Cyber Security - Future of Cyber Security in India

I think the state of cyber security in India is going to improve by a huge factor in the coming years - especially the coming decade. We are looking at a time when the government has started taking conscious and even drastic measures to ensuring the country's motion towards digitization. 

This has started with the financial sector - one of the most crucial lifelines of a country. With the rise in digitization, the attacks on digital financial structures are inevitable - and an industry is steadily rising to provide the necessary services for securing these platforms. "Necessity is the mother of invention" - and this is the first time in India when we consciously need steps towards public cyber security. I believe the government is also following this line of thinking by their recent announcement of a FinCERT (Financial Computer Emergency Response Team). 

Hence, I think the future of cyber security is too bright and too speculative to really predict but we can definitely see many good signs. But I want to go beyond the scope of this answer. Yes, India is going to be competent in cyber security in the time to come, but is that where our duty as citizens ends? Cyber security is a field of precision and perseverance, and mostly ends up being a cat and mouse chase between the hacker and the security analyst. So if we are to take up the task of building national level secure digital infrastructure we must all actively participate and contribute. 

The above statements are much more applicable on students than professionals in my opinion. A recent NASSCOM report states that there is a huge shortage of skilled cyber security professionals and as much as 15 lakh jobs will be vacant in India alone by 2019. The field of cyber security is in many ways open ended where sky is the limit - and the opportunities it offers because of having both high demand and low availability of good professionals for jobs makes it an exciting (not to mention lucrative) offer for students to consider.

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Vinayak Mehta