Ask me Anything: Cyber Secuirity Program by IIT Kanpur and TalentSprint

Hi everybody, thank you for joining in to this Ask me anything session for the IIT Kanpur and talentsprint cybersecurity program. My name is Ernesto Bhattacharya, I head admissions for talentsprint. And we're very excited to have you guys here today. I have a hopefully an exciting session for all of you guys.

Wherein I'm going to talk in brief about the various opportunities that we have in cybersecurity.

A little bit about the program as well, because that's something that's important.

I'm going to answer all of your questions. So what I would request all of you to do is to hold on to your questions till the q&a section starts it will be easier for me because if you send them the questions right now, and a whole lot of questions keep popping up but your question will get lost. I have a set of questions myself which we always receive as a part of our

Our webinars and the other, you know, any content that we usually share? I will answer those questions first, perhaps that will be an answer to your questions. And then if there are any other questions that you have, I'll be happy to answer that. So that's going to be the next hour that we have that we are going to spend today. Thank you again for joining in, you know, on a Wednesday evening, so we'll get started. So, again, I had admissions for talentsprint all my professional life of over a decade I have been advising professionals I've been advising

companies I've worked with more than 40 3040 fortune 500 companies as clients trying to help them identify people, people, leaders, advising people in terms of career choices that they should make my role before I joined talentsprint was with the Indian School of Business in Hyderabad whereby I let the Indian

A program admissions for that for both the flagship one year MBA program as well as the senior executives program.

So that's the context term. And why don't we get started it's important to talk about talentsprint. Most people don't know a lot about talentsprint. But the fact of the matter is we are probably the only edtech company in the country that works with these these top institutions a top I am a top triple it or a top IIT and iisc. I there's no other a tech player in the country that actually has the kinds of programs that we have IIT Kanpur, we are working with them for the cybersecurity program. There are other programs that are coming up and ISC can we have launched a program on digital health and imaging. Again, this is a program which is primarily meant for technology professionals who want to move into the healthcare sector.

Indian Institute of Management we have three programs with them. One on FinTech, financial blockchain the other on using AI and marketing, other on global economy and digital money. And then we have the AI ml and the other programs, blockchain programs with triple it has about so one common thing if you were to really look at it amongst all of these is the fact that

the it's it's the The theme is that these are deep tech programs. And these are most of the people who tend to choose us are our professionals. Serious professionals tend to choose us. So that's that's the important part of you know, talentsprint and not only do we do we work for working professionals, we also work with college students as well. We have partnerships with Google where we run Women Techmakers program, a program which, you know, almost last year if I'm not mistaken, 18,000 people

applied 400 odd seats.

And it's it's a program which you know students don't have to pay

they are trained with with us for almost two years and then they get lapped up by you know top companies similarly we have partnerships with automation anywhere blue prism, etc. So we work with these companies also to help college students train up in in you know, things like robotic, Process Automation etc. So we work with both ends of the spectrum, sometimes for the programs, the executive programs that we have, students can also come in. So like for the cybersecurity program, this is our experience with running the first cohort which is just graduated a couple of weeks back where we had one student This time we are allowing graduation or people who are undergraduates, not from school, you have to be in college. If you are bright enough, you know, we will give you an opportunity to join this batch. So we are very agile to making these changes. Now when we talk about sizing

Security I've just come back in and just set the context of cyber security is important if and I was just going through some research and Google Trends that I was looking at cybersecurity at the moment is the hottest topic. It's it's even in terms of the interest from audience it has even eclipsed the traditional you know, the traditional leaders in terms of you know, data science, ai ml, which everyone thinks is the largest one, we actually it cybersecurity, which is very important. And it's not surprising, right? We are in the midst of a pandemic, most of us are working from home. What it means is that, you know, companies are working in ways that we've never watched before, which which means that

you know, it opens up so many avenues for things to go wrong and for people to take advantage of. And, you know, it doesn't seem to be getting over anytime soon, most companies have for the short term announced that

Until December, nothing is happening, you know, it's status quo. And many of them have even announced, you know, late next, I mean, mid of next year is when they expect people to come back. So it's not not gonna improve things are only gonna probably yeah continue to be critical, which is a great opportunity for anybody wanting to get into cybersecurity. And the $1.1 trillion that that stare on that slide is huge money companies are spending all over the world. This, again, has been

research that's being done by cyber Ark global, advanced threat landscape report, this came out late last year.

