With news of the Union Ministry of Home Affairs raising security concerns over non-availability of “lawful interception” in the BlackBerry service and the resultant possibility of a ban on BlackBerry services in India , Biztech2.0 spoke to some leading Indian CIOs for their reactions.

Disbelief, ridicule and exasperation were some of the overriding emotions across the board. A CIO of a telecom company who wished to remain anonymous for obvious reasons said that if Blackberry services were curtailed, the step would be akin to asking enterprises to refrain from going mobile—which is vital for businesses to work efficiently and stay competitive. “With infrastructure that requires top management to be mobile and connected, this step is completely in the wrong direction,” he added.

Alok Kumar, Senior Vice President, Reliance Info Solutions, said any curtailment of services would set Indian enterprises back by two years. “As most senior executives rely on BlackBerry services for quick decision-making, efficiency and connectivity, banning services would definitely prove to be a hiccup. A drop in productivity would be another fall out of this decision.” added Kumar. Zoeb Adenwala, CIO, Essel Propack was more direct and said it would be a complete disaster.

“If the government wants to ban this service, they must provide another encrypted alternative network, as no company would want sensitive data flowing over unsecured networks,” said Kumar.

What most CIOs are unanimous about is that this issue definitely would tarnish the ‘secure’ tag that the BlackBerry so proudly bears. “If this monitoring comes into effect, there has to be some sort of policy that ensures that this data does not fall into the wrong hands. Unless this is in place I would not be comfortable using the service to transmit anything sensitive, which would be most of my mails,” Kumar added.

Another CIO who also wished to remain anonymous said the entire matter was laughable. “Just because a terrorist uses a cell phone doesn’t mean that all cell phone services should be banned. And then what about executives, especially MNC executives, using corporate VPNs or SSH connections to a remote server to access their e-mail? Will this also be banned because the government can’t tap this medium in real-time?” he asked.

BlackBerry maker Research In Motion (RIM) states that all security certificates and encryption policies lie on a user company’s BlackBerry Enterprise servers and that RIM itself doesn't store anything, what if companies have to give the government access to their servers? This produces mixed reactions from CIOs. Most say that if they had to comply by law, they would have no option, but would rather not have their sensitive data open to prying eyes.