Indian IT trade association Nasscom has today reiterated its commitment to enhancing security at Indian IT locations, announcing that 100,000 IT professionals have now signed up to its new National Skills Registry.

Nasscom president Kiran Karnik said that the registry - which aims to help firms limit security breaches by providing them with an independent mechanism for checking potential employees' credentials – had now reached a "critical mass " with 55,000 professionals now on the database, a further 45,000 applications in the process of being completed and 36 employers having declared their support for the scheme.

"By December 2007, we hope to take this number five times over to touch 500,000," Karnik added.

The Skills Registry was launched by Nasscom early last year in the wake of several high-profile scandals that revealed that UK customer details stolen from Indian call centres were being sold by criminal gangs.

The registry formed the centre piece of a wider IT security crackdown from Nasscom that has seen the trade group recently open its first Regional Cyber Security and Research Centre in Chandigarh and provide cyber security training for 2,675 police and security specialists.

The milestone comes as Nasscom also announced the appointment of Shyamal Ghosh as the chairman of a new Self Regulatory Organisation designed to develop and enforce privacy and data protection standards for Indian IT and business process outsourcers.

Shyamal Ghosh said that Nasscom's investment in security and the launch of the new Self Regulatory Organisation were essential if the Indian IT industry is to alleviate customer concerns about security risks and "demonstrate globally that it is capable of adopting the best practices for data protection".