With 95% success, the success was for the attackers $1.1 trillion spent, which means that there is clearly a lot of spending that's happening when there's a lot of spending that's happening. Obviously, they're spending it on people, they're spending it on processes. Right now also we have not reached a stage where

Words have taken over. So a lot of their a lot of the people are, are going to, you know, it's going to be driven by people. So huge opportunities for you anybody wanting to get in. But the fact of the matter is in spite of spending so much you have 95% success from for the attackers. So in spite of pouring in tons and tons of money, attackers are the ones who are still getting away with data breach. Now does the survey that this is the survey that was done. This is a part of the survey three top findings from that survey where they had, I believe, what 1000 thousand close to almost 1000. chief information security officers were old. For this across more than 2025 countries in the world. 46% of them say that they can't prevent attackers from getting into their networks, test cases.

An audio that they had 46% said, Whatever we do, we can't prevent it.

which clearly means that opportunities for companies to improve opportunities for people who have the necessary expertise to improve, then everybody believes in that survey that are successful phishing exercise or a breach will occur in the next 12 months. Why 46% of them said that, you know, there's no way that they can prevent 100% of them believe that you are maybe some cases we may prevent. But in the next one year, most cases, something bad will happen.

26% of the budgets have gone up on an average for all the companies that were pulled as a part of this.

And the budgets 26% or 26% attacks have increased despite a 9% increase in budgets. So budgets are going up, but attacks are going up at a higher clip. And we have been seeing that if you've been following news. You know, a few

few weeks back a few weeks Yeah, last month organism got attacked you know their data was out in the open There are so much so many reports coming in by you know, we have been in this lockdown the the kind of attacks that have happened have gone up and and why is this happening where are attacks happening from the there are broadly you know this this is kind of classified along with So, these are broad areas where attacks are happening from the last line is something that probably we can do the last two.

The last two sales on the left will is something where a solution can probably come in but devices and users we we have new devices everything is connected these days from a fridge to or even a car is connected these days all new cars that are launching our smart cars, they are touting it as smart cars. Recently, there was a hackathon which was happening where they they actually successfully

hired

Get a car, a famous, you know, smart car that was there. And they took complete control of it. So everything that is connected while connected is great, it brings us a lot of convenience connected TV connected, a secret phone is always connected anyway.

It also brings in the fact that those devices are then liable for hacking. If they're liable for hacking. While it is an opportunity for hackers. It's also a big opportunity for people who want to prevent them to make a livelihood at the end of the day. We are all here to make you know to gain something and then earn out of that. So and in in that process if we can secure systems etc. I think that's a big bonus. So visibility challenges, new devices constantly coming in disjointed security products. Everybody and this is one general thing that I've been.

You know, Vivi is V speak to thousands of people as a part of our exercise of fuel.

don't fit getting in people for this program. There are so many other programs that talentsprint has most cases when we talk to people who want to join cybersecurity program on their definition of cybersecurity program, or a cybersecurity expert is somebody and this is this is across years of experience is that hey, I have a team a team reports to me. And he we are good there is and people have told me this actually, it's quite funny. When when I actually talked about this with the faculty at IIT Kanpur and the usual definition is retro. There is a third party software is available, etc. My team will install it. And that's it. I am so I am a cyber security. I'm the Chief Science Officer, information security officer in the company. Why do I need to learn? The funniest thing is that that is that is the understanding of cyber security. If people feel that I am I install a third party software etc.

Somehow secured my network I bring in whatever x, y z for five kinds of software to protect this VPN, etc etc I know all about cybersecurity. You don't people actually don't even that is not even the sources of cybersecurity and most people don't even realize that and and I'm going to talk about what we expected what this program does, I am not saying that you know it can put program is is again the the only program that you need in the world if you do this you are the guru of cyber security. The next slide itself will actually show you how vast the entire field is. But the fact of the matter is one piece of advice that I will give you is if any program says that you do this program and and and somebody says you master the art beat and cybersecurity data and artificial intelligence machine learning. Please take that person with a big pinch of salt.

All these fields are very vast fields, very dynamic fields. If somebody is claiming that you will become a master just by doing a six month program

it doesn't matter.

That way, I have spent more than a decade in this industry to know that it doesn't work that way. It's a learning process. So please don't fall for that. That's that's one. You know, on a side note, that's one piece of advice that I will give you before we proceed. So disjointed cybersecurity products again, the problem is, products don't speak to each other. And we have no way because we don't have enough expertise to actually understand what true cybersecurity is or what is what is the function of a true cyber security professional. We bring in so many products, they don't speak to each other. So the right hand doesn't know what is happening to the left hand everything is in a silo. At attackers take advantage of that come in, screw our systems up and you know attacks are successful.

