Authbridge

Businessworld : In god we trust; all others we virus scan…

Neelkanth Dhir was restless. He was amazed how one phone call could completely overturn a whole week of success and happiness into one of humming desperation. Digvijay Malik, head of a successful foods business, had called him, having found his number on the website of Fun & Folio (F&F) India, where Dhir was the CEO.

“Pardon me for calling without an appointment Mr Dhir,” Malik had said, “I am a little perturbed. And I need your help to understand the situation as it concerns your firm and my funds. Last month, your portfolio funds manager Sushant Deo had asked me to sell 30 per cent of my holdings in Belt-Lin India at Rs 73, insisting that he had market information about its plan to diversify which did not have a Board consensus. I agreed as I trusted him, and to be fair, he had taken some very wise decisions on my holdings in Capollo and Wertier, which saved me from losses. But I recall being reluctant about Belt-Lin. The next day the market closed at 78 and CNBC reported that the plans had been unanimously voted on, as expected.

“To be fair again, Deo met me and apologised sincerely and even called Belt-Lin’s CFO in my presence for misleading us, etc.

“But, I don’t know Mr Dhir, how to say all this without making it look ominous. A similar thing happened yesterday with Kashi Vira, head of Mellon Media, the ad agency. He lost Rs 1.83 lakh, and it turns out he had transacted through Deo whom I had recommended to him a few months ago. I am upset also because I had told Kashi about Deo and your firm after my timely exit in Capollo. Last night, Kashi spoke to me; his nephew, who is an accountant, examined the documentation and feels the shares were in fact not sold on the day the order was placed. I don’t quite get the process, as I said I don’t know how to say all this, but knowing Kashi’s nephew is a senior manager at KPMG and clearly knows what he is saying, and after my own losses of Rs 3.5 lakh last month, I wanted to tell you that either this is not above board or Deo is a bad egg.

“Then, I went back and cross-checked with another broker — let me say I don’t feel inspired any more Mr Dhir. Please do not misunderstand me, but I think you must get to the bottom of this. My lawyers may wish to confer with you in due course, Mr Dhir.”

And ever since, Dhir had been restless. Deo of all the people could not be the harbinger of bad news. The man was pure gold. He had been shortlisted by the placement firm that F&F had been using for the past two years. During the interview, Dhir was impressed by Deo’s track record — three years with Einstein & Bagel Investments, Washington, 14 months at Trade Ventura Bank, then one year as credit advisor with Globe Paper Bonds, Mumbai, when he met with an accident and was in traction for eight months. That was when he approached the placement firm and was willing to work for much less, knowing he had lost time and continuity.

Dhir had liked the young man who spoke with conviction about wanting to develop a new model that factored in emotional buys and sells into the forecasting techniques. Deo had an MBA degree from a reputed b-school and Dhir liked the package and hired him. So, while Malik had had a bad experience, and he was willing to look into it, he had already set aside any aspersions that the early morning conversation had cast on young Sushant Deo.

But, if only things could be set aside that simply. Dhir had not reckoned with his mind, which like an urgent trader, kept bringing his attention to the little seed of doubt that Malik had planted. After tossing his thoughts around for two hours, he decided to take a look at Deo’s CV once again. So as to not draw attention he asked for the CVs of everyone in funds management. And then felt exhausted. Why am I overreacting? But yes, a small reassurance would have helped, he thought. For something inside was nagging him.

Tanvi, his assistant peeped in. “12.30 Neel,” she said. “Lunch with Kapilesh Kar… and two of the lifts have been shutdown for maintenance, so you want to start early?” The last thing he wanted now was lunch; so he said, “Tanvi, call off the lunch. Tell him I am busy.”

But Kapilesh would not be put off so easily, he told Tanvi to pass the phone to Dhir, “Hello! You want me to come there personally and scrape you off your chair? Rishte mein bhai hoon! I will be waiting at the Willingdon for you.”
Kapilesh was a cousin thrice removed, but he was also a batchmate from Mayo College. A paraplegic after an accident at 12, Kapilesh was on a wheelchair. And when he joined Mayo, the family pressed upon Dhir to be his shadow, and take care of him. At The Willingdon Club, where they met once a month, the menu was decided by Kapilesh — always. Dhir, who always lodged a token protest, did not say a word today. “What’s on your mind?” asked Kapilesh. And Dhir lied.

They were chatting about their nieces and nephews in boarding school and about their German Shepherds… when the club manager led a young man to Kapilesh who, after excusing himself with Dhir said to Kapilesh, “Sir, we have just completed the task and need to finalise the prosecution orders; Vidyut-ji says it can only be a criminal case u/s 379 and 408 of the IPC; sections 65 and 72 for hacking can be suppressed if you insist, he says. So, after your lunch, we will meet Vidyut-ji here in the lawn cafe.”

