DRDO working on 'Indian OS', plans release in three years

Exhorting the need to have a robust cyber security system in place, DRDO chief V K Saraswat on Thursday said the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) alongwith other premier institutes is developing India's own operating system (OS), which is likely to be ready in next three years.

"One of the major elements of cyber security is having our own operating system because today we are dependent on all OS systems which are imported whether it is based on Windows, Linux which is likely to be having malicious worms/things and hence it is essential that we have our own OS," the DRDO Director-General said New Delhi.

Speaking to newsmen on sidelines of NAVCOM-2012', two-day international conference on Navigation and Communication that began New Delhi, Saraswat, Scientific Adviser to Defence Minister, said, "We have already started a major programme and are one-and-half-years into that programme. It (Indian OS) is a major effort requiring large number of software engineers working together."

He said 150 engineers were working across the country on creating Indian OS, and added it will take at least three more years for getting the Indian OS ready.

"It is our Indian effort we are not having any foreign involvement in this," Saraswat pointed out.

Defence researchers and scientists should start working together with industry and DRDO and other scientific departments and bring country's own operating system soon, so that "we are independent from what is coming from outside world," he stressed.

Earlier, speaking at the event, he said cyber security networking was very important today in view of everything being network centric and on Information Technology.