We have a security operation center since we have so many products etc. Most of the cases the products give false positives. So there is there are always maybe $100 in a day. Of those hundred dollars, probably 99 of false

It gives the one true positive attack probably gets overlooked in the avalanche of false positives. So thanks to Europe, and this is how we are and this is how most organizations are working on this is again, from one of the big eminent cybersecurity organization research is these were the actual findings. It was a part of one of the biggest cyber security conferences in the world, which was which happened in Switzerland last I think this was as early as January this year. So this is from one of the renowned global cybersecurity experts, regulations, privacy and all of that are always a problem. Privacy will is for cyber from cybersecurity professionals. And this is the only webinar where I can say that privacy is a problem for us because we would love to as cybersecurity professionals want to take that, you know, open up

the camera so to speak, surveil everything that

as possible, look at you know I can you can open up my mobile phone camera at any point in time that would make me very secure but then my privacy would go for a toss. The government would screw screw up whoever is doing it etc. If you are recording my voice you always hear of these cases. You know, Alexa was recording people's voices, habla happened, all of that Amazon has to do it sometimes you hear Google is trying to do it etc, etc. Facebook is trying to track years. While it is great for privacy security, it becomes a problem we need that we always have this cat mouse cat mouse situation between regulations and cybersecurity regulators will always look at privacy. Too much privacy will not allow us to have the necessary security in place because we need to do that new technologies coming up which are constantly exposing threats so you have connected cars you have so many other things which are constantly happening, new technologies are coming in which is opening up

hoses are connected from smart logs this and that to what not is there but which always opens up issues deep fakes huge problem most people tagging a deep fake you can I can probably out it can be printed a fake Times of India news paper fan page can be printed to say that India has declared nuclear war on China or nuclear war on Pakistan. So many people are dead and that's possible you can I mean, an end it's a fake news complete fake news it somebody will create it with mal intention malafide intentions for gain deep fakes they can create your view everybody has a bank account so the deep fake website can be created which will have all the functionality of your regular bank account but it will not be of your bank, any information that you put in will be compromised. Similarly, thanks to AI deep learning, you can create a video

For me with my voice making movements, hand gestures, everything and you know, I can probably spread some rumor that there has been some run on a bank and if that spread out on social media on WhatsApp, Instagram, Twitter, whatever, probably there there is none on somebody everybody will start believing that you are my deposits are not safe in state bank and everybody will rush tomorrow to go and withdraw their money. Now that is possible. And and these are deep fakes phishing, like I said, you know, they can create a website. So, these are challenges that are there which are coming in ransomware again, is another challenge you have ransomware cognitive was attacked actually by ransomware. There are so many cases where you know, organizations don't even report that they're in your data is screwed up you have ransomware so these are the areas that are there. Now problem is there is a huge talent shortage, which is very which is a big opportunity for you there is critical talent shortage in the world.

Not only in India in the world and institutions, so say for example, an IIT on top of all the IITs dreams all everybody, I'm sure who is here, who has who is an engineer who aspires at some point in time you would have aspired to get into an IIT, if you would have gotten it. Now, how many seats seats do I it is at some couple of lakh people will sit for gate and all of the other competitive examinations a few thousand will get it and that is also much less than four 5000 people who get it who will get into computer science even probably fewer than that the top people will get into computer science. So, the current top institutions beat it is beat and it is already top triple IITs, you hardly have a few thousand seats. Now for a country hundred 30 crore country and the kind of needs that is their cybersecurity needs that is woefully inadequate. Now, so before this is woefully inadequate, you actually have people running after trying to get certifications and all of that

And which is where you know companies like us come in a tech players were in and and you know organizations like IIT Kanpur have also understood the fact that institutions that the the current flagship it programs the programs that they run is not enough and this presents an opportunity for people to come in and learn from the experts, so to speak, and benefit out of that. So, this is why these executive programs are being run in India. Now, skill gap I was talking about World Economic Forum there is this room, you know, this organization they you have these meetings in Davos every year this year didn't happen, but thanks to the pandemic, but so they're they kind of they did these analysis and they said that the skill gap,

the workforce skill gap, so which is what you know, organizations bond versus what people are available, is the biggest in the world inside

Security

35 lakh jobs globally by 2021 will not have qualified people. This is all over the world if you ask me for India, the next two lines are for India.

largest number of cybersecurity openings job openings which opened up were from India in the world since 2017. on cybersecurity 10 lakh at least and there's been an updated study disperse again end of 2020 was this survey happened before the pandemic hit us. This was last December, January was when this I think the December was when this was published. I read a recent report again, which says that the the number has gone up from

you know, 1.1 million to 15 lakh now. So, so many opportunities out there, if you look at this and this these number of jobs, we kind of searched for it on one single portal.

