The State of Cyber Security in India & How to Minimize the Risks Associated with It

How important is cyber security for SMEs in India?

Data loss is equivalent to financial loss as well as a compromised brand name no matter what the scale of the business. In case of SMEs, limited IT budgets are a major concern. This means that SMEs opt for cost efficient and only the most critical solutions such as Cloud technologies which could be deployed without any check for security. Cyber security is critical at every stage of an organization - from educating employees to deploying as well as developing secure software.

The focus of cyber crime has shifted from quick fame to undetected gains. Hackers are actively targeting Points of Sale (POS) and Automated Clearing House Systems (ACH) of SMEs as these are mostly unsecured. Companies are facing maximum risk to their confidential data such as bank account records, credit card information, customer, employee records etc. Given this scenario, cyber security definitely needs to be a top priority for SMEs.

How big is the cyber security threat in India? What do you think the situation is going to be in the future, especially in conjunction with cloud technologies?

We as a country are yet to mature in terms of adoption of technology. The cyber security infrastructure is yet to match up to the actual usage of internet and mobile technologies. We have around 900 million mobile subscriptions and approximately 150 million internet connections. China today has a qualified and strong army of cyber warriors. Infact, the common perception is that Cyber hacking is a state-sponsored initiative in China. A Pew Research study shows that China has a pool of at least 25 million people that have enough education to participate in cyber warfare and live in an area with the network infrastructure to support such an attack. In contrast we have merely 20000-22000 cyber security experts whereas the requirement is that of 500,000 skilled professionals by 2015. According to a recent report on cyber crime, in the last year alone, we have lost about $8 billion due to various cyber threats. Globally, the loss is estimated at $110 billion. The Norton Cyber Crime 2012 report, which was the result of one of the world's largest consumer cyber-crime studies, estimated that 42 million Indians have become victims of cyber-attacks in the past 12 months.

India today faces rampant cyber attacks - government systems, various military and intelligence websites have repeatedly been hacked, potentially threatening to cripple the nation's social, economic and financial infrastructure. India needs to boost its cyber security skills immediately. According to CERT-In an estimated 14,392 websites in the country were hacked in 2012 compared to 1,752 in 2006 and a new report from McAfee reveals that India has the lowest rate of security measure adoption, and it tops the charts for malicious traffic in Asia. If attacked, the average estimated cost of downtime associated with any major incident is $6.3 million (around Rs 30 crore) per day. As we move from traditional computing to mobile computing, the ambit of virtual threats will widen. Cloud technologies promise a lot of efficiency and flexibility in terms of expansion of scale. But then, traditional security solutions cannot help secure data on the cloud. Also, security concerns are compounded when one considers public cloud services with shared environments.

What are the pre-requisites for the CEH course offered by EC Council?

Certified Ethical Hacker is a comprehensive Ethical Hacking and Information Systems Security Auditing program focusing on latest security threats, advanced attack vectors and practical real time demonstration of latest hacking Techniques, methodologies, tools, tricks and security measures. Unlike other theoretical trainings, students are exposed to interactive sessions and hands-on lab. The course can be taken by anyone with a basic knowledge of TCP/IP and networking concepts