SSL Wireless for updating existing IT policy

SSL Wireless, a leading IT solution firm in Bangladesh, has strongly laid stress on updating existing IT policy focusing on ICT infrastructure, e-commerce, mobile apps and privacy in order to foster growth in the sector.
"Existing IT policy is based on a very old framework, which does not cover many things. To boost the sector, the IT policy should be updated focusing, among others, e-commerce service delivery and mobile apps development segments," Shahzada Redwan, Head of Engineering, SSL Wireless, told the FE in an interview over e-mail recently.
Mr Redwan further said, "As expansion of IT enabled services continues, the policy should provide strong focus on prevention of cyber crimes, maintaining of privacy and data confidentiality too."
Citing that ICT infrastructure condition in Bangladesh is very poor, he said, "You need excellent quality of ICT infrastructure to support the IT-enabled services. We still have to rely on poor data connectivity, over-head cabling, lack of redundancy in networking etc."
"The IT policy should also address the infrastructure situation and design a roadmap to establish robust infrastructure throughout the nation."
Mr Redwan also underscored the need for having an accepted process of selecting IT policy implementers and drivers to benefit from the policy. "Executioners should come from pure IT education and service backgrounds having hands-on knowledge about this, expediting achievement of the Digital Bangladesh goal."
In future, SSL looks at expanding its operations in the IT-enabled service sector; currently, the online merchant base of SSL is mostly Dhaka based.
"We want to spread our services to other districts and villages so the whole nation can reap the benefits of e-commerce. We also want to bring more people under our own service portfolios so we can unfold the true potentials of IT to digitise the society and economy," Ashish Chakraborty, General Manager, SSL Wireless, said.
As part of its continuous effort in driving changes in the digital space by innovating new services, SSL is working on a project called etunes.com.bd to legitimately sell music digitally. "This can save our music industry in two ways- providing deserved revenue to the artistes and uniting all of us to take a stand against music piracy," Mr Chakraborty said.
SSL is also looking ahead to create an e-wallet service so that people can purchase products and services from e-commerce without hassles. The service can offer the customers a lot of benefits-- customers will not be required to access their bank account or credit card for purchase; they can easily save their e-wallet credentials as they don't need to enter it again and again, he said.
The company's main products are SMS messaging solutions, which covers short code management and alert/notifications, e-commerce, mobile airtime recharge, bill payments, VAS for telecom, media and corporate, digital security certificates, and 3D secure platforms.
SSL Wireless, he said, is empowering people digitally by bringing many services to the reach of everybody through mobile phone and/or PC; if you own a bank account, you can get SMS alerts for any transactions or if you want to check your account balance, you could do it with your mobile phone or if you want to top-up your mobile phone, you could easily do it from your mobile phone or PC. The customers get all of these services instantly.
"SSL is also one of the pioneers of launching e-commerce in Bangladesh through the support of DBBL and BRAC Bank and currently leading the sector with the largest number of online merchants and acquirer of payment channels," Mr Chakraborty said.
He further said that SSL also the leading provider of Digital Security solutions like SSL (HTTPS) to banks, e-commerce sites, and others. All of these have an enormous impact to achieve the government's Digital Bangladesh vision.
Redwan said that for enabling IT for banking and financial inclusions, SSL largely contributed to digitalise the delivery of services to consumers by creation of an alternative channel for these banks like short code based banking, or alert banking services.
"Currently, over 30 banks are taking various services from SSL to bring their customers closer to the bank without needing them to visit the branch or telephone the bank," the Head of Engineering said.
Under SSL's services, customers of these banks can access their accounts using their mobile phones and they can also pay for their mobile talk time or pay utility bills from their home or office. They can do online shopping from different merchant sites. These are helping us take huge leap forward as a nation for the banking and financial industry in Bangladesh, he continued.
About the security and privacy of these services, Mr Redwan said that security and privacy aspect is taken care of through implementation of special measures and checkpoints.
As instance, he said, installing security certificate (like HTTPS) on a website is one kind of security measurement, which helps the customers in protecting their sensitive information by encrypting them during transmission from your browser to the server.
SSL is also playing a key role to provide these certificates to merchants and banks so that they can protect and prevent unauthorised access to these critical data. SSL has signed up with Symantec Inc. (previously known as VeriSign Inc) to provide these digital certificates in Bangladesh back in 2009. Symantec is presently considered as the number 1 Digital Security Solution provider in the world.
"We do not sign up any merchant or bank for our e-commerce gateway SSLCOMMERZ without the proper installation of a security certificate (HTTPS)," he said.
On the other end, banks are putting an extra layer of authentication by asking for One-Time-Password (OTP) to their customers whenever they go online to do a transaction.
These are also called 2FA authentication where banks take an extra password from the customer before authorizing an online transaction. Most of these OTPs are sent through SMS messaging platform of SSL Wireless. SSL has also signed up with CA Technologies Inc, who is the world's leading 2FA solution provider for credit card transactions online.
They are providing the 3D Secure (ACS) solution to the local banks through SSL Wireless. Some other banks are also using SSL's messaging platform to send locally generated OTPs.

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