These were two jobs that

came out you know being beat Ethical Hacker informant. He is a penetration tester analyst. This was from one single job portal on one single day in a couple of I think it was last month sometime we were trying to figure this out.

If you look at all the other job portals, etc, the number of jobs are mind boggling and there are people are not available, which is why you know, it becomes important now is coming to that a while back I was referring to a trade the opportunities for people in cybersecurity. Most people again think that like me, I don't have to install some software etc. I'm a cybersecurity expert. This is something which has been created by United States again, you know, they are anyway leaders, United States and Israel.

These are the various categories workforce, every column

is a category of

cybersecurity professionals. And as you go down that column, these are areas in which they can specialize in, if you are to look at it. And this is the nice framework, which is there, you can find it on on the US website on the NIS t website.

This is a training framework basically where people can be trained. So the kind of opportunities that are available to you be it in terms of developing systems, provisioning for security, or in terms of maintaining data or in terms of, you know, protection or defense of critical infrastructure, or in terms of analyzing the kind of threats or investigating the kind of threats in forensics, digital forensics, it's, it's a huge number. This this by itself, if you were to look at it, there's some 3435 kinds of jobs that are there, which means that it there's a lot of things that you have to learn and it is good at

It is very important that people who aspire to be cybersecurity professionals upskill themselves. Now, I come to what IIT Kanpur offers this this So, we started off and if you were to really look at it there isn't an organization in India which is better than IIT Kanpur. When it comes to cybersecurity. It houses the CTI Center, which is India's leading research center on cybersecurity for source and critical infrastructure. They have amongst the highest amount of research that's going on it can coincidentally

also partners with, you know, centers of global centers of excellence in the US and in Israel, which which which you know, they are the leading the world when it comes to cybersecurity provisioning, it comes to research over there and the training of IIT Kanpur, you are going to be taught by you know, the same

faculty who teach the computer science folks at IIT Kanpur

and the fact is NRF you know an IRF 2019 even 2020 IIT Kanpur is ranked number four in the country. So, that's, that's a great you know, name to have on your resume that you have a program from IIT Kanpur, having been taught by the same faculty who teach some of the best students in the country and it can genuinely know for known for the kind of research that's happening especially in cybersecurity. Now, the CGI thing so what has happened is that CGI has was set up with the objective of Is there a slide on CGI? So anyway, so it was set up with the objective of doing research and suggesting and and working with the bought government as well as private enterprises to help fool us

Research in the areas of cybersecurity, there isn't any of it any pure of its kind in India at the moment. So, if I knew will be getting access to researchers in IIT Kanpur ncti Labs as a part of this program. I don't know if any other program which can offer something like this to you, in when it comes to a certification, you will have the IIT Kanpur, you know stamp on your CD if you were to do this program, the mentors, you can google their names up

professors and literally tripla he is possibly India's foremost expert on on cyber security. He is a Padma Bhushan award winner, and he's amongst his board less than 5000 professionals in the world who have be who are an IEEE fellow. So so that's him. You can find his information on

goodwill and and so he he's the head of the program he teaches you and and the kind of insights that he brings in is is, is excellent. I mean, I've been privileged to have, you know, some conversations with him. We kind of exchanged he was there in the closing ceremony, I have a small video of two minute video of the closing ceremony. And anybody who has seen attended his classes or or or you know, had the privilege of meeting him swears by, you know, the knowledge that he has. So if that's the kind of people who will be helping you out and to teach you in you know, your your pieces in cybersecurity, be the platform itself is a great platform, the experiencial learning that's there. This is an online program. You thanks to the pandemic, this time, there are no campus visits that are going to happen because it can produce closed to external visitors. For the

till December. So for the first cohort, the previous cohort that passed out, they had two campus visits planned the first one happened. The second one unfortunately could not happen because they were again in the midst of the pandemic. So this time there will be no campus visits. But the fact of the matter is we are bringing the cybersecurity vcci the expertise, all the kinds of machines and the and and the infrastructure available to you, most of it hopefully, virtually through the talentsprint platform, which again is one of the great platforms I am Calcutta is using the talentsprint platform to run the main MBA program that they have. So all those you know so so it's a wonderful platform. It allows you to seamlessly interact with me all these are live classes, these are not self these are not recorded sessions etc. You will be able to stop the faculty you will be able to interact with the faculty just like you would be able to do that in a live classroom session. You

