Ask me Anything:
Cyber Security Program
By IIT Kanpur and TalentSprint

Industry needs 1.5 Million Cyber Security Professionals. Are you ready?

Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining me on a Saturday morning. My name is Arturo Bhattacharya, I'm the senior director at talentsprint.

I had the the recruitment or the admissions for all of the programs that talentsprint conducts. Before I joined talentsprint, I have spent my entire life in education and upskilling people, professionals, more than I've interacted with almost more than 50,000 professionals in these in this period of time, both at talentsprint. Before that, I was with the Indian School of Business and before that with Pearson, so that's me. You know, I've been working with

people who are looking at upskilling themselves looking at taking that next step in their career, so that they reach new heights, and I help organizations I've helped organize it.

have helped people to understand their potential and growth. So what we're going to do is, like I said, we have a very interesting session lined up today, I'm going to talk a little bit about the opportunities in cybersecurity, followed by how you can benefit, take advantage of these kind of opportunities by talking about the IIT Kanpur cybersecurity program that we have. And then I'm going to try and get you guys to see a bit of the life cost of the graduation ceremony. You know, there are so many interesting bits that are happening over there. So that's, that's on the agenda for the day. And then we can go and do a small q&a,

where then I'll try and answer all of your questions. So that's the agenda that we have for the day. What you can do is that if you have questions, Ben, I announced the q&a you can send in the questions on the chat window, and I'll try answering all of those questions if I can't answer that. I'll give you an

medium where you can get, send us the questions and somebody will get that answer for you. So having said that, so that's that's on the agenda we we just about spend an hour and I expect that we will be done by around 12pm during the day. So before we, you know, get started, it's important to talk a little bit about talentsprint.

We partnered with top academic institutions to provide deep tech education for professionals like you.

So if you look at the names over their top names in the country, both in terms of management education, the Thai and Calcutta, IIT Kanpur for cybersecurity, we worked with the Indian Institute of Science for the program on digital health and imaging, which is of great help I need which is a lot of interest. We just launched this program about a month, month and a half back again, for

technology professionals who want to build a career in healthcare, and triple it hijabs. That's the oldest program that we have, which is the IML and the blockchain program. So, we work with top institutions and very soon this portfolio is going to grow more programs are going to be added. And we will be adding international institutions as well. Now, we not only work with the institutions in in India, we also worked with global blue chip companies to help train college students. And you look at those names. We run programs with these top companies, which primarily help people in colleges to get trained in areas of deep tech, which obviously leads to better availability of talent and

Which leads to a much better, you know, ecosystem overall. So that's talentsprint. For you, we are a 10 year old edtech company now, and we would have trained up a few, a couple of lakh students by now and professionals over this period of time. So what I'm going to do is so this is, you know, so that's, that's us and today we're going to talk about the IIT Kanpur program that we have, and which is the cybersecurity program. Now, we have had, you know, this this entire

thing about cyber security, and this is some interesting research that I was pulling up, which is, which seems to be if you look at it, which seems to be a pretty rosy picture, $1 trillion has been spent over the last seven years on cybersecurity, which is which is great for anybody who is wanting to look at a career in cybersecurity whether you are a fresher

You know who is going to get trained in various aspects of cyber security over the next couple of years, and then get into a job and or whether you're a professional who's already working at a, at a certain level in his or her organization, and who wants to take that next step up and get into a much larger role. I'm going to talk about the kind of roles that are available over there as well. So this is a great opportunity. If you look at it, a trillion dollar spent over the last seven years this was a report from the cyber Ark global advanced threat landscape, which came out last year. And there's also parts of the report are also the slide is pulled out from Verizon data breach investigation reports.

So which is which is great with 95% success rate. Now, this is the part where the not so great part comes in. The 95% success rate was for the attackers, not for the people.

To spend the billion $1 trillion. So be it organization spending the government spending

it, the attackers still succeeded 95% of the times. So that's the opportunity. That's these paint, but unfortunately, the threat has not been eliminated. So this is the part that I want to talk about in terms of the opportunity. It's still huge. And this was again, a survey, which is a part of the same survey that was done. Where envy they were almost 1000 order CIOs were polled and 46% of the CIOs Chief Information Officers said that they are in not in a position to prevent attackers from breaking into their internal networks, every time etc.

So you have almost close to a 50%

probability that an attacker will be able to attack systems even though you know we have we've taken all kinds of security etc.

