How cybersecurity is redefining and reshaping India’s young minds rapidly?

‘India is aiming to be the cybersecurity capital & hub of the globe’

Cyber domain is considered to be one of the world’s prominent, interesting, inspiring, innovative and challenging coordinate systems in the current era of 5th / 6th industrial revolutions, where time, speed, safety, security and scalability coordinates play a vital role in the protection systems. A nation’s security is determined and diagnosed by the strength and capability of the Cyber Walls established by Cybersecurity, which India has attained peak milestones and supremacy over the past 12 years.

The launch of Digital India program and policy frameworks like DPDP-Digital Personal and Data Protection Act, 2023 has boosted and pushed the Cybersecurity domain in our nation beyond limitless boundaries and created wide spectrum of skilling opportunities for young minds.

The best classical examples of India’s high volume of data safeguarded are the successful UPI (Unified Payment Interface) supported by National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) across the nation and global countries and Aadhaar under the UIDAI, Unique Identification Authority of India. These are the distinguished pillars of Digital Public Infrastructure, which forms the DNA and strong testament for our country’s success pathway in Cybersecurity.

India has adopted the best practices of protecting preserved the data and took proactive action against the cybercrimes through an effective and strong comprehensive cyber mechanisms

Cybersecurity - NCERT Guided safety for Youth

India has been forefront in keeping cybersecurity of the young children as highest priority. In view of this it took several initiatives in the form of awareness program, inducting safety aspects in the academic curriculum to protect the school going children to be aware of cyber-attacks. This enables the safe use of digital education platforms. One of the key initiatives outlined under the DPDP act, 2023 for the social platforms which has to comply with taking the parental consent before admitting the personal data of children while using digital platforms. This ensures safety and security of the young students.

Central Institute of Educational Technology, a constituent of NCERT has facilitated young students and teachers in publishing several digital hand-outs like Cyber world for both students and faculty members, Cyber Safety guidelines for students, parents, teachers that will allows the safe usage of digital platforms.

India’s Cyberspace — A Viksit Case study

Ministry of Home affairs, Government of India has been playing a key role in launching several robust initiatives that bring ruggedness and rationalise the access of data through cyber protection walls which can hardly be intruded by cyber attackers.

India’s cyber system is sailing through strong protective covering strategies like recently the launch of Cyber Crime Mitigation Centre which is First of its kind that caters to the need of different stakeholders in fintech, telecom service providers, IT domain which includes our emerging data centre, supercomputing infrastructures, and most importantly this could also be extended to the growing and emerging India’s Space, Nuclear and Defence sectors.

Cybersecurity - An emerging domain to develop young talents

Cybersecurity — India’s powerhouse has sown the seed in both academics and research thereby building a strong skilling opportunities for today’s youth. The opportunities could be in space, nuclear, defence, agriculture, smart cities, automotive, manufacturing, Indian railways like the recent bullet train, quantum technologies like quantum cryptography and recently the domain of digital forensics.