will have access to the whiteboards if that he or she is writing on you have pure virtual hangout rooms that we are creating where people can after class, come in network with your peers. And and you also have access to all of the notes and all of that that are anyway given our MIDI platform also in case you miss a couple of lectures, everything is recorded, you can come back to it these videos that are there of the classes that are happening our AI part so you will understand exactly, you will have a tom table of contents, you will be able to figure out just click on you know the subject that interests you in the class and jump to the video there. You don't have to go through the entire thing, the sum of these small things that are available. There are many other exciting features of the platform that are there. So you get to use this platform.

And the pure networking has been excellent and the kind of peers that you

Get in our our par excellence. So the the amount of experience that the years of experience that they bring in the kind of industries that they work in. And and the best part of it is that we know what happened as in the first cohort and this was not a part of the program. These people I have a small video one minute video of that has been the projects that they did thanks to the fact that most of them had come in from great industries, years of work experience, the collaboration work that they did, they did some eight projects, details are coming up on that.

All of these projects, professors and live Shukla is in talks with one of the leading publishers to bring out a book on that. These projects are also being sent to the Government of India Ministry of Information Technology as recommendations for implementation in India. Now

There is no other program in the country which can probably give you this and imagine, you know you as you're part of your capstone project, you are doing something

and a book will get published out of it. It has happened for the first chord. I'm not saying it will happen for the next cohort, but you never know c three d are actually collaborating with two sets of I mean the current batch students and there are two startups that are being set up from the current batch from the first cohort of the IIT Kanpur cybersecurity program in areas of cybersecurity and cyber defense. So these startups will form and they are going to do research and they're going to come out with products India made products for India, in cybersecurity. I don't think any other program in the country allows you to do this. So you know, getting a book published getting your recommendation saying to the Government of India for implementation

Having two startups coming out of a first offer cohort, which would have around 4550 odd people is a great thing to have. And then having such pure peers, which who worked in large companies, you're going to see all of their names if that one minute video that's there. These are opportunities that are there for people to look at. And currently as we speak, we are almost in the last stages of closing applications for cohort to 90% of the batches full. And we have some seats are available, you know, you will be happy if you can come in. So this is one two minute video of what the alumni had to say on the day of their graduation.

It's been a great learning experience, and I agree with everything that

I've said about expanding

Learning. I think it's been absolutely fantastic. And perhaps for me, one of the main reasons for this first being so successful is that it's not just it's not

just learning few concepts, but actually getting your hands dirty and doing projects and assignments and CDs and so on. A person like p od did not have much knowledge on the cyber secularism, the word cyber security, but I finished the program I know so much of understanding, right, at least I could get the profit out of it also from this course.

Which means I did win some business deals right. So thank you very much. And thanks a lot.

within an organization within an app, when people come across to know about myself, that I have, you know, pursuing this course, they realize this guy will be the right fit. Now I'm heading SL software from Oculus where entire team is structured by me each and every day sources handpicked by me and secret is going to be one of

A crucial area where we require a huge number. And that really helps me, you know, improve on to understanding the technology that we employ deploy in our projects. And I can be a participant to that, and tell them what is the best practices and how we can actually come across security issues and all those things. And that would have never been possible if I would have never taken this course. Right. So thank you so much for bringing this, you know, opportunity to be part of this particular course and I am not the same person who I who you can compare only to people, right. It's you about a timeframe ago, and it's you after a timeframe. Okay. So comparing that I would actually say that I'm a different person, six months down the line than I was on February 2 or third of this year. Thank you.

Yeah, so that's just you know, one

and we do a q&a session I just going through some of the comments that have come in, there's a q&a session you will get to ask your questions as well.

So, what's the curriculum like it's a six month program, it's it's an interactive Life program. You do have to know so which are led by life faculty, you are not going through recorded sessions. On your own you have to be in the class, you you work with people, you peer groups are created. And you work with your peer group as well. So even though it's online, you are safe in your own house. You still get the entire experience of being taught by a living person, working with you know, peers, getting all of the learning all that is a part of the program.

You know, these are and this program tackles

Most of these areas, both eight covers the attack side as well as the defense side of things. So, you know, you can just research on the names, the in terms of you're looking at details of what the program covers. It's there on the talentsprint website. It's even available on the IIT Kanpur website if you were to look for it.