Kapilesh had not expected Prashant, his executive assistant back so fast. The plan was for Prashant to discuss with Vidyut Sharma the cyber cop and then for them to meet the following week. Clearly, things had escalated. When Prashant left, a stunned Dhir said to KK, “What on earth was that? Why are you going around prosecuting people? We are simple folks KK! Why are you messing with cops and robbers?”

Kapilesh nodded, “I agree, but what do simple folks do, when not-so-simple folks pervade their lives? Very undesirable what has happened, and the lad is no older than our Kuldeep !”

Kapilesh ran Saffire, a product company that developed analytical software for call centres, among others. One of the products was Emo-Tone, a software that flagged calls in which, the customer was either angry or highly dissatisfied by monitoring inflection in voice. Saffire was developing this product for the Morro Group.

“The key IPs behind this product are the natural language processing and voice modulation techniques used to determine the emotions of the customer,” explained KK.

“The algorithm and set of technologies to capture the voice conversations are the critical pieces that feed the software, ok? The algorithms that have been created have taken countless man years to develop and stabilise. Since this is a highly recognised need, there are many companies that have entered the race of being the first one to bring the software to the market.

“Now, what kind of not-so-simple person disturbed my peace? I will tell you. A young man called Duleep Sinha, all of 28 years. He leads the technical team working on the algorithms. He has access to all aspects of the implementation of the algorithm, and he is the team member who is responsible for breaking out the voice signals into chunks that the algorithm uses to monitor. So, he does not work on the algorithm directly, but is a link in the software factory, do you get my drift? As you have realised by now, he has access to supply the necessary data to the algorithm.

“And what utterly uncommon act did he do? He passes on the information of what parts of the voice conversations are being used by the algorithm to a private client that he is working with in his spare time. Not only that, because he has access to all the design documents, he can give away the documents around this process, thereby leaking critical IP that can be utilised by competitors! And that is what has happened!”

Dhir was alarmed. How could this be? He had thought firewalls were installed to prevent just this kind of betrayal; that is what his own IT chief had reassured him with whenever Dhir mentioned security. So he said, “KK, how can that be? With all the firewalls operating, it should not be very easy I would imagine!” KK shook his head, “Well he is within the company, no? So, the simplest thing in the world to do is to look at a document and save it in a flash drive, or print it, so that you can review it at home.”

Dhir agreed, “Hmm… but then how would security pick it up? Will your server pick up copying of data onto pen drive?” KK now explained, “We have a system in which they can see who has accessed what file. And there are any number of specialised software that monitor employee usage. It’s pretty easy these days; you need to only define your parameters. Once the software starts running it tracks everything, every single key stroke, every site you visited, every document you opened and sent in emails, everything!”

Dhir was sharp, he said, “KK, didn’t you once tell me that your organisation does not allow emails at work? If that is so, then how come the same ruling did not disallow pen drives? I mean it’s like a movie theatre not allowing you to bring your own food in, but lets you cook food in the theatre!” KK said, “The only thing we don’t do is a body scan, Neel; somehow I was averse to such suspicion. It just did not seem right. I mean, at one level we say we are a family, and then we go about frisking them. So I did not get that serious. And frankly, I have been casual about all this, because I trusted the fellows!

“So that is what happened, you see! I relaxed the rules, didn’t allow frisking, told them ‘we trust’; emails from non-corporate vehicles started happening and I said, rehne do, after all these are young boys and girls and I did not like treating them as suspects! When I relaxed, they gave up being alert and forgot that there is still a silent software that is monitoring all actions!”

Dhir was taking all this in as if in a trance. Then he said, “So now?”KK sighed and for the first time his face lost its geniality. “I hired a cyber cop to examine the situation and he hired a background checking agency to probe the antecedents of Duleep and the rest you heard from Prashant.”

Dhir gasped, “KK! These are young boys for heavens’ sake! Technology is like that. Think, there was a time when there was no technology, and these things happened even then… can’t you deal with this without getting in the cops?”
“Neel, we are in an industry where the respect for a system is what governs fair play,” said KK. “It is an industry that works on trust, and we are constantly dealing with creative sorts who are very exacting in their demands, and we are forever willing to fulfil these… but, for a reciprocation of trust. And when there is breach of trust, then this one micro system will destroy every other.”

Dhir was thoughtful. Stealing data and stealing money… what a world we are in, where one is as bad as the other! “And I don’t know about yours, but in ours, some unusual behaviours are cropping up, and if not stemmed in the bud, all hell will break loose,” continued KK. “We are already faced with a lot of silent ‘misbehaviour’; we have situations where an employee would abscond from work, and go work in another company after faking the signatures of our HR head on a fake relieving letter! There was Arnav who absconded, basically left us without serving the notice period. We usually did not do much to track down these employees as there were too many of them leaving every month. A few months later, I got a mail from a background checking agency saying they were doing a BGC (background check) for Arnav, who had already joined Exetel. They also sent me his scanned relieving letter, which to my astonishment and anger had MY signature on it. It was a fake, and a very poor attempt indeed!”

