Zia Saquib

Executive Director

Zia Saquib received a Bachelors degree in Electrical Engineering from Regional Engineering College- Rourkela, and a M.S. Degree in Electrical (Communication) Engineering from Florida Institute of Technology, USA.

After graduation, He began his career in 1986 with Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) Bangalore, where He worked as an Avionics Engineer at Aircraft Design Bureau till 1989.Thereafter He moved to Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering, Florida Institute of Technology, where He worked at the Opto-Electronics Lab till 1992.

Thereafter he worked at Infotec of Florida as Chief Technical Officer (CTO) where he developed a messaging software infrastructure for service provider segment. In 1998 he founded Scope Technologies Inc., an R&D and Training Company that developed secure messaging software for the enterprise at Orlando, Florida. He was the founder Vice-President of this company.

He returned to India in 2002 & joined C-DAC as Member Technical Staff and soon was designated as Group Coordinator and Chairman of the Management Committee of Advanced Computing Training School (ACTS).  

From 2004, He was given full responsibility as Head & Program Coordinator of ACTS and e-Governance Software Solutions Groups.

In January 2006, He was elevated to the position of Executive Director, C-DAC Mumbai (and Electronic City- Bangalore) formerly known as NCST.

As Executive Director, He initiated research programmes, notably in scalable software router (based on FoRCES protocol standard of IETF), immunity based intrusion detection, cyber-security for critical infrastructure, level-3 fingerprint biometrics and iSCSi-based storage networking. Some of this work has culminated into transferable technology and is being deployed in projects under National e-Governance Plan of Government of India.

He has also initiated a 6-month full-time post graduate diploma programme in information security with emphasis on modern cryptography and high-speed network security.

Research

My present research interests are in areas of coding theory, applied cryptography and network security. More specifically, I am interested in elliptic curve and pairing-based cryptosystems in constrained environments such as SCADA/Smart Grid, Wireless Sensor Networks & MANETs. We are developing cryptographic key management protocols and exploring biometric based key generation for such networks.

In addition, I am actively involved in storage networking and disaster recovery framework (REVIVAL product family) based on the iSCSi protocol standard.

I am a Working Group Member of the following e-Governance Standards of Government of India:-

(i) Metadata & Data Standards for Application Domain.

(ii) Technical Standards & E-Governance Architecture.

And of following committees:

(i) Peer Review Steering Group (PRSG) of  "Biometrics for Mobile Applications" a research project at Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur.

(ii) Member of High Power Committee for Information Technology, Government of Maharashtra, India.

Publications

Journals

[1] Anupam Saxena, Om Pal, Saquib Zia, Dhiren Patel, "Customized PKI for SCADA System",  International Journal on Advanced Networking and Applications (IJANA) 2010 , ISSN 0975-0282 (Online) 0975-0290 (Print).

[2] Om Pal, Peeyush Jain, Sudhansu Goyal, Zia Saquib, Bernard L. Menezes, "Intrusion Detection Using Graph Support: A Hybrid Approach of Supervised and Unsupervised Techniques" International Journal of Advancements in Computing Technology (IJACT) 2010, (ISSN: 2005-8039)

[3] Saquib Zia, Soni Santosh Kumar, Vig Rekha, "Automated Fingerprint Identification System: Recognition Techniques & Algorithmic Approaches - (ISSN: 0975-525X) Techno Path Journal- NMIMS University (Volume II)".

[4] Saquib Zia, Soni Santosh Kumar, Suhasaria Sweta, "Automated Fingerprint Identification System: Recognition Techniques & Algorithmic Approaches - (ISSN: 0975-525X) Techno Path Journal- NMIMS University (Volume I)".

Conferences

[1] Saquib Zia, Soni Santosh, Vijay Jain, "Seafarer's Identity Documents: Towards Fraud Prevention and National Security". International Conference on Trends in e-Payments- Challenges and Opportunities, Mumbai, Sep 28-30, 2010.

[2] Saquib Zia, Om Pal, Saxena Anupam, Soni Santosh, "Secured Multi-Party Micropayment Scheme for Mobile Commerce, " International Conference on Trends in e-Payments-Challenges and Opportunities, Mumbai, Sep 28-30, 2010.

[3] Saquib Zia, Soni Santosh, "A Novel Scheme for Sweat-Pre Extraction & Performance Evaluation on Multi-Core", International Conference on Electronics and Information Engineering (ICEIE 2010), Kyoto, Japan, Aug 01-03, 2010 (ICEIE 2010 Catalog Numbaer: CFP1036K-PRT, ISBN : 978-1-4244-7680-0)

[4] Anupam Saxena, Ompal and Zia Saquib, "Public Key Cryptography based approach for securing SCADA Communications, LCNS-CCIS, 2011.

[5] Om Pal, Anupam Saxena, Uttam Kumawat, Ravi Batra and Zia Saquib, "Secure Group Deffie-Hellman Key Exchange with ID based Cryptography", LNCS-CCIS, 2011.