Everybody in the entire survey believed that a breach will occur through a phishing attack or some kind of an attack on their systems. And enterprises are seeing a 26% increase in security incidents despite increasing budgets. Now, this is the current state of the market that we are in where attacks are very common. You have data breaches happening, I'm sure if you I mean, all of you, most of you would be in technology. You would have seen that if you're following things you know, you have this website being breached and so many million

email addresses or other personally identifiable information has been released on the dark net. People are trying to find you know, you can buy information, personal information PII personally identifiable information off the dark net, you know, it's available for peanuts some cases. So that's something that's happened. I if you've been following the news last couple of months, during the pandemic organism has been breached almost twice. A lot of data has been stolen, you know, so they suffered a breach. So it's, it's not something that does not affect us. It affects you, me. Everybody are our own data. In my case, I follow you know, Mozilla has this feature whereby it will be able to tell you whether your email address has been compromised or not. And, and in the last seven months, I have seen that my

email has been compromised four times through an attack, or somewhere where I or website that I had used to log in which had my email and other credentials. I got the update saying that, yeah, it's been breached, there's been a breach, change your email address. So that's that's where we are, we are in a world where increasingly, our presence online is, is everywhere. So in terms of an opportunity, it's a huge opportunity. If you look at it,

your phones are connected, your TVs are connected, your cars are connected even these days. So everything can be hacked. So for budding professionals for professionals who are already there, this presents a huge amount, a huge opportunity, something like this has never existed before. And this was again from one of these cyber security conferences that happened in January, this year where we were, you know, we were trying to figure out the

kinds of cybersecurity challenges in the evolving nature of cyber security challenges. So if you want to look at it, the visibility challenge is a big challenge over there. When I say visibility, that's what I was just talking about. You have new devices your watches are smartwatches everything is getting smarter fridges, smart. NICs, smart. Everything is smart these days. So you have new challenges you security cyber security professionals need to understand organizations need to be cognizant of where the next attack will come from.

The second thing is the disjointed security products. Now one common misconception that I have encountered when I have spoken with cybersecurity professionals are people intending to get into cybersecurity. And that's that's a very, very ugly I wish people you know, understood this better.

Or great cybersecurity expert or somebody who knows cybersecurity does not rely on it.

The shelf products are an off the shelf products and I've been talking to people at CCI labs. I'm gonna people who don't know it. I'm going to talk about that as well. We talked to so many people who are in technology I talked to we talked to technology leaders. The fact of the matter is, everybody thinks that Yeah, I will buy something off the shelf implemented. My job is done. And I'm a cybersecurity expert. That's not the case. And even if you want to be able to do it, most of the products available in the market are extremely disjointed. They don't speak with each other so you don't have an overarching solution which can protect you from everything. And that's and it actually follows from the first point because you have the threats that can happen are evolving. We nobody predicted Coronavirus would happen, right? All of us most of us at least would be working from our homes, which is a new challenge. Our the companies that we work for, I would have never, you know, planned for this, that half of the workforce.

It almost 90% of the it 95% of the it workforce is working from home. And on critical find data, financial data, client data. It's all being done, which is a new set of challenges that have come up,

which leads to an overarching alert, overload it the security operation center. So most large companies have security SOC Security Operations Center, which leads to huge number of alerts that are coming in, thanks to the sources thanks to the new ways in which people you know, attackers are planning attacks. There are so many

positives that keep coming up. Now, positives, maybe some of them are and many of them are false positives. And false positives also leads to you missing out on the real threat because of the volume that is coming in.

privacy regulations again, are are a bit of a problem. Because most of the cases we are seeing that privacy regulations that are there we have so many regulations that keep coming in

etcetera, which, which, from a cyber security professionals perspective, they inhibit a lot of things. You cannot track people, you would want to trace people, you would want to be able to trace stuff but regulations are there, which is which from an individual perspective or from an organization data perspective, it's great. But it does not help us in terms of as cybersecurity professionals or as professionals who would be securing data. You'd want new technologies, posing new threats you never had, you know, new technologies are coming in all the time connected cars. We never had connected cars before that's coming in now. And you have ways in which there are so many studies that were done in security conferences. I remember one of the

global security conferences. They actually, the first thing that they were trying to do was they they hacked

one of the most one of the famous cars, automated, autonomous driving cars that are there and

All of that is possible we are seeing smart cars coming in. So these are new threats. Phishing has always been a problem for us. And now what is what we are seeing is phishing with deep fakes. Now, what are deep fakes? Deep fakes are a website or, or a video is so real. That's thanks to artificial intelligence machine learning, then maybe a deep fake of me, talking about the fact that India has have sub faced a nuclear attack and it's entirely possible to do thanks to artificial intelligence machine learning, that somebody may be able to put that video on me there is nothing has happened of that sort. But and people would believe that and we spread that out so we can create a website and attacker can create a website, which is absolutely a carbon copy of a website and steal information spread misinformation,

you know, so that's, that's where we are we in so fishing has also taken a new format. It used to be an innocuous copy of the website right now. You