Dhir was intrigued and disturbed too. He wondered what these youngsters thought that made them do this. So he said, “Then you need to keep your company letterheads in safekeeping?”

“Oh”, said KK, “It is possible that they may have obtained them from a contact within the company, or maybe someone was careless and left them lying around; it is also possible to erase the writing on a used letterhead and use it to type an experience certification letter on. Endless possibilities with today’s technology like adobe Photoshop, MS Paint, Corel Draw… these are techies, Neel, they can create something out of nothing! And in IT, the graphic artist works very closely with engineers so relationships are bound to exist. Sunit (a cousin) was telling me about a print shop he went to get his company letterheads printed, and there he was shown samples of letter heads of all the big companies! So, it doesn’t take much to get letterheads!”

Dhir felt as if he was talking about a completely different world. “Our banking industry seems like a kindergarten in comparison, KK, but then yes, our crimes are not technology driven. But tell me, when your boys go absconding, do you find out where they go or what happened to them? It should be easy to track them!”
KK said, “They probably just join another company that does not do a BGC, or they just never show the Saffire experience in their CV’s. Since they usually leave in less than six months, they would try and explain that period of inactivity to the next company, by saying that they were hospitalised for a serious ailment, or that they were involved in a property dispute, or were looking after their family business; and you cannot do a BGC on these, can you? I mean if a candidate came and told you he was hospitalised after an accident and, hence, could not work for 6-7 months, can you ask him for proof?”

Dhir experienced a distinct discomfort. His mind envisioned page three of a CV he had read only this morning. The CV of Sushant Deo. An accident during a service week with the victims of a factory building crash in Kolhapur kept me in traction for eight months. “But KK, how can you be so sure that all that you doubt is the truth?”

“Oh, I never doubted the man, which is the funny bit. Never,” said KK. “The software did record data traffic into a pen drive, but when the data security chief mentioned it once to me, I waved it away saying, ‘it’s ok, routine stuff’. “But he was obviously concerned. He hired a background check agency who unearthed a whole lot on Duleep. Then the nexus was more than apparent.” Dhir was uncomfortable as he asked, “But didn’t he find out that he was being paged and checked and policed?” KK shook his head, “The way they work, nobody finds out.”

When he returned to the office, Tanvi had a 30-minute time window with him to run over the minutes of the Rolpex meeting with him. As they sat checking and correcting, Sushant walked in with a smile. “May I take a second only?” he said; and placed before Dhir a plastic bag with a laddoo. “For you Mr Dhir, I did a special pooja yesterday for Mumbai’s safety.”

Then he added, “We may be called to place funds for the Jewel Bank, Abu Dhabi; I was on a conference call late last night, and the meeting has headed in the right direction.” Dhir smiled and nodded. “Keep me posted,” he said. And then, “Good job, Sushant,” and then, “Sushant… hold it please, I have a thought. I will handle Jewel Bank. Send me a briefing please?” The thoughts he had whipped around in the morning, came back with new shades and flavours.

Tanvi watched Dhir through this. When Sushant had left, Dhir pulled out his mobile phone and opened ‘Notes’ where he had saved a number that KK had given him today. Handing it to Tanvi, he said, “This is the number of Lenny Dias; get him on my direct line please?”

When Lenny Dias the senior agent at CopSecret took the call, Tanvi left the room and Dhir identified himself. “You may be aware of the vulnerability of investment companies and banks when they are dealing with multiple millions of funds on client account. I am required to check out a few of my senior people to provide a comfort position on them. As it happens, we are about to embark on a very major deal with a bank in Abu Dhabi. The client has asked us to conduct a formal check on the team members who will be on this deal. I felt a good place to begin would be the references that an employee gives at the time of joining us.
“We can begin with Sushant Deo who is the team leader. Although he had provided us with a reference letter from his ex-employer’s HR as well as two other people personally known to him, we never conducted a reference check in such a manner. let me say, we would invoke that reference only if we felt compelled. Mostly, the asking of references and the actual referral is in fact only a formality. But now that the client has asked for this…” and Dhir left it in the air.

A week later Dhir called Lenny to check if he had made any headway. Lenny said, “I wrote to his last employer’s HR head and am still awaiting a reply. I called them two days ago but was told the HR director will write an email. Assuming some organisations are slower than others, let us wait another two days.” Restless, Dhir called Sheila Jacob his HR head. “Sheila, if an organisation asks for references about a new employee, can the ex-employer choose not to reply or provide a non-committal reply?”

Sheila was clear, “Very rarely would a reference or the HR department give non-committal or no-replies. Even they understand that the employee’s career may get jeopardised if they don’t respond. I mean the only reason they stall is because there is some hanky-panky there!”
Dhir did not like this.