[6] Peeyush Jain, Zia Saquib, "Analysis of Key Distribution Schemes for Distributed Sensor Networks", LNCS-CCIS 2011.

[7] Om Pal, Sharda Saiwan, Peeyush Jain, Zia Saquib, Dhiren Patel, "Cryptographic Key Management for SCADA System: An Architectural Framework", IEEE Proceedings of ACT 2009 International Conference on Advances in Computing, Control, and Telecommunication Technologies, Thiruvanthapuram, India, December 2009, Pages-169-174

[8] Zia Saquib, Nirmala Salam, Rekha Nair and Nipun Pandey, "An Enhanced Method for Singular Points Detection in Fingerprint Images", The International Conference on Computer and Communication Technology, ICCCT 2010, Motilal Nehru National Institute of Technology, Allahabad, Sep 17-19, 2010.

[9] Zia Saquib, Santosh Soni, Rekha Vig, Pratibha Mokal et al, " Sweat Pores based (Level3) Novel Fingerprint Quality Estimation", IEEE International Conference on Computer Design and Applications (IEEE ICCSIT 2010), Chengdu, China, July 9-11, 2010.

[10] Saquib Zia, Soni Santosh Kumar, Vig Rekha, "Hierarchical Fingerprint Quality Estimation Scheme". International Conference on Computer Design and Applications, (ICCDA 2010), Qinhuangdao, Hebei, China. June 25-27, 2010.

[11] Saquib Zia, Soni Santosh Kumar, Vig Rekha, "Inter-domain Quality Estimation of Fingerprint Images", International conference on Image and Video Processing and Computer Vision (IVPCV-10)", 2010, Orlando, Florida, USA.

[12] Saquib Zia, Soni Santosh Kumar, Salam Nirmala, Nair Rekha P., Pandey Nipun, et al "Automated Fingerprint Identification System: Issues & Trends", National Conference: NCICT-2010, March 5-6 2010, MPSTME, NMIMS, Mumbai, India.

[13] Saquib Zia, Soni Santosh Kumar, Salam Nirmala, Nair Rekha et al, "Automated Fingerprint Identification System: Architecture, Sensors and Standards", National Conference NCICT-2010, March 5-6, 2010, MMSTME, NMIMS, Mumbai, India.

[14] Saquib Zia, Soni Santosh Kumar, Nair Rekha P., Pandey Nipun, and Suhasaria Sweta, "Bharatiya-AFIS: An Architectural Framework for UID Applications", International Conference on "Spin-offs of Unique and National ID to Smartcard, RFID, Biometrics and e-Security Stakeholders", New Delhi, India, Sep. 2009.

[15]. Santosh Kumar Soni and Zia Saquib, "Novel Applications of Biometrics and Interdisciplinary Technologies for the Visually Impaired/Old Age/Deaf & Hard of Hearing," International Conference on Biometrics (Biometrics India Expo 2008), New Delhi, August 2008.

[16]. Zia Saquib & Rekha Singhal, "An Architecture for Continuous Available Commodity Storage", Workshop on Storage Technologies in HIPC, Dec 2007.

[17]. Jennifer D'Cruz, Narainee Rambajun, Sanjay Sood, Rajeeve Agarwal and Zia Saquib, "The eGovernment Concept: A Systematic Review of Research & Practitioner Literature", IEEE- Innovations in Information Technology, Dubai, 2006.

Indian Patents

[1] "SecKeyD": A Method and System for Secure Key Distribution in Constrained Environments (Pending): Co-inventor

[2] A Method and System for Disaster Recovery with minimal RTO/RPO (Pending): Co-inventor

Research Projects

• Cyber-security for Critical Infrastructure (Industrial & SCADA Networks)

• Design & Development of hardware based Intrusion Prevention Systems

• Bhartiya- Automated Fingerprint Identification System

• iSCSI based Storage Networks

• Architecture Framework for Development of e-Governance Systems

• Development of e-Forms Designer & Run time Engine (Fulcrum)

• Intrusion Prevention using Kernel Immune System

Software Projects

(List of projects of value Rs 100 lacs or above)

• National Services Delivery Gateway (a mission mode project under National e-Governance Plan- NeGP)

• State Services Delivery Gateway (SSDG for all 35 Sates / Union Territories)

• State Portal/ SSDG and e-Forms Delivery System (State of Jammu Kashmir)

• Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojna (PMGSY) Automation (Ministry of Rural Development, GoI)

• Public Works Department Automation (State of Maharashtra)

• Public Works Department Automation (State of Tripura)

• Stamps & Registration Department Automation- SARITA (State of Maharashtra)

• Stamps & Registration Department Automation- KAVERI (State of Karnataka)

• Stamps & Registration Department Automation- GAURI (State of Goa)

Consulting

(List of assignments of value Rs 100 lacs or above)

• Strategic Control of Passport Seva, a mission mode project under NeGP (Ministry of External Affairs, GoI)

 Awards & Honors

• Marqui's Who's Who in the World- 2008
• Rashtriya Shiksha Ratna Award- 2008

Last Updated on: 30th December, 2010.