With the increase in cyber-attacks and cybercrimes over the past few years, there has been a huge demand for trained cybersecurity professionals. However, the fact that there are not enough trained cybersecurity professionals in India concerns Hari Krishnan Nair, Co-founder of Great Learning. Great Learning is an edu-tech start-up that provides courses in various software programmes including Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning and so on. To bridge the gap, Great Learning collaborated with the Stanford Center for Professional Development to offer the Stanford Advanced Computer Security Programme — a six-month online programme that provides you with the skills required to protect your data and other necessary information available freely on the internet.
It's been less than a year since they have launched this programme and there are already 100 people pursuing it. Hari Krishnan says, "Now, data has become so important for all kinds of companies that they need employees who can secure their data from all cyber attacks. Not just that, we also need people to investigate when there are cybercrimes. What we realised was that not only is there an acute shortage of professionals but there are not enough programmes that can help professionals upskill themselves in terms of cybersecurity. Therefore, we came up with this programme especially for those who are already working in the technology sector and want to upskill themselves. They can have a holistic understanding of how to design cybersecurity systems and incorporate them wherever required. We have professionals who have a minimum of eight years of experience to a maximum of 25 years."
According to Hari Krishnan, there is no compromise in terms of the content or the kind of modules included. In fact, the modules and content included in this programme are designed by the faculty of Stanford University who are global cybersecurity professionals. People who are experts in this field from India will train those who opt for this course. Apart from this, they also arrange for sessions, like case studies, online lectures, project discussions etc. Now, they have students from India and the United Kingdom. Hari Krishnan explains, "We have observed that people from countries including Singapore, Germany, United States and the Middle East have also shown interest to pursue this course because all these countries are financial hubs and here, data security plays a key role."
Explaining the curriculum in this course, Hari Krishnan says, "The programme is divided into multiple modules. It begins with mobile security as the whole world is moving towards setting up app-based systems. Hence, there is a huge amount of data that gets captured on mobile applications. This module helps one design a proper application that secures all the information. Then, there is writing a Secure Code which helps to control hijacking attacks, build language-based security models and so on. We have a network security module under which one can prevent network and malware attacks for mobile devices etc. This is followed by three other modules including exploiting web applications, using cryptography correctly and emerging threats and defences in various software programmes like Machine Learning and Cloud trust assumptions."
