As part of its efforts to encourage IT awareness and adoption in the Indian SMB segment, Microsoft India in association with PricewaterhouseCoopers announced on Monday the Annual IT Security Leaders Awards for the SMB segment.

The award has been instituted to recognise and reward individuals and their companies in the SMB sector across India for pioneering security initiatives. The winners, selected by an eminent panel of industry leaders and academicians, will be announced at a gala awards function in the second quarter of 2008.

''As Indian SMBs increase their levels of investments in IT and move up the IT maturity curve, the importance of commensurate security measures to safeguard these investments cannot be overstated. We hope that these awards will encourage those who have excelled and inspire those who want to improve IT Security in their organizations,'' General Manager SMB, Microsoft India Rajeev Mittal said.

There are four categories of awards, including

• the Best Overall Security Strategy & Implementation -- aimed at recognising institutions that have best overall people, processes and technology strategy for implementation of a secure IT framework;
• Best Overall Security Strategy & Implementation -- with a Microsoft Backbone, that focuses on how Microsoft Technologies have been employed to design a security framework;
• Best Setup integrating Compliance & Security, to recognise those institutions which have best managed to embed regulatory policies into their security or IT framework and
• Best effectiveness in raising IT awareness among employees to recognize those institutions which have devised innovative schemes and methods to ensure employee adherence.

The last date for entries/ nominations is April 2, 2008. To participate, one needs to register at www.Securityleadersawards.com.

This will be followed by four phases of detailed assessment of the solutions deployed, including a phase where nominations and case studies will be presented and discussed before a board.

''It is encouraging to see the importance SMBs are already giving to IT Security in their company. With this initiative we hope to provide them a platform to share experiences and best practices. We believe that learning from the finest among them is the best way to improve in this extremely important area,'' Executive Director PwC Sivarama Krishnan said.

A recent Microsoft-AMI partners report on IT adoption in Indian SMBs stated that over 36 percent of the mid-market businesses surveyed had IT security as one of their key focus areas for the year.