For Indians, terror has taken on a new meaning of late. With frightening dimensions, Indians fear that the outsourcing that it provides, the very backbone for global MNCs could also become soft targets for terrorists.

The BPO industry alone employs close to seven lakh employees, who all can potentially access sensitive data. They are thus under great scrutiny of late. Every IT and BPO company is now stepping up background checks on its employees to avoid terrorist attacks. As almost 70 per cent of the outsourced work from the US and Europe is received by the back offices in India, there are crucial data and operations that reside here and employees have access to it all. Should an unforeseen event like an attack take place it can seriously hamper a substantial amount of their businesses.

Of course it will be some time before the government can bring in uniform identity system in place as most of the data is still not digitalised and available for screening centrally. Companies, meanwhile, are resorting to police verifications and employee referrals and even external agencies looking afresh at identities of existing employees and the new hires.