By Anil Valluri, MD & Regional VP – India & SAARC, Palo Alto Networks
It is heartening to see the continued focus of the government on technology and its efforts toward realizing its vision for a truly digital India.
Digital Public Infrastructure for the country’s agricultural, fintech, manufacturing, and healthcare industries, including their Information Technology (IT) & Operational Technology (OT) capabilities, will help usher in a new age for the sectors. This will be characterized by cutting-edge solutions that will deliver advanced farmer-centric solutions, exhaustive market intelligence, evolved Agri-firms & start-ups, and more. The provision of 5G labs across India’s top engineering institutions will help power new applications, innovations, and opportunities that will further boost the development of the high-speed network service in India. Enterprise and academia collaboration to “Make AI in India and Make AI work for India” will be instrumental in bringing the technology and its innumerable applications into the mainstream and fostering an unprecedented AI ecosystem that will benefit both organizations and individuals. This ecosystem will flourish thanks to the newly announced youth-focused skilling initiatives for AI, Industry 4.0., coding, robotics, and more.
Competent cybersecurity will be crucial to the success of these initiatives, considering our digitally transformed populace. With ransomware attacks seeing alarming highs and national critical infrastructures becoming regular targets, any further transformations may render us more vulnerable to attack. A strong focus on data governance – reflected in the Union budget’s plans to set up a National Data Governance Policy – and cybersecurity skilling, combined with a cybersecurity-first approach powered by AI & ML for devices, networks, and applications will be essential for digital India to become a reality.