The police hosted a workshop for cyber caf owners here on Monday. Nearly 200 cyber caf owner participated in it. A free cyber caf security software was launched by Ideacts Innovations Ltd on the occasion.

The objective of the workshop was to ensure cyber security and better data management at cyber cafs. Cyber cafs are sought after by all sorts of anti-social elements such as fraudsters, data thieves and terrorists. Given the growth of such unlawful activities over the last few years, it has become absolutely essential for cyber cafs to have a foolproof system to monitor their customers, said Krishna Swamy, retail head of Ideacts Innovations.

Mr. Swamy said that the software CLINK Cyber Caf Manager keeps accounts of every printout taken from any computer in the caf. It has a user data storage system to capture and store the photographs of every customer.

As per the provisions of the IT Act, caf owners have to maintain details of each customer, Mr. Swamy said and added that the new software simplified the procedure and made it more effective. Cyber cafs account for approximately 47 per cent of the access points for internet usage in the country and hence their digital management and security is critical. Caf owners do not have practical solutions for caf management and visitor information storage, Mr. Swamy said.

Mangalore City Police Commissioner Seemanth Kumar Singh said that until now, most cyber cafes were maintaining visitor data in physical registers.

Terming it an inefficient information management, he said it was difficult to retrieve the data in that method.

Stressing that cyber cafes were used by anti-social elements, Mr. Singh welcomed the fact that the software was free of cost. We are happy to associate ourselves with the company and encourage the use of this software in all cyber caf here, he said.