In Brief: Tech bodies to raise PDP Bill concerns before parliamentary panel; Sophos launches new XG Firewall version

Indian industry bodies and foreign companies in the technology sector are expected to address issues pertaining to the Personal Data Protection (PDP) Bill before a joint parliamentary committee that is studying the legislation, The Economic Times reported. The issues they want to address are the inclusion of non-personal data in the bill, exemptions that the government has granted for itself, voluntary verification of users by social media companies and weakening of the Data Protection Authority, the report said. The association represents companies such as Infosys, TCS, Google, Facebook, Paytm and  Amazon.

Read: Personal Data Protection Bill 2019: Verified social media accounts and other proposed measures

Sophos’ new XG Firewall version takes on encrypted network traffic 

Cybersecurity firm Sophos has launched a new version of its XG Firewall to eliminate significant security risks associated with encrypted network traffic. With the new Xstream architecture, high-performance transport layer security (TLS) and traffic decryption capabilities, XG Firewall will also feature artificial intelligence-enhanced threat analysis from SophosLabs and accelerated application performance, the company said in a statement. Another study by SophosLabs which surveyed 3,100 information technology (IT) managers from 12 countries, showed that only 0.3% of Indian organisations decrypt all their network traffic to inspect it and that nearly 13% of surveyed Indian organisations thought it was necessary to decrypt all network traffic, the statement said. In October last year, the firm said in a study that over 60% of Indian businesses were concerned about being exposed to cyber threats due to employee error.

Read: Cybercriminals to leverage emerging technologies against companies in 2020: Sophos

Chiratae Ventures adds Ferzaan Engineer to its India advisory council 

Bengaluru headquartered venture capital firm Chiratae Ventures has added co-founder of Medwell Ventures, which offers home healthcare services under the Nightingales brand, Ferzaan Engineer to its India advisory council. “Funds advised by Chiratae Ventures have been investing in healthtech since the early days and have committed over $130 million into this space. We believe Ferzaan’s expertise can add tremendous value to the portfolio and help us build a more sustainable strategy in this domain,” Sudhir Sethi, founder and chairman of Chiratae Ventures, said. The company’s global advisory board has chairman emeritus of Tata Sons Ratan Tata, co-founder of Infosys Kris Gopalakrishnan, founder and non-executive vice chairman of Schroder Bruno E Raschle and non-executive vice chairman at Asian Paints Manish Choksi.