• Defence Research and Development Organisation [DRDO]: The technology cluster wings of DRDO like SAG-Scientific Analysis Group, PXE-Proof and Experimental Evaluation, CAIR-Centre for Artificial Intelligence & Robotics are working on advanced security solutions- blockchain security, application security, cryptology like Cyber Defence & Cryptanalysis Automation, Development of PUF chips, security documentation and masks for production, Blockchain for Defence Applications - Access Control & Trust Management
• CERT-In: Indian Computer Emergency Response Team under Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology plays a significant role in creating cyber awareness program through hand-holding practices for different stakeholders.
• India’s one of the premier organisations like Society for Electronic Transaction and Security under the flagship initiative of Office of the Principal Scientific Advisor, Government of India, located in Chennai, Tamil Nadu, is working on network security. The organisation has a thought process of providing cybersecurity coverage and robust safeguard mechanism for Indian MSMEs, which play a vital role in India’s GDP. The organisation has been creating several value-added opportunities for students and faculty members in the field of quantum cryptography, IoT security, critical infrastructure and industrial security, privacy and data protection, cryptology and computing. The organisation provides summer internship, and short-term program in different field of cybersecurity for students.
• C-DOT (Centre of Development of Telematics): A Research and Development organisation wing of national and global importance working on optical technology, post quantum cryptography, security solutions. It offers diversified internship in the field of security solutions for students. 
• The recent introduction of Bachelor of Technology program in Cybersecurity by Indian Institute of Technology, IIT Kanpur and Indian Institute of Technology, IIT Madras has brought a paradigm shift in the admission process which has unique selection mechanisms against the traditional selection process especially through the hackathons, solving real-time problems by applying critical thinking. This has empowered and enabled young talents to explore the ample opportunities available in the field of Cybersecurity. The program is first of its kind that the students will learn both theory and lab sessions initially for first 02 years followed by the hands-on experiential learning through internship at the Government organisation to work on real-world problem statements.
• C3iHub, IIT Kanpur a premier centre of excellence for cybersecurity established under the National Mission on Cyber-physical systems and a technology innovation hub at IIT Kanpur is one of the prominent pillars that offers cutting edge training in the field of cybersecurity in collaboration with institutions across India.
• Futureskills Prime under Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, Government of India in collaboration with Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC) and NASSCOM has been offering cutting-edge cybersecurity, block chain, machine learning and various 5th / 6th industrial revolution program. The C-DAC, Noida has been pioneering in offering Big Data program for students and faculty members through a cost-effective mechanism thereby offer training in high computing software at virtual labs mode. Additionally, the C-DAC enable the students to work on real-time projects on various interesting problem statements as well.
• Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, Government of India has launched the Digital India internship especially in different verticals like cybersecurity, web development, big data and many more.
• Virtual Labs, an initiative under National Mission on Education through ICT - NMEICT, Ministry of Education, Government of India has developed Virtual lab experiments for cyber security, network security, database security. This allows students and faculty members to remotely access the laboratory experiments 24X7 anywhere and anytime.
• DSCI: Data Security Council of India in collaboration with industry giants like Rockwell Automation has taken great step forward in addressing the security solution through establishing new-age OT cybersecurity laboratory to meet the growing demands of digital public infrastructure integrated with intelligent supply chain security, smart manufacturing.
• Smart factories: The growing smart / intelligent factories in India like Havels Lloyd new manufacturing plant in Rajasthan, bajaj silent factory, Pune, Colgate-Palmolive, Gujarat, L’Oréal, Pune utilize 5th/6th industrial revolution technologies like Machine-to-Machine (M-2-M), Human-Machine interface-collaborative robots [Cobots], automated guided vehicles, telepresence robots, advanced rapid prototyping technologies, industrial robots. These future generation factories in India has created ample internship and job opportunities for young minds to explore the possibilities to work on enhancing the security solutions of the manufacturing processes. International giants like Boeing have launched Boeing India Engineering & Technology Center (BIETC) campus in Bengaluru, Karnataka, is aiming to provide cybersecurity solutions for designing future-generation aircraft.

The availability of above skilling avenues and experiential learning platforms showcases the creation of unique-of-its kind opportunities for young talents in India to explore in defence, space, nuclear and industrial setups.

India’s future outlook on Cyber Viksit

India is pushing the automotive segment to become more cyber aware by building a safe connecting systems like vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-infrastructure. Cybersecurity is increasingly becoming an essential element, especially in the automotive segment, with a special focus on built-in tamper-proof systems in both existing and new-generation vehicles. India’s Viksit Vision is to build self-reliant ADAS, Advanced Driver Assistance System enabling safety components in the automotive vehicles. 

India has laid the foundation for the cybersecurity by establishing prestigious Universities like Rashtriya Raksha University located in Gandhinagar, National Forensic Sciences University, Gujarat and Uttar Pradesh State Institute of Forensic Science, which has been playing a key role in providing Undergraduate, postgraduate, Advanced Diploma and Self-paced learning MOOC courses in the field of Windows Malware and cyberattacks. These stand as a pathway for Aatmanirbhar Bharat Cybersecurity.

In addition to the above the premier centre of excellence, digital experience zones, cybercrime mitigation centres, India Cyber Crime Coordination Centre, CFCFRMS- Citizen Financial Cyber Fraud Reporting and Management Systems, Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC- Cyber Forensic section), Trivandrum, NIELIT has pushed India to the next level of future generation skilling platforms. Our nation has created a handful of training platforms like the MOOC ‘CyTrain’ offers state-of-the art experiential learning for police/judicial officers across state/central and UTs.

Cybersecurity is not the technology for India. It adds value to our nation’s robust vision policies by building cyber infrastructure to address the cyber framework, thereby achieve the Mission Mantra of Cyber Viksit, which will act as a fulcrum for our nation’s security.

The author is an Assistant Professor, School of Cybersecurity and Digital Forensics, Uttar Pradesh State Institute of Forensic Science, Lucknow; Views presented are personal.