B Swaminathan
There has been an increase in cybersecurity hiring and retention challenges in India, revealed by a survey by global IT association ISACA. This year’s survey results in India depict that 60 percent of the organisations have unfilled cybersecurity positions and that 42 per cent of the organisation’s cybersecurity team is understaffed. Skilled Cyber Security Talents have always been in great demand in India for the past few years. While the country is moving towards digital first initiative, issues related to cybersecurity are becoming relevant. While large MNCs are able to hire skilled-professionals at higher costs, mid-size and small channel partners are unable to retain skilled cyber security talents.
Rajiv
Rajiv Warrier, an industry veteran who had been tracking the cyber security industry on the capacity of a distributor, OEM, channel partner and a cyber secuity consultant sees the need for skilled professionals had become a mandate even for start up companies. “Cybersecurity has now become part of every growing company irrespective of the size or industry. There are multiple brands becoming part of the cybersecurity strategies and hence growth of MSSP. SOC (Security operations center) has now become the goal for every business. Amidst all this the shortage of manpower in the cybersecurity field has been the worry point for all.” Many Indian channel organizations support companies to implement SOC and offer SOC as a service but the scarcity of the right talents in this cybersecurity field has forced us to increase our HR team too. The Cybersecurity field is becoming more complicated and sophisticated and hence the requirement of resources with the right knowledge in this field is just growing. I am sure in India more and more students are getting into the field of Cybersecurity and this will certainly benefit all companies and help reduce this scarcity of good talented resources in this field.
How can partners manage the situation?
Manish
The biggest threat every channel partner in India is facing is to retain the skilled employees. According to market sources, instances of many employees working for two companies are increasing, thanks to the work-from-home concept. Manish Aggarwal of Aim Technosoft calls for a holistic approach to this issue. The business model of Aim Technosoft is to tie up with channel partners who are ideally box pushers who have large accounts in hand but unable to implement any security deployments without skilled man power. Aim Technosoft provides skilled cyber security professionals for such tough deployments. “Partners should understand the basic needs of the employees to avoid losing the employees. It is always better to train them and upskill them to ensure that they grow and in turn, the company also grows”, says Manish who also added that the demand for skilled professionals are always on the go and partners should be prepared for more switchovers by their employees.
Manoj
Manoj Tiwari, MD, Rise Tech Software, Jaipur says that Digitization of the entire nation has increased the demand for skilled cyber security talents. “Home-grown hackers are increasing in number. Thus, we need more skilled resources to protect the devices, data and systems. The days ahead will have more demand for professionals and I am sure the industry will get more students completing cyber security as a course.” According to him, till date, there were no authorised courses for cyber security in India and thus the specialization had reduced. “The Government had launched cyber security institute (Rashtriya Raksha University) is likely to play a key role as cyber security is given uttermost importance in the academic.
Cyber Securitization Is The Only Way Ahead:
Gunasegharan Krishnan
Gunasegharan Krishnan, Director, eCaps computers has been advocating for increasing the skilled cybersecurity professionals in India. He bats for a new concept called ‘Cyber Securitization’. The word, coined by him, means bringing cyber security to every facet of an individual’s life. It will become a buzz word in the next few years, as per him. “If only ‘Cyber Securitization’ becomes the order of the day across all computerised networks including IOT, fruits of effective computerizations can be effectively harvested. Individuals and companies in today’s scenario have opened their eyes towards the same to handle current situations. As cyber security talks have started entering the boardrooms of management, I am sure that they have to implement a lot more changes in the systems.” Industry experts see an increase of more than 10% in their spending for the current year compared to last which is approx. usd 2.6 billion for the products and services.
Those outlook on cybersecuritization has led to huge demand for cyber security professionals across the globe and in specific to India where the spend is higher by 57% compared to rest of the world.
To combat this issue of skilled professionals, Guna and his team had made training programs for students in cyber security free of cost and have been continuously engaged with various colleges to send their students . “ We are also in touch with students who show extreme interest in cyber security finding ways to help them make a career giving exposure to them about the technologies we have around. Along with this we are also talking to various institutes to include a cyber security curriculum or design a special graduation program around cyber security.”
Sonicwall’s Role In Helping The Eco-System
Debasish
Debasish Mukherjee, Vice President, Regional Sales-APAC at SonicWall said, “As the economy digitalises and cyber threats continue to grow in scale and complexity, we cannot simply rely on traditional hiring processes to increase nationwide resilience. There is a growing need for organisations to strengthen their cybersecurity workforce processes by building a strong talent pipeline and identifying challenges related to recruiting, developing and retaining top-tier cybersecurity talent so that they can perform cybersecurity roles at various levels within their organisation and for their customers. At SonicWall, we’ve implemented a robust and diverse cybersecurity workforce to fill critical positions to ensure that we remain agile enough to meet the demands of our cybersecurity mission. This starts from our foundation during training and knowledge building exercises, including equipping them with the essential skills, data transfer, knowledge assessments, incident response, network forensics and more to drive the organisations’ cyber security strategy.”
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