Cyber defence to cost high

India will need at least `1,500 crore to train five lakh personnel in cyber security, which the government has targeted.

“On a very rough basis, it is estimated that training of one person costs `30,000 to `40,000,” said Mr Akash Agarwal, the country manager of EC Council.

The council has invested $5 million to set up capacity for training 40,000 cyber security personnel by the end of 2013.

The government on Tuesday unveiled the National Cyber Security Policy 2013 to safeguard its assets.

It has tied up with 92 authorised training centres for the purpose. EC Council is one of the world’s largest certification bodies for Information security professionals.

Mr Jay Bavisi, the president of EC-Council, says “This (the government’s) policy was much needed and this initiative was long overdue. With 13,000 cyber attacks witnessed in India in 2011 and 10,000 email IDs of top government officials targeted on a single day in July 2012, it has become imperative to address the cyber issues that are creating a menace in the country”

According to industry data, more than 1,000 government websites, storing critical and sensitive data concerning national security, have been hacked by cyber criminals in the last three years.

“This cannot be the state of the software and outsourcing capital of the world,” said Mr Bavisi.

One of the solutions, Mr Bavisi suggests to curb this menace is to, use an active vaccine — to provide the necessary secu- rity education and training to the technical community and to inject them into our critical infrastructure.

“That will help us achieve what we as a nation have set out to do via the new policy, framework and infrastructure,” he said.

The government hopes that lakh people will be trained by 2015 which means about 22,000 in the next 18-24 months.

This is a tall order, says Mr Agarwal, adding that it will need an action item a kind of road map of how to create these people in a short time.