Now, the capstone projects, I mean, this is what, you know, what was of interest to a lot of people, the capstone projects that happened, these are some examples of the capstone projects that people did, the people had the opportunity of bringing their own projects and solving that and as a result of these, the project presentations were of such high caliber, that yours ambipolar that led to you know, the entire recommendations being sent to government of India plan as well as the entire plan for looking at, you know, implementing one, all of this as a part of one of the books that you know, Professor

has been writing and all of this will become a part of that. So what I have is this small video of the people who made these presentations, it will help serve two things. It will give you an idea of all the participants, the kind of people who have come into the program was passed out of it. And it will also tell you, you know, the kind of projects that they've worked on

Yeah, so low hit to pushkar again was, you know the only student as a part of this cohort and, and he kind of he did such a great job of eight we have decided to open up you know the program this time for us

Some select bright students in Indy four four you know most of them were there in college and and you know they are interested in making a career in cybersecurity. Now the audience q&a part it can start I will actually I have some questions which I mostly get and I kind of saw some of those questions were along similar lines.

So, first question is am I a student can I do this program? Yes, this time we will be giving

some seats around 1012 seats to students. So, if you are a student specially if you are in your graduation beat a third year, fourth year etc. Even first second years can do it because you know, classes mostly happen on a weekend. You can you can apply for the program, you have a certain number given below. She's the program lead or you can email us, Dave hurt she and her

team will be happy to help you out. You even have the silica, silica, she's a part of this group. See, if you want to share your number, maybe you may want to do that as a part of the chat. So they will be able to help you also as a student, yes, you can do this program.

It opens up new opportunities for you as well.

The other question that I get is a programming is it necessary? And so the answer is yes, you do need to have programming knowledge. And that's where if you want to, you know, kind of understand why is it required? I was having this chat again with Professor Standish lab, right before the the cohort was graduating, generally asking him you know, just to understand I'm not a pure technology guy myself. Why is coding required? The his answer was that no, in most cases, I believe he had said that in one of our webinars.

He's a little most cases people

are implementing, and we received this question from a lot of people who want to get into programming, you want to get into cybersecurity. And you know, I don't need to code I can just buy software and implement it. It's easy. Why do I need to learn coding for that? Yes, it seems to be a very natural thing. But the funny thing is that the software that you are buying is not made in India, it's a third party software, you have no way of knowing what can happen who has a backdoor if there is a backdoor or not. But what can happen is somebody can somebody scan is data being sent somewhere. So you are if you're relying on third party software to provide security to you while not knowing basics, you are living in a fool's paradise. So coding is very important part of, of cyber security. And the funny thing is that we actually had a gathering

For the current students who have enrolled for the, for the second cohort, just last Sunday, we had a virtual kind of a gathering for them. And this this person, I'm not going to name the company, he has already done a couple of certification programs from a well known company, a tech company in the market. And he comes here and he tells me and this question was asked by one of the participants also, you know, why are we focusing on, you know, coding and all of that so much. He says, retro, you won't believe it.

I had my instructor Tell me, who is who is supposed to be so called cyber security expert, that cyber security is coding has nothing to do with cybersecurity. It's you just you just have software and all of that will take care of that. And that's what we teach you. So why do want to what has cybersecurity got to do with coding, it's coding for developers. You want to develop something

cybersecurity doesn't require that. That is the kind of knowledge that unfortunately that you know leading educators, some of the educators in India have on cybersecurity. It's a very sad state of affairs. But the fact of the matter is this program focuses on basics. You we will teach you basics if you are coding is right, if you could want to get your hands dirty, if you want to build a strong foundation,

this is the program for you. So, coding is important what is what is required in coding and do we help you with that? Obviously, you have to understand something. If you have the basics of coding, we can help you we can teach you coding because again, it doesn't work that way. So currently, as we speak, people who have enrolled they are already going through a rich course which which you know works which is kind of teaching them on basics of working on the command line. You know, programming fundamentals of C because C is the language that is

Any, you know, important for, you know, learning, shell scripting, text processing using the new debugger. So these are some of the things which are happening as a bridge program as we speak. The classes for the program will start from fifth of September. But before that we are running a bridge program just to help brush up people's fundamentals. If you do not have coding knowledge. Unfortunately, you may not be able to join immediately you got to build that coding knowledge and do it. And this applies for people with work experience as well. If you feel that just because you know you are a senior person and you have your team reporting, you want to become a cybersecurity expert, without getting your hands dirty to code. Probably this is not the program for you. Because that's that's not the way in which this program has been designed, we will help you give you a very strong foundation. Using that foundation you will be able to build your castle up or build your building up and dive much deeper in a much better fashion in the world of cyber secure

