Decoding cyber security

With countries going increasingly digital, the biggest question is, how well prepared we are to tackle and prevent cyber attacks like the ransomware attack on Friday. According to experts, cyber security will be one of the most sort-after courses in the next decade, owing to our dependency on the internet. Many colleges and universities have acknowledged the need for it, but agree that a lot more has to be done. 

“For the past five decades or so, computing has been made commercial, where people made money out of the technology, neglecting the security aspect altogether. Security was an added feature and not an integrated one. Now, people are waking up to it after the increase in the number of cyber-attacks,” says Prof Kamalkoti Veezhinatha, from the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, IIT Madras. He further says, “Around 10 years ago, the Ministry of Information Technology initiated Information Security Education and awareness programme, which is in Phase II now. As a part of it, four Research and Development Centres were opened, including one in IIT Madras. We conduct various training and research programmes for students and staff. We also have massively open online course on the same, where participants are taught about the various aspects of cyber security.” 

Colleges across the state too have interesting courses on cyber security. In fact, Madras University’s Centre for Cyber Forensics and Information Security was initiated in 2007. “Initially, it was part of the Criminology department and only in 2012, it was made a separate department. It is getting popular among youngsters for the relevance of it in the future,” says Dr N Kala, Assistant Professor, Madras University.  

Even SSN College of Engineering on OMR has a course on Information Security. “The department of IT of SSNCE is an authorised National Resource Center for Kancheepuram region, under National Cyber Safety and Security Standards. We conduct several workshops and events. We recently conducted a workshop on CAPIP (Cyber awareness programme—inside perspective) for 250 engineering college students and all of them were given a discounted coupon on cyber awareness programme offered by CompTIA that has introduced a new certification under Cyber Security Analyst, which operates from Chennai,” explains Dr N Bhalaji Associate Professor, Department of IT, SSN College. 

Amrita University has gone ahead and established a cybersecurity hub, which will bring together research, funding and industry to build the next wave of cybersecurity startups in India. Dr Krishnashree Achuthan, CEO of Amrita University’s Center for Cybersecurity Systems and Networks, a cybersecurity expert says, “We often depend on solutions from other countries. Our aim is to train talents here who will create solutions for preventing and protecting cyber attacks,” she says. Elaborating  further, she says, “There are more than 4,000 startups in India but only less than 100 operate in the field of cybersecurity and related products. With wars being fought every minute across the world, it has become a strategic national priority. India needs to tackle this challenge from both an economic and military perspective.” 

According to her, cybersecurity is estimated to be a $700 billion industry worldwide, with an annual loss of $400 billion due to cybercrime and threats. This loss is expected to shoot up to $2 trillion by 2020. 

However, experts say that what is taught in most colleges is not comprehensive enough. Cyber and cyber law expert Karthikeyan N takes classes at Tamil Nadu Police Academy and other government institutions says, “In India a student undergoes a class on Android OS for 45 minutes compared to a one-year course in Russia. Most colleges here have cyber security as part of a larger course. There needs to be comprehensive study on this considering there is a new development every day in  this field.” 

Ransomware is a malicious software, in this case WannaCry, that blocks access to a computer system until the owner of the data pays ransom to the hacker in bitcoins.