Social media trends and data analytics will be used for the first time in monitoring security at the country’s airports, and nuclear and aerospace installations. The Central Industrial Security Force (CISF), tasked to secure these important assets, has created a maiden ‘media lab’ and social media monitoring control room — the Pattern Research For Institutional Social Media (PRISM) analytics — at its base in Arakkonam near Chennai.

A special team of CISF agents has been trained in tracking social media trends, collate them and dish them out as vital pieces of “actionable intelligence” to various airports and other vital units. Platforms like Twitter, FaceBook, YouTube and Flickr will be used to check any suspicious and sabotage-like activity against the assets.