British Premier David Cameron during his second day in New Delhi on Tuesday, inked co-operation between Britain and India in combating cyber attacks.
Mr Cameron has already called for stronger business ties with India and progress on cyber cooperation would also translate into business opportunities for UK security firms.
India is one of the fastest-developing markets for cyber exports and Mr Cameron believes that the UK has a competitive and technological advantage from its expertise in tackling attacks.
The cooperation aims to both protect the huge amount of British personal and commercial information that is stored in large databases in India, and to allow both countries to share information about planned cyber attacks, whether from criminals, terrorists or other countries. Mr Cameron will announce a new joint task force to share information, when he meets Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in Delhi. In two years’ time there will be more people online in India than in the US and the potential threat to security is huge, officials have said.
Cameron is expected to lobby the Indian prime minister to open up the country’s economy to British investors, particularly in areas such as financial services and retail.
Regional security, especially in Afghanistan after the withdrawal of Western troops, will feature on the agenda. Mr Cameron is also expected to make a push to secure defence deals from one of the world’s largest buyers of arms – but his visit comes at a sensitive time.
Last week, India indicated it would cancel a contract to buy helicopters from the Anglo-Italian firm AgustaWestland over bribery allegations, a move that could undermine Mr Cameron’s efforts. On Monday, David urged the Indian government to cut “regulation and red tape” in a bid to encourage more trade and investment involving UK businesses. Mr Cameron said India “can be a difficult country to do business in” but insisted he wanted the UK to become India’s economic “partner of choice”. He said he wanted to see UK firms playing a bigger role in a “more open, more flexible” Indian economy.
The delegation includes BAE Systems, Rolls-Royce, London Underground and the English Premier League. The Delegation would also call on Indian President Pranab Mukherjee.