You have news articles that can come out, which will look like an absolutely authenticated version of the original news item as it would appear if it was indeed true. So that's one problem. Now the final problem, and then there is ransomware, which is there, you know, companies these days are increasingly facing a lot of ransomware attacks, thanks to all of the new challenges posed to COVID the last two columns over their talent shortage, huge talent shortage, which is why I guess most of us are over here, we want to understand what the opportunities are over there. And and the second part, the second, the middle column, last cell of the middle column, institutions not providing a talent pool now, if you were to look at it, and and I'll be very honest, if you want to get into computer science in IIT, Kanpur or any of the leading IITs, or you know, the leading nit, etc. It's it's a difficult job to do. I mean, you're cracking g code.

You know, very high etc. And you will have 100 couple of people hundred people coming in human who will be doing cybersecurity who will be doing computer science, then there are other areas in computer science that they would want to focus on. And you probably have a handful of people who would want to look at this aspect of have computers or information technology. So, the traditional institutions which are there which which can which should be able to provide a huge volume of people actually provide very less because the number of seats are there, competition is huge. If you've already, you know, if you're past that age, you know, there's no way you can get into an institution like this. So there's a huge amount of talent shortage that is available, especially from create institutions. So usually great and good institutions. Big institutions are big because they provide people with the kind of skills that they require. So these are the opportunities the skill gap. I was reading

Just talking about the last two points skill gap, World Economic Forum talked about the fact that in the world and this is a current report, this report came out, I think sometime in March or March or February or March of this year. So where they talked about the fact that cyber security is the space where there is the biggest skill gap skill gap means companies looking for cybersecurity professionals and the volume of cybersecurity professionals available. It's the largest in the world, which means it is a great opportunity for professionals like you or for students as well to look at getting into cybersecurity for people who are not in cybersecurity who are working right now to make a career move in to try cybersecurity and people who are already at probably at a base level of the cybersecurity pyramid to upskill yourself.

To move up 3.5 million unfulfilled cybersecurity jobs all over the world. So if you're asking me what is the state for India, these were two worldwide reports. The state in India is not different. India was the largest contributor to the, the the number of job openings from 2017 to 2000. You know, 22 the time that this report, I mean, cyber security ventures report. This report, I believe, came out early this year, sometime in December, last year or January of this year. So, largest growth in terms of cybersecurity openings. And so one thing it becomes very clear, is that we need a lot of cyber security professionals. By the end of year 2020, we need almost 1 million. There's a different study that came out during the pandemic that number has gone up to 1.5 million 15 lakh job openings

Automated but and companies are looking so we just did this analysis, you know, of the kind of jobs that are available on LinkedIn.

And and these are some of the jobs This is just on LinkedIn, we didn't even go to any job portal that the big job portals that are there. So these are the kind of jobs available only in India. And we we had done this a couple of months back that the rate has gone up much higher. So what it means is that you as professional as an aspiring cybersecurity expert, or already somebody who's working you have huge opportunities. And the fact is currently, I'm sure most of you would be aware thanks to you know, the pandemic that we are going through. It's taken a huge economic toll on on on the entire economy. People are being laid off unfortunately.

But there is still a huge opportunity and that's where I've been when we talk to people

We understand the fact that you know, these are difficult times and one of the things that we say is that one of the best insurance against being laid off in all my years of you know, working with professionals, technology professionals, management professionals, is upskilling yourself. If you can upskill yourself, this is the best insurance you have against being laid off. So even in the midst of this pandemic, you go and do a search, you will find that these are hot jobs that are available which you can go and get, you know, get you get yourself in

own but you need to have those competencies. This is something that is there. I'm kind of coming towards it. I just want to set up the context over there

and see if there is a lot of new things that are happening. So this is the national initiative for cybersecurity education. Nic This is a US

government sponsored, they do most of the research anyway, in cybersecurity, US and Israel are, you know, amongst the leading countries over there. So, this is a framework that they have created in terms of what are the kind of jobs that are available just in the cybersecurity domain. So, if you look at it, you have

security provisioning, operations and maintenance, oversee and govern, protect and defend analyze. So, these are some of the areas of in which cybersecurity professionals are required and if once you go down in the column, those are the kind of job roles that are available. Now,

cybersecurity again is a huge area and if somebody tells you that you know, this is you, you just finished one course and you will master it all. They are lying to you, and neither will I say that, you know, even if you were to be this I'm going to talk about the IIT Kanpur program as well.

