If you are a user of mobile wallet MobiKwik, you must be in a sad place right now — given how, about a week ago, data of over 10 crore users got out there on the dark web for everyone to buy. More recently, there was another data leak of Facebook users. In this digital age, lack of cybersecurity is a real threat to each and every one of us. "Kachkad Narender and I used to work at a cybersecurity start-up called Lucid Cyber Source in Delhi and we used to wonder why more such platforms didn't exist that could also engage with students. We specifically wondered why Hyderabad didn't have such a platform," says Kunur Vajpayee. So on March 23, 2020, the duo — both students of Lovely Professional University (LPU) — started Kleen Infosec to spread awareness about cybersecurity.
Under Kleen Infosec they have three verticals. And the one we are looking forward to the most is Kleen Academy. You know how when you sign up for a course online, you have to pay for the whole deal irrespective of whether you follow through or not? At Kleen Academy, things will be different. "You can buy each chapter of a course and that way, continue only if your interest does," explains the 21-year-old who is pursuing his final year of BTech in Computer Science, while Narender has recently graduated. The curriculum has been developed by Awadhesh Shukla, Assistant Professor, LPU, along with the duo.
They have already conducted about six virtual workshops till date, including with G Narayanamma Institute of Technology and Science and Sreenidhi Institute of Science & Technology, with the help of the same curriculum. The workshops themselves were on the basics of cybersecurity while Kleen Academy will offer a few more options in the same field. Talking a little more about the workshops, the COO and Co-founder says, "We usually start with the methodology of hacking and then talk about how we can protect ourselves, which is one of the most important aspects of our workshop — this goes on for about an hour and a half. There are also 20 minutes set aside for questions and answers," explains the youngster who was born and brought up in Hyderabad. They also have an MoU in place with Siddhartha Institute of Technology and Sciences via which they will be developing five projects with the students.
Battle Stash, their second vertical, is a platform that gives you a plethora of questions that test your cybersecurity knowledge, of course, and the more you solve, the higher you climb in the rankings. And who knows, maybe a company might be interested in hiring you based on those very rankings. Hack Arena, their third vertical, offers to host competitions or exams based on cybersecurity. "We are about three to four months away from being fully functional and then, we will launch all our offerings," informs Kunur.
For more on them check out instagram.com/kleensecurity
