First it was the Nasscom and now it's the Confederation of Indian Industry.

Industry bodies in the country are fast assuming a proactive role in managing network security and information risk for India Inc is concerned.

As they work towards protecting the competitiveness of Indian companies in an increasingly unsafe cyber environment, both the CII and the Nasscom have launched special initiatives to educate and aid its members in securing their networks.

Speaking at an occasion marking the launch of the CII's information risk management service, George Samenuk, chairman and chief executive officer, McAfee, said, "The year 2003 saw the most number of virus attacks. But now the numbers show that the first quarter of 2004 has had more attacks than the whole of 2003. It's not just personal computers and servers that are vulnerable to these attacks. Increasingly, 3G phones and cellular phones are falling victims to hacker attacks."

Earlier this year Nasscom also launched its security initiative aimed at IT and ITES companies. It is also planning to carry out third-party security audits for business process outsourcing companies in the country.

Samenuk pointed out that just having an anti-virus was not enough protection more and more software services companies, financial institutions and governments are opting for a host and network intrusion prevention technology.

Voice-based BPO companies in India have the biggest reason to worry as Internet telephony has been identified as a new frontier for hackers world over.

Financial institutions such as banks and credit card companies have also been plagued by 'phishing', where hackers get access to sensitive customer identification information by sending e-mails from the institution's mail address.

Though the extent of the damage caused by these attacks has not been estimated yet, security has already emerged the number one spend area for CIO's globally.

"It's not just software and hardware that we invest in, there are a number of aspects like physical security etc that we invest in regularly," said S Mahalingam, chief financial officer of Tata Consultancy Services.