If you do that, it's not that you will become the master of cybersecurity. And you will know it all. So if somebody says that please don't believe them. But these are the opportunities that are available for you, you can specialize. But yes, doing a program from a great institution with a legacy in cybersecurity will help you move into these areas much more easily. The program will cover aspects of this, but there's no program that exists on Earth, which covers everything. So that's there and see, this is a very evolving market. If I just want to give you last stat before we kind of talk a little bit more about the program, new attacks are complete are happening all the time. So this entire framework will also go into you know, have a change or in in some period of time. You have

The new threats which are there. So now what is happening is the global VC market or the venture capital market where, you know, all these startups are happening, a lot of focus right now is on upskilling people and which is something that we are focused on,

off the VC investments that are happening, if you were to look, you know, take data, which has happened in the last one year mean take the period of 2019, because to 2020 has been

a bit of a shock now, so, we had around three or four of the 1015 big VC investments that have happened four has happened in training, three have happened in training. And these are these are global trends that I'm talking about in fishing in you know, in terms of and software or companies that can prevent phishing, about three, four. Securing data for or big investments securing identity of people

For odd investments, etc. So it's a huge volume of investments that are happening, which means there is huge amount of potential for you to do great when it comes to cybersecurity. And we've had new things coming in with, you know, IoT coming in with 5g coming in. Artificial Intelligence, again, is is, is poised to change cybersecurity also to a certain extent. So all of this presents new opportunities for professionals to do well, and to upskill themselves. So you all of that will also start flowing in over here. Now, how can what can you do to upskill yourself if you're already a professional Who's that are at a stage in his or her career?

See, information technology is something that you need to

know

And you need to completely come constantly upskill yourselves. So it's a great tool and something that allows you to stay relevant. Now, IIT Kanpur is India's foremost institution when it comes to cybersecurity. And there isn't any other institution in India which focuses on cybersecurity as much as it can put us.

It's the fourth ranked and IRF. That's the framework that the Government of India Ministry of Human Resources has put up. In terms of ranking universities. It's number four in the country. It's one of the best IITs to MIT for most people to get into. And it hosts CTI, which is the leading institution or the Research Institute on cybersecurity in the country and CGI partners. Not only with the

The academic side of things in terms of doing research for academics, CCI works with the Government of India with big private organizations to consult with them on cybersecurity.

Side dcgi center and it can also collaborate with global centers of excellence in us and in Israel

to research on new areas in cybersecurity, and

see researchers all I mean, we all want to get into jobs and all of that, but whatever upskilling that happens happens as a function of research. So, researching and education are two of the strongest pillars, which go hand in hand. So if you were to look at IIT Kanpur, you can't get a better institution in the country which will be able to give you any kind of education and I said before when I started the presentation,

It's difficult unless you are a student. You know who's naughty not started this graduation. I don't think there'll be too many of you in this, your chance of getting into IIT Kanpur is done the cybers the CS program at IIT Kanpur is over, but thanks to the fact that most organizations these days are providing executive education, you have an opportunity to get taught by the same faculty get taught the same modules that the CS students at IIT Kanpur,

those those toppers, those IIT toppers, those who point and they get taught the same thing. So, that's, you know, that's the bit about CGI labs. Everybody knows if you're not aware of it, you can google CGI labs, you will get, you know what it is. So it's the Interdisciplinary Center for cyber security.

in cyber defense of critical infrastructure, so that's the name, CGI. And what is CGI doing at the moment CGI is actively collaborating with the Government of India to secure

all kinds of cyber threats to our national infrastructure. And the so it works with the Government of India. It works with big organizations towards helping secure research and secure their critical infrastructure as well. So when I say critical infrastructure, our ports, our power plants, ports, thermal plants, railways systems, your defense infrastructure that's there and we all know you know, we are we are facing attacks from all over the country cybersecurity attacks from all over the world sorry, so CTI works at the forefront with the Government of India to help prevent these attacks and you

Somebody if you want to be a part of the cybersecurity program, the talentsprint it can't go Thai cybersecurity program, you have access to knowledge that is that is being produced at C three. And I'm going to talk about what has been happening in terms of you know people's experience at CGI.