Like I said at the start of the webinar, you know if any program if anybody's telling you that you do this program, you are an expert in the field of cybersecurity, they are lying, and neither am I claiming that you do this program. You know all about cybersecurity, you will probably be scratching, you will be at the start of your journey to do it and no program will make you one expert in six months time. It doesn't work that way. But yes, this will give you the tools to start thinking about it. And this is something one feedback that I got from a lot of the participants of Cohort One is that and they were also a couple of them were talking about that also key you know, it's gotten me started thinking about these things. Now another of the basics. What area I want to go into is you know, something that you will do and learning is a continuous process. So that's the part about why is programming necessary Yes, programming is necessary and you know, if you if you have done it, some years back as long as you remember some of the things we will give you a bridge course

Which you can attend. If you are enrolling quickly, you will still be able to go to the recorded sessions for the first few sessions of the bridge course and probably attend a couple of live sessions which are coming up over the weekend. For that you will have to be a little quickly. I mean act a little quickly in the next couple of days. Now. The So okay, our placements provided I have not yet looked at the chat window. So I'm assuming that that question will come. So, on the face of it, placements are not provided. Having said that,

we are in touch with some of the leading companies and there have been expressions of interest. I will not take their names because things have not been finalized with them yet. But by the time you probably graduate, we will have expressions of interest signed up or we'll have concrete you know, we would have completed our discussions and and we are in discussions where these companies want to have the first right of interview for the entire time.

So, I am talking about while leading companies over here. So, while officially we will still not say that we will provide placements, we are in touch with them there are companies we are and it has happened even before in the first part also we never you know talked about placements over there. I know of people who are making career switches now because, you know, they it's it's such an in demand you know, role or in demand competence to have an A certificate to have people are doing that people are a two startup started some of the people actually collaborate in startup form Cohort One did not have and at that point in time, we will not talking very actively to companies, but then we have received expressions of interest from big multinational international headquartered companies, fortune 500 couple of Fortune 500 companies as large Indian multinationals, and all of them have been saying this, we want the right to interview everybody.

The first in the cohort first, so we are in touch with them. By the time probably you guys are through with your program in the month of December, end of end of December, mid of January,

there will be something in place for people. And the other thing that I talked about is even though we don't provide official placements, people still do this program. One focus on and one reason for that is that we focus a lot on building up your skills. And most people and this is this is true for POV technology bit management skills, beat finance, anything. If you know the content well. The job will follow you you will not have to follow the job if you go your trade well. If you if you really focus on your basics, you will get the job you don't really have to focus on a job placement. And anyway even if somebody were to guarantee your placement to you, if you do not have your skills, you may get a certificate you may be a Stanford or Harvard pass out you will not be able to get it

Nobody does charity these days just because you have a certificate from a big place. Yeah, it may open a door to you. But if you can't perform if you don't know you're trained well if you don't have the requisite skills, you will not be able to hold on to a job. So looking at look at building your skills, the job will follow you. If you look at job placement, you will not build up the skills you may probably land a job but you will not be able to hold on to it. And and so this is one mantra that I have given to you know, thousands of people that I've interacted with. I've still not had somebody come back end contest that is the statement to build up skills focus on that. Yes Why placements is important. We are all doing learning this to you know, get a job. The only thing is if you do it when you will get the job. If you don't do it very well and concentrate on basics why you may get a job you will not be Hold on You will not be able to hold on to it for very long.

What is

Okay, I'm a student I've done that okay, cost of the program. cost of the program, the program cost is around two and a half lakhs, but there are scholarships that are available there is a scholarship of 30,000 rupees which is given on top of this, some specific sets of people have specific sets of scholarships that are given, you can talk to her to find out about that, why So, let me now so I have answered What does the program cost? What's the duration of program?

Okay, let me let me just start from the beginning and try and figure out online offline. I have answered that question. Is there a certificate for this webinar? Which webinar gives you a certificate? But no, there is no certificate for the webinar? Okay, there's a question somebody asked me ruchika How will this help us in our future? Again, a very broad question which Chica I don't know what you want.

to do in your future but if you are aspiring to become a professional who wants to work in the domain of cybersecurity where there are huge opportunities are available even in the midst of all the pandemic, all the job losses, pay cards, people sitting on benches, there are companies are literally calling us and saying boss, do you guys have people your first cohort has just passed out? Can you set up interviews for us we will take the entire cohort if they are interested. So if that's the future that you are looking for, that's something that you have otherwise I don't have enough information to answer that.

