Shortage of Cyber Security Professionals

NEW DELHI - June 5, 2015 - PRLog -- According to an item published in the latest issue of Indian Military Review nations and firms globally are grappling with a shortage of cyber security professionals as they try to build comprehensive cyber security capabilities.

Giving details, the new issue of Indian Military Review, published from Gurgaon cyberspace has become a full-blown war zone as governments across the globe clash for digital supremacy in a new, mostly invisible theatre of operations. Once limited to opportunistic criminals, cyber-attacks are becoming a key weapon for governments seeking to defend national sovereignty and project national power. One can see the emerging contours of cyber warfare from strategic cyber espionage campaigns, such as Moonlight Maze and Titan Rain, to the destructive, such as military cyber strikes on Georgia and Iran and the new dimension of recent attacks on corporates like the Sony Entertainment. Human security and international conflicts are entering a new phase and domain in their long histories of existence. This shadowy battlefield called cyber space, requires a new breed of warriors, the Cyber Warriors.

A cyber warrior, like the Special Forces, is a distinct breed requiring a very high standard of professionalism, training, ethics, discipline, initiative and focus. He will have to be proactive, innovative, a self-starter with a technical aptitude and a strong desire for learningso as to keep himself abreast of emerging technologies and be able to build his knowledge and skills through continuous updating.

Organisations in India are also witnessing a huge growth in cyber-attacks and intrusions. While the National Cyber Security Policy, announced in July, 2013 stipulates availability of 500,000 cyber warriors by 2018, the country faces a big challenge with a shortage of more than 4.7 lakh trained cyber security professionals as of last year. Considering that it takes about three years to have a well-trained cyber warrior and that there are varied issues of training infrastructure, quality of talent availability, attrition, continuous upgradation, budget, certification standards and retention, an innovative approach is required which maximizes the available resources in a given time frame.

It is recommended that a ‘Cyber Wing’ be established in all the four divisions of the National Cadet Corps (NCC) of India.

The aims of creating NCC in India have a very large coincidence with the requirements of a cyber-warrior as mentioned above. Cyber space is a playground of the millennials and the NCC provides just the right pool to pick up India’s cyber warriors. The Senior Division of NCC has a strength of 365,000 young boys taken from the colleges in India; the Junior Division has 658,000 young boys taken from the schools; the Senior Girl’s Division has a strength of 69,000 and the Junior Girls Division has 73,000 members. This pool of over a million young boys and girls of India, even at 15% acceptance should provide India with nearly 1.5 lakh cyber warriors in the next three years, who could then be trained and organized as Integrated Cyber Defence Teams comprising of operators, technicians, analysts, intelligence experts and developers of cyber weapons and tools. These teams would train amongst themselves, with other countries in exchange programmes, with the cyber command/units and be available to the Defense Forces on call. The cadets must be given encouragement by way of financial rewards, recognition, scholarships for further studies in cyber security including in countries abroad and be provided with appropriate certifications. They must be given preference for enrolment in the cyber warrior cadres of the country, Armed Forces and the industry. They must have a viable, attractive and challenging career path. Selected NCC cadets should be able to work from their homes and tasked for computer network exploitation, cyber forensics and vulnerability discovery of nominated networks and systems. Their identity should be kept secret and they be given necessary resources, legal protection and report to only selected officials.

India’s vulnerability to cyber attacks is going to increase exponentially with development of infrastructure and programmes like Digital India, National Optical Fibre Network, e-Governance, e-commerce and e-Services. The NCC provides a ready resource for picking up India’s cyber warriors in the available time frame. This will also start the organization transformation of the NCC and make it a 21st Century force relevant to the Aims set for it by the Indian Parliament.