So, this is the program like I was talking about, you know, the IIT Kanpur CGI program that is there, you know, which is the leading research center in terms of cyber security threats for us in the country. That's one of the big reasons why people choose this program. You can't get anything better. By being in India you have to go outside and get into a into a program which will offer you more than this. Now, you also have excellent faculty. Now, you can google this gentleman

named Professor Sandeep Shukla, he's Padma Bhushan awardee. He is one of the

he's an IEEE fellow

in the Giro, he's an IEEE fellow. And just to make you understand I Tripoli is an organization that sets standards for Electronics and Communication,

you know, equipment, etc. There are less than just about 5000 IEEE fellows in the world. So that same he's one of the foremost authorities in the country. In terms of cybersecurity research and analysis, you get to you know, he will be the one teaching you so you can't get a better mentor than that. You have you and the program allows you to schedule mentoring sessions with all of the faculty including with Professor Shukla to decide to discuss one on one. It's a certain age you get a certification

from IIT, the certificate as an IIT Kanpur certificate as a part of the program you don't. So it's a great thing for you to do. When it on your you know, it's a great thing on your resume, so you wouldn't be able to get in otherwise. The networking had great students in the first in the cohort that's just passed out. The valedictory ceremony is going on. I can see that in the other screen that I have opened over here. And you're going to connect to that ceremony as well in the next couple of minutes, and you get a certificate it's a great certificate to have on your on your resume. It will open new doors for you.

The Learning part of it the program itself is designed for working professionals but we've also taken students we've taken right students in in the first cohort they've done excellently as a part of this program, and you get to experience learning just like you would in a class.

program had one campus visit to campus visits were should do for the first cohort, the first campus visit did happen. But then thanks to you know, the COVID pandemic at all of that we are we've taken the program completely online, the rest of the classes were anyway going to be online.

Classes happen on a Saturday and a Sunday, you will just have to, you know, put in for the live classes that are there. And these are not recorded classes that are there, you will interact with Professor Shukla and the other faculty just like you know, I am talking to you guys right now, you will be able to talk to him, you know, notes, everything, the platform that you will be using is one of the best platforms available in the country at the moment. The talentsprint ipoll.ai platform, it's an artificial intelligence pod platform, which allows you to, you know, everything that you do, it's just like being in a physical class except that you're not in a physical class. You can break

out with people, you can talk to people, you can do group exercises, you can do your hackathons. You can, there's a whiteboard that you can look at, just like you would look at in a class. And all of this is recorded. And, and, and, and the video that is there, it goes to an artificial intelligence layer, and you can and it creates content that is available, which will primarily you know, you don't need to then scroll through your notes to the video that's available to see what concept was being decided at what point in time in your class, it will give you the entire content of all of these lectures. And you get to you know, look at whatever information that you need as a part of the video. So it's a it's a great platform. It's currently being used by I am Calcutta. The same platform that people that learners use as a part of this program is being used by I am Calcutta to deliver their main MBA program. So I you know, the one that everybody sits in cat and

gets 9900 percentile to get into I am Calcutta thanks to the coronavirus pandemic that's going on right now, you have that available as well. So, the same platform is being used for delivering this program. Incidentally another IIT also IIT Kanpur has obviously used this program, this platform to deliver the first cohort of the program. And now, you also will also have a couple of other IITs coming in, they will be running their classes thanks to you know, using this platform. So, as an L You don't have to be worried about you know, what is it that you are learning the quality of learning the the opportunities that are there I primarily trying to kind of talk this in a sequence of the opportunities that are available for professionals or students to in in the sector, the kind of roles that they can look at, and I'm kind of now talking about, you know, learning because unless you know things

You will not be able to take advantage of the opportunities and get into those roles. So that's the this is the third part. And you know what IIT Kanpur has been doing over here in terms of helping professionals helping students master their knowledge in cybersecurity or cyber defense. Just one minute on the curriculum. It's a six month long program, live, interactive, live online classes by faculty. And unlike the other programs that are available, where you look at recorded videos, and talk to your faculty, maybe once every three weeks once every two weeks, four weeks, in some cases, or over a webinar session with all 50 other 100 other participants. These will be live classes and where you will be allowed to talk interact with the faculty on a real time basis. So that's one of the biggest differences and people sometimes do not understand the value of this and

I've had people now who come in and tell me yes or throw, you know, I understand what it means to be in a live class. Have you had cases where people have done programs, similar programs with with in other places before? online? Yes. And and then they and it was not as beneficial to them as far as as they thought it would be. And they have come in and they've enrolled for our programs, it's and then that's one of the biggest things that you know, they can do. Currently physical classes anyway are not possible. Nobody knows when physical classes will be safe, unless we get a vaccine which chances of that happening in this year at least are almost remote, maybe sometime mid of next year. So if you are really willing to wait for a classroom program

is you don't have any classroom programs in the country right now. From any top institutions you may get it from some time they can you know hairy place kind of place. It will not give you much value at all.

So the curriculum, it's all there. So these are the kinds of things that are there that are taught. If you want a detailed curriculum, you can go to the website of talentsprint. And it can go website also has it. Since this is an official for IIT Kanpur program as well, you will be able to get the detailed curriculum that is there. Now, capstone projects, most of us and this is where I'll spend some time on. I will,

you know, talk a little bit about some of these kinds of capstone projects that people have done.