Will you start with coding Okay, there's this question again. Okay. ruchika again, we will not the bridge courses there will not teach you coding if you don't know it. The bridge course is kind of a bridge to just brush up assuming that you know you your machine is there it's it's not been working for a long time. We may kind of forget that leads

Just kind of brush off some of the rust from the machine but the basics the machine should be knowledgeable how to perform which is basically coding over here.

I wanted to apply for this course would you help to get what all I needed?

gelato gelato, the IE, I don't get a question. If you you want to apply for the program, you know you can talk to her schita she will get you in in terms of now that I've covered the program details, all of that I'm sure you have enough information. Applying for the program is all about going to talentsprint there is an applied, there's a form that's there. It's not a very long form. You've got to do that talk to her she and her team. They have they'll be happy to

do it happy to help you. thermowell How does this course help a novice in cybersecurity? Okay, and obviously cybersecurity again is a very big term. If you look at it, I don't know you know what you have. But the fact of the matter is if we help you have

The basics. It will help you get the basics from an institution of national importance and one of the great institutions that India has. And that's a great certificate to have for you. It will help you get your basics right, which you can use to move up from being a novice into more of an expert. So that's that's probably

you know, how the program will help you.

Okay, Arjun says that is there any chance of recording only considering that the timing is not convenient, unfortunately,

these sessions while you don't have see all of the sessions you may not use, I think there is a 75% attendance is what is required for the program. You can miss some programs and you can go to the recordings are anywhere available, but you need to have 75% I we are very serious. You know, when we do IIT Kanpur is very serious about the program and outcomes here.

Have any CDs So, if this is just a certificate that you are looking for, and and you are not willing to bind, I'm not saying that you are not willing to. It's just that if you're if you can't find the time, it's not that you know, we'll be able to give you a certificate just like that you have to attend the classes you have to go through the rigor, which is what you know, and it can provide is known for an eye all of our IITs are known for right? It's not about the easy path. So this is also not the easy part you are taught by the same faculty. Incidentally, you are taught the same curriculum. This is the same curriculum that is taught for the computer science students the full time computer science students at IIT Kanpur, so you get the same kind so they expect the same commitment. If the timing is very inconvenient for you, my request to you would be to see if you can get an exception. There are companies which provide exceptions The classes are happening on a weekend and I've not come across too many companies with you know, which

stop you from learning upskilling because at the end of the day, you know, you will contribute much better to them. And I've had so many cases that people have this conversation with me and I told him to, you know, go talk to your manager, tell them that you are much you're going to be much more productive when you come back. If your company is going to sponsor you all the well if the company is not going to sponsor you at the moment, it's still fine. And this is again, one question that comes in, you know, if my company is or doesn't sponsor me, how do I take you're making an investment in yourself so you might as well do that and then you're not tied to a company you can go you know, change your job, get much better compensation, you bigger projects, manage more people. So don't wait for your company to sponsor and at the moment, most companies you know, very few companies will be sponsoring you. But if you are one of the early movers who wants to still get into, you know, cybersecurity, with the all the talent shortage if you make them

Investment now, the benefits that you read will be much higher because you will rise much faster you know once and this will become you know, now there's a lot of focus that's there everybody wants to do cybersecurity now so the market is very soon going to get flooded with a lot of professionals who might as well learn this and get into it and make take advantage of it when you have the time when there are less professionals that are available.

I'm a BSc honors in mathematics. Can you join up? I don't, that's not you need one year of work experience also to join but then some of the students are there, BSc honors Manoj. If you know coding, nothing stops you from joining the program.

Okay.

What level of programming is required level of programming is you got to be familiar with, you know, some of these basic concepts that are there. And you got to mean you should be able to write code on your own. So, that's all

If you don't have to be a hardcore expert in C, it's not like you need to live, breathe, eat C or, you know, Python, etc. But if you know it'd be much easier for you to do it so I wouldn't really classify what level is there again level is a very relative term.

Okay placement assistance I have asked for I have answered for ethical hacking coding is needed. Yes I yes for ethical hacking coding should be there I it because unless you can put you will not be able to do a lot of things which are which are expected from a hacker to do so yes, it's there. It's also I would say ethical hacking is taught as a part of the program. But anyway, all of the basics are covered as a part of this. What's the duration of the program? Like I mentioned, the program is starting

On fifth of September, the bridge course has already begun. And the program mostly will be ending sometime in the month of January of 2021.

Jeet Singh, he has 10 years of experience in programming is the course good for him? Yes, a cheat. I don't see a problem again, there