Integrated IT Systems across companies with database of employees for background check

Detailed background check to be done at regular intervals (bank details, debts, spending habits, etc.)

Involving psychiatrists and conducting psychometric tests at the time of recruitment

Maintaining a separate IT security team for conducting regular audits

Periodic IT security audit and review by a competent external agency

Encryption of critical data

Dedicated team for physical surveillance / monitoring

No materials (paper, etc.) to be allowed inside, or to be taken out from the office

Information to be given to customers not to disclose details which are not needed

Conclusion

The risk story is definitely true, and it is here to stay unless the Indian BPO companies wake up and take the risks seriously. Companies need to work on them, invest time and money to mitigate these risks. Unless companies allocate appropriate resources to Risk Management, there can be more cases like the unfortunate incident of fraud at Mphasis BPO.

The BPO industry still has time to overcome this hurdle and script a success story. Else, it may be another familiar India story of so close, yet so far.

Concluded.

* Contributed by: -
Devroop Dhar is a Management Consultant with PricewaterhouseCoopers in Mumbai. He has almost 5 years of experience in the field of Consultancy, Project Management, Six Sigma. He is an alumnus of IIM Kozhikode, specializing in Finance & Operations. He has also worked with TCS and Bristlecone in the past, and done an internship with EXL Service. He also holds a BE Degree in Production Engineering from Jadavpur University, Kolkata.
All views expressed in this article are the author's, and not of his employer.