The interesting thing is that we had almost 50 participants in the first cohort, and these were people just like you, you know, people coming in aspirations, many of them had left their jobs, they wanted to pursue the program. There were some students very bright students who had gotten special approvals to get them into class in all, and

the the capstone projects part These are some of the capstone projects as a part of this course.

Grant, you have an option of bringing in your own project. Also you can do the program as a part of a group, you can also do that you can bring in your own project as a part of this. Now what has happened, what happened was that there were some eight projects which were presented. So I guess around five, six people, every team and couple of individual projects are presented now, and this this happened, just dividing the end of last month. Now what has happened as a result of the capstone project, the expectations when it comes to capstone project has exceeded all the faculty's expectations. The capstone projects were so good and and this is something that I can see with a lot of pride. Is this the only program all of the capstone projects, these people did a lot of research in terms of threats that are there that India In India is facing Indian infrastructure is facing itself.

As a part of this program is now being sent to the Government of India as a report by IIT Kanpur and that is going to be implemented in the country. There is no other program which can do that

all of the projects that are there that that I have been coming out that have come out as a part of this capstone project will go to has been sent to the Government of India Ministry of Information Technology for implementation. The second thing is that C three I'm a lot of people ask for job opportunities that are there, what is what is going to happen?

See three ID, the incubator, the research facility, they were so happy as a result of the capstone project, the depth of the capstone projects that are there, they actually do have now offering to incubation they are offering to startup opportunities to the participants of the first

cohort, they already had the ideas and all of that some of the participants have come together. And they are creating two new startups which will work in areas of cybersecurity, creating cybersecurity software and cybersecurity infrastructure in India for India. So though there are two startups that are being formed, thanks to be CO in collaboration with CTI and participants of the first cohort will work in those startups to get these ideas off the plate. So that's something

that is that is also there. And so these are opportunities that are there. And one thing that we firmly believe is the fact that you know, you have these, these opportunities that come in as a part of a program.

The important thing is that many people say that, you know, give me a job right now, job placement. One and one or two

advice that I will give you is from all of these years that I've spent more than a decade that I've spent advising professionals is that most people ignore one basic thing. You don't get a job because you have passed out from a great brand. You don't get a job because, you know, you'd complete a program, you get a job because you have the skills required to perform at that job. Even if you were to pass out from Stanford

with that certificate and not know anything about cybersecurity,

nobody would hire you, thanks to the fact that you have passed out of Stanford. So my advice to most people is and and we're going to now connect to IIT Kanpur life for the session that's happening, I think I can see Professor Sandeep Shukla addressing some of the DD adiante D students actually, for the first cohort. So you will not get a job you know, because you've passed out of a programming but if you pass out of a program and we have we don't have a job

placement as a part of this program, but what happens is that if you ask any people and we are doing webinars with them, we had a webinar a couple of weeks back with some of the participants with the one of the participants and Professor Shukla, you can you can get access to that video in an in the next couple of days, I guess it may already be up on the talentsprint YouTube portal, you will be able to see that these people were working very well without any kind of job placement guarantee that's there because right now they are in such demand thanks to the fact that they've been able to build up skills and they invested in themselves at at the correct time. job opportunities are not a problem for them. So my only request to people is that everybody thinks that you know job Yes, that we understand the fact that you know job is very important, but most people ignore the fact that you need to build up skills, and you need to build up skills from a great institution from great learning. great teachers. As long as your learning is there. The job will follow you you will not have

To follow the job and with the kind of openings that are available in the market,

you know, job opportunities are a dime a dozen you should build, you should invest in yourself, you should invest in yourself to build the skills up, you will get the job and the return that we all are expecting the data is not going to be your an issue.

So what I'm going to do right now is that I'm just for a second, I'm going to stop sharing my screen and I will pull up oops, I will pull out the live stream of you trying to do this for the first time. So we've never done it as a part of

a webinar before let's let me just

with Rohit from tally

Explain everybody. So this was a wonderful experience and which has made this program successful actually, and the projects that we have seen and the presentations we have gone through that is wonderful. They are overwhelming, actually. And they are remarkable. So all the best to everyone from our side. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you with another minute in through untalked about this cyber army that is being created. I also see a little cyber warrior there or I mean cyber warrior with mine. And

I

mine would you like to say something? Yeah, hello. Hello. It's actually my son. He wants to say something.

Hello.

Hey, hi. That was nice. Hello. Thank you.

Yeah, so I would like to thank

Everybody, everybody here and congratulate everyone on completing records. And mostly Professor sukla. Nagy, sir, we have been in touch with the nameserver. We are, I think, every week we are having having a call. So he's he's helping us in WayForward to take up things. And

I would like to repeat the thing that Shivam told that initially, for me, the course was not very much difficult. I was able to adopt it very quickly because I come from the development background. And

for most of the people, I used to get the calls in the beginning, after one week of the course, to leave the course and many, many, many of the things so but I was able to go home so it was not problem for me but most for most of the people coming with a lot of experience. They don't have the development back

So, that has to be make sure that we should clear the requirements and the prerequisites for the course. That is that is the main point. Because for me it was not not difficult, but I could understand from the from the conversation that I had with multiple people who opted out and who remained also I, I think I had a chat with the shamans are also but it was totally good. And

on the course, I was not expecting these many broader areas, a lot of areas that that would be touched. Because before joining the course, I thought the cyber security only in terms of because I come from a development background. I thought of the sonar fixing the vulnerabilities, and these all things and removing the C CV skating the CVS, these kind of things I didn't knew about BGP and they

These kinds of things, several aspects which are in cybersecurity

after completing six months or what I say, if you start studying, start making a career in cybersecurity, there are a number of paths in cybersecurity you can follow you can follow right. So, what what is have decided I would like to go in the SCADA security part and would be working

in that

area only. And so concluding, thank you, everyone. Thank you, seatrade team for helping us and your prompt reply because being so much busy, we expected that we should float a question and we will expect answer in a day or two because he will are quite busy, but it was in an hour or two. So that was that was wonderful.

Thank you. Thank you and remind

you

I would like to talk about some of the feedback and also, you know, thank the staff. So can I can you hear me properly? Yes, yes.

Yes, thank you. So I'll start with the, you know, the feedback part of it. So as I mentioned, for some of us, the application security was of great interest. When we have started with the code personally for me, and also the experience that we caught in the CCI lab. The staff there was very, very cooperative. They made us you know, they educate us on the SCADA systems and those were like eye openers. For some of us, we didn't think about those lines, that it could be used for power or, you know, water and such kind of energy projects. So that was really good.

So experienced that it gone for that we had with the CGI lab staff there. It's all phenomenal however,

What I observed is that we had the application security, which is one of the areas not so talked about or understood well, in terms of the IT professionals or the information security professionals, that was little threatening for them, right. So, what I would suggest is when you structure your program for the next cohort, probably keep Application Security maybe as an offline or online class session, and not on the first set of cohort and sessions by Professor maninder approval and Professor Shukla or maybe some more faculties from IIT, Kanpur and unanswered Han and l'ouverture and couple of them would make it a you know,

a complete program when they visit the college. So, that is something which I had in mind when we had the troubles around the program and by people find that you know, they they're not understood

The buffalo floor, things like that if they don't come from the programming background that will

it will also give them time to prepare over the next few weeks until that you know topic comes up. So that was one I wanted to tell. Second is about the talentsprint team.

They have been really very supportive. Right from you know, when people are there at the college and the press has specially has been very, he's like he will call people tell them that this is something what is there and when to handhold the 15 minutes of session that was the plan with Professor Sandeep Shukla, that was very helpful because we can converse with him we can ask the doubts which we individually face in our understanding. And also it was a very short 15 minutes call but that kept that dialogue going and

We could understand it bit better. The professors that we had an answer which they were all available, and the culture of the team is really very crazy. So, and I, we all thanks to Professor Sandeep Shukla, and as abishek told right there COVID came to our rescue. Right. So we had the only professorship like taking all of our classes. And we caught good insights, although the team was working behind we had so was mentioning that answer otorrhea preparing presentations and all of this, but then the court couldn't say there was a continuity because the same professor was teaching us all through these weeks. And we can relate to what is coming up next to the next week and and as we know, all of our families would be knowing you know, all the professor's name by now over the past six months, right? Is the oh you are attending this professor class. Okay. You are

Returning This truck is a class. So that was that's the kind of impact it has happened. It had because of the Cobra situation or it has happened in our lives. And I want to thank, you know, the entire team and congratulations to Oliver batchmates for this program and it was really supportive once additional requests to

Shanthi know, Andrew hitters, since it is a first cohort, we would like to request for

you know, a one day seminar or conference kind of a thing at IIT Kanpur once this resolves, and please make a note of our request. So that in case you wish to plan, you can plan it sometime next year. So thanks everyone.

Yeah, so, um, Hi, everyone. So I'll be back. So this was very unfiltered conversation that is currently going on with as a part of the battle

valedictory ceremony at IIT Kanpur, we we were so, if you generally hear it, you will be able to see that you know the the the feedback that we are there and we are so happy to get the feedback

that we have received from all of these participants. So, and we were so confident of it, I actually allowed, you know, completely unscripted, this is I am not aware of the script, it's happening somewhere somewhere else in IIT Kanpur, as well as in and people are joining in, you heard about what people are saying in terms of the program in terms of, you know, the kind of questions or in kind terms of the kind of support that that is there. So, I'll take some questions if people have it.

And, yeah, so there's, there's some comments in terms of, you know, the cost of the program and all of that.

Again, like I said, it's the cost of

program, you know, with scholarships and all of that, it will pay, it's around 2.5. But then there are scholarships that are available, you can get in touch with Srilanka to know the kind of scholarships that are there. And it's an investment in yourself, if you were to really look at it, you know, you may want to make that investment and do it. But and that's your call. But if you don't make that investment, that's an opportunity that you're probably not going to be able to make, get, make most of. So that's that's the bit I would like to say about this this value value that is there in terms of value. value is also something which is very personal for people, but most cases knowledge doesn't go to waste. And I also see there are questions that

are there in terms of you know, online, IV have PDFs and all of that that's available. Yes, there is a lot of information that's available online, no doubt about it, but most cases and this is very true for

Indians, we are not that great when it comes to learning online self paced everything we lack that discipline. So, the challenge that happens is that because of a lot of online, you know, things that are there we just lacked discipline and end result the output is not there. Having said that, and since we are kind of talking about outcomes and all of that, not many people are aware while officially We are not saying that there is placements that are available, there is the large talentsprint network that we have. And we work with almost 700 companies as a part of our network for not for the cybersecurity program but globally. We work for providing placements for our college programs. And maybe in the future. Some of these programs will also some of the executive programs will also have placements. So we always get requests for you know, professionals who are trained who can deliver and I myself have gotten requests from top companies for

cybersecurity professionals, we don't offer that. And the same is being floated out to people in the current cohort, those who are interested, they can actually look at opportunity. So officially, it is not there as a part of the program, but unofficially, you have people, you know, joining the startups that CGI has collaborated with them on. You have a lot of requests that come in from companies saying that, you know, we need X number of people with these skills, do you have it from top companies, we forward it to, you know, all of the participants of the cohort, and then they, you know, they can go through it and get that that's a regular part of the Alumni Engagement that happens.

So,

so let me look at the CI six month the course this course, this is the last so the the program, this is an ongoing program.

And you will be able to see the current classes for the program. The second cohort are going to start

On 29th of August so we are still accepting, you know, refer refer we are still accepting applications for the Cohort Two, you can make it you can get a selection if you if you are interested.

Okay, so there's a cyber security set of police, army army cyber security is different. So this is a question from Sona cry army army's quite different because you have to get into the NDA and then they have their own internal, you know, security, they have their own internal training. Police. Interestingly, we are getting a lot of requests from the defense. There are there are there was one defense personnel if I'm not mistaken, who's done the first cohort and we are getting a lot of interest from law enforcement for the cybersecurity program. So they do that and then it's it's a part of, you know, you can get an over there as a consultant. I am aware of

Couple of people one person from the first cohort who is working as an external consultant now for one of the law enforcement agencies on the in the area of cyber security. So, that's about it. I have a poll which I have opened, you know, I would request all of you to vote. The one last thing that is there is an SR questions in terms of if you don't come from an IT background, unfortunately, if you come from an IT background, also you do need to know programming even if you don't come from an IT background.

on traditional IT background, I am also not an IT guy, but I know how to program. I know c i know Java very well, I can do this program. So it's not that you have to be a B tech, or or somebody who has done signs and all of that. I am a beacon grad, but I know programming very well. So I can do the program so to speak. So this program to the next cohort

He's going to start soon. And if you have any questions, we can, you know, you can reach out to us, you may get a call from somebody in the team.

talking a little bit more about the program, if you have questions, you can reach out to us at CSC da talentsprint.com. Or go to www.talentsprint.com. And go to the cybersecurity section to know about the pricing scholarships that are available, you have some additional scholarships that are also available as a part of the program. You can talk to silica only number given below. And and that's that's it for today. We've already crossed our time. It's a 1204. I thank all of you for joining us today. And it's been great having you. I wish I could answer a lot more questions, but then we kind of get one hour for this and I will, you know, I know. I'll still try and answer questions if you if you send it any questions that you have on the

On the email that is there on the screen. So thank you so much. It is lovely having you and I look forward to getting seeing more of you. In the cohort that's coming up. We've had great, you know, success stories with the first cohort. And I'm sure we would love to have you as a part of the same cohort as bell in the future. Thank you so much. You have a good day. Stay safe. Bye bye.

Watch the entire interview here https://youtube.videoken.com/embed/nPDidN18Eo0