Amit Kumar,
President, Cyberfort Technologies

IT is playing dominant role in the current economy and trade. As IT has simplified our daily work in all aspect, it has also called for cyber threat. Cyber criminals have found a new way to invade the economy and terrorise the nation with the use of IT. It has shaken many nations in the past and has made the government to think seriously about this unknown terrorist and secure and preserve the prosperity of their nation. To combat this cyber crime, nation need cyber security expert to work and secure the existing platform so that prosperity flourish in the livelihood of individual people. Though how, India has proven its IT super power across the nation, still it require five lakh cybersecurity professionals by 2015 to support its fast growing internet economy as per an estimate by the union ministry of information technology. These jobs will come up across industries. The financial sector alone is expected to hire over two lakh people while telcos, utility sectors, power, oil & gas, airlines, government (law & order and e-governance) will hire the rest. A large number of these jobs will be around cyberpolicing and ethical hacking, to check for network vulnerabilities. The need for cyber experts has grown exponentially as the country is heading towards an internet explosion mostly fuelled by e-Commerce, e-Banking, e-Governance and the social media.
Today, there are more than two billion people online, who need to be protected. Cyber attacks are already happening on a daily basis in the world and as we grow more and more ‘connected’, the threats also become more complex and difficult. On Facebook, there are 50 million Indian users and even if a small fraction of them click unsuspectingly on a malevolent but seemingly ordinary link, you have that many computers opened up to risk and infection. The freedom of cyber space is just as crucial to the debate as its protection is.
The University Grant Commission (UGC) and the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) have asked Universities and Technical Institutions to introduce Cyber Security and Information Security as a subject at the Under-Graduate and Post-Graduate levels. This was stated by Minister of State for Human Resource Development, Dr Shashi Tharoor in Lok Sabha.
Based on the recommendations of the Task Force on the National Security System constituted on the direction of the Cabinet Committee on Security, the UGC has requested the Vice Chancellors of all the Universities to ensure that Cyber Security/ Information Security is introduced as a subject in the universities and technical institutions at the under-graduate and post-graduate levels. AICTE has intimated that following the recommendations of the Task Force, it has made provisions in the Approval Handbook that out of the two divisions allotted at the Post-Graduate and Post-Diploma levels, one shall be on Cyber Security or in Cyber Security related courses in the Computer/ IT branches of Engineering/ Technology.
Quoting a Gartner report in its letter,UGC said, “The country’s information security market is expected to grow by 18% to reach `1,415 crore in 2013 on the back of increased spending by companies to secure their information assets. Despite a continuing economic slowdown that has been putting pressure on IT budgets around the world, cyber security spending globally would continue on an upward trajectory, reaching $86 billion in 2016, up from $60 billion in 2012.”

India needs five lakh cybersecurity professionals by 2015 to support its fast growing Internet economy

National Skill Development Council is also working with partners to develop cyber security talent. Nasscom along with DSCI currently operates eight cyberlabs in Bangalore, Chennai, Pune, Thane, Mumbai, Gurgaon, Delhi and Hyderabad. We train the police on forensic, cyber crime detection and tell them how to register cybercrimes, secure evidences as per the IT Act.
If combating malware, hackers and cyber crimes are your passion, this is the right time to be a cyber security expert. Amidst this cloud of cyber crimes, there is a silver lining that comes in the form of job opportunities for students in the field of information security. Recognising the dearth of trained cyber security experts, the Indian government has expanded the career prospects in this field by announcing to train five lakh cyber warriors in the next five years to boost e-Defense. A government-private sector plan, this initiative aims at beefing up India’s cyber security, as we face a shortfall of five lakh such experts, despite our reputation of being an IT and software powerhouse. The government also intends to introduce specialised cyber security-related curriculum in engineering and management courses and establish Institute of Cyber Security Professionals of India.
Security stats
Contrary to the importance given to network security and threat prevention in countries like the UK, US and China, India is lagging behind in identifying the need for this scarce skill-set. The rising spate of cyber attacks has alerted government and private organizations, thus generating a huge demand for information security professionals to safeguard and monitor their network and systems.
“Be it an organisation or an individual, everybody wants to ensure the safety of their system, thus, relying heavily on information security experts. Government departments and security agencies too demand large number of cyber security professionals,” says Gaurav Raj, a certified Ethical Hacker. As per industry experts, job opportunities in this field have outnumbered trained professionals. IT security with ethical hacking skills is the most promising career to be in, with challenges and excitement every day of the work. IT is the back bone of any nation in now days. There is a huge shortage of IT security manpower, only 556 professionals are available with respect to five lakhs of jobs in IT security field in India. Recently, government has floated vacancy for the recruitment in Intelligence Bureau for cyber security expert. It shows and opened up the vacancies in this emerging and most promising career in the field of Cyber Security.”

Required skills
Elaborating on the skill-set required to succeed in the field of information security, Bezawada Bruhadeshwar, International Institute Information Technology, Hyderabad, says, “It’s a field that requires your keen interest, professional training and thorough knowledge of operating systems, programming, networks and protocols. Cyber criminals strike through virus attacks, destroy systems, modify and steal data from your system without your knowledge. The first and foremost job as an information security expert is to detect and analyze the vulnerabilities and then plug the loopholes to protect the system, network and data. Cyber security experts need to know about coding of some basic languages and database handling skills.”

Career ahead
If you are a trained professional in this field, you can find placement as network security systems manager, network security administrator, network security engineer, web security administrator, web security auditor, application security tester, ethical hacker, information security analyst, database and software developer, data security specialist, and chief information security officer.
An information security specialist can also start his own venture to provide security solutions to a variety of companies and government departments. Cyber security experts are a desired lot in banks, energy sector, hotels, airlines, healthcare, telecom companies, infrastructure, transportation, law enforcement, defence, emergency response systems and ITES companies, among others.

Required certifications
Graduates with a degree in computer science or engineering can opt for various full-time and short-term courses in information security, like MTech and MSc in Information Security, degree and diplomas in information security and network administration. You need to be trained and certified from a reputed organisation. International certifications like Certified Ethical Hacker (EC-Council) and GPEN can do wonders to one’s career as a cyber security expert. Salaries in this field range from `3 to 5 lakh per annum. With experience and desired expertise, the package may go up to 10-12 lakh per annum, and even to a crore.
(Cyberfort Technologies, a venture by IIT alumni, is a leading IT security consultancy and training firm in this arena.)

In a world increasingly defined and re-defined by the forces of the 21st century, all domains of human transactions have undergone massive change. Globalisation has made it mandatory to treat the world as one giant market for each and every product, service or process. Hence, no matter what the domain is, it is inevitable to consider its prospects and ramifications worldwide. Today, the chosen area of one’s endeavour is limited only by his/her imagination, otherwise all the world is a stage. Therefore, it has also become mandatory to restructure our systems and processes because for a global market, a system that stands the test at the global level is required. These are global challenges and global opportunities for what one has to offer to the 21st century world. In this context of ceaseless transformation in every sphere, education has no luxury to be a glorious exception. Across the world, it is pertinent to note that education is also measured against global benchmarks and international parameters. University rankings are the testimony of this globalized benchmarking of higher education. At such a time, when higher education is also undergoing a paradigm shift in terms of its foundational concepts, practices and benchmarks, it would be ideal to revisit higher education in India and discourse on its relevance to the globalized nature of the 21st century Indian scenario.

Across the world, higher education is deemed equivalent to opportunities for the youth to explore and widen the horizons of knowledge and seek the fulfillment of their aspirations. For a country like India that is deemed the youngest country in the world, it is easy to relate the development of the country to its youth and their development to higher education. In such an equation, it is advisable to ensure that the youth get the higher education of the international standards because they will be required to compete and perform at the international level. Unfortunately, it seems that there is a long way to go before we equip our youth through higher education for such international competition because our universities have not figured very high in the University Rankings and the employability ratio of the oft-quoted World Bank figure of 10% for general graduates does not seem to be going away too soon. If higher education is the system to provide the youth the opportunity for the development of their skills and competencies so that they realize their full potential and fulfill their aspirations, we are yet to see that happen for scores of youth who seek these employability skills and await simple straight forward employment opportunities. It has been stressed in various researches and reports on education that the aspects of experiential learning, application- based education and training of the youth to address the market needs are invaluable for the relevance of a country’s education and disregard for all this will invariably lead to erosion of the significance of education system itself. Hence, higher education is required to take cognizance of the fact that the world expects it to provide youth for its varied business and market needs and the responsibility of training them for that cannot be any longer avoided or postponed. Increasingly, higher education and employability are being related with each other and rigorously discoursed on different government and industry forums. Universities have enjoyed and continue to enjoy certain intellectual freedom that no organization in any domain does because everything is tied today to impact, outcomes and results. But the scenario has undergone a thorough change since the governments, industry bodies, companies and people at large have begun to link higher education to employability and employment and we have come to a point of no-return. Therefore, higher education will need to strive to fulfill its mandate of providing trained and skilled workforce to the country. It is not exactly disadvantageous to higher education because it is in this way that the relevance of higher education will be enhanced and its significance will remain sacred and beyond question.
The reasons for strengthening the relevance of higher education in the 21st century are many. Firstly, the 21st century as a knowledge century needs a robust system of higher learning. Secondly, if higher education fails, everything else is likely to be adversely affected – the economy, business, industry, etc. Thirdly, it is for creating knowledge workers of the 21st century that we need to empower higher education with respect to its relevance and its contribution to the society and national development. This is not the conjecture derived out of idle thinking. It concerns what is at stake. It is aptly captured by Dr Ragunath A Mashelkar, “As I see it from my perch in India’s science and technology leadership, if India plays its cards right, it can become by 2020 the world’s number-one knowledge production center, creating not only valuable private goods but also much needed public goods that will help the growing global population suffer less and live better.”
In India’s growth story, becoming ‘world’s number one knowledge production center’ is not optional. It is mandatory to accomplish it because unless there is knowledge production to suit the 21st century needs, India will never become an economic superpower. Increasingly, economic growth is directly being linked with what kind of education is provided to its youth. It is unequivocally clear that higher education is particularly entrusted with this responsibility of ‘knowledge production’, that Dr Mashelkar refers to, that is beneficial to the country and to the world. For such knowledge production and knowledge application, the youth need to be trained for a different skills set. The novel modes of teaching have to come into play and ICT has to be integrated to hone the skills of this high-tech generation for the kind of world they are likely to deal with as professional is quite different from the precepts taught at university departments. Connecting these dots in higher education is required to be done on priority basis so that we can see the full picture and act accordingly. Thus far, we have operated from an ivory tower but now that is a luxury we cannot afford because we have a large youth population to answer to and stakeholders in the world business and industry to provide skilled workforce for. Economics and Education have never been such close allies in national development. But the time is ripe for such a collaboration of mutual interest. Universities will enrich themselves further if they take a cue from market needs and offer courses and train students for skills and competencies that cater to specific industry and market situations. For an economy like ours which rests heavily on the Services sector, it would be ideal to have some skills development provision for the youth for that specific sector so that when they enter it, they excel at it. In all, the question of relevance of higher education is linked with questions of skilled workforce and economic development. If we, the policymakers, administrators and academicians, answer the question well, it will be our genuinely enduring contribution to nation building and, as for the question of the relevance of higher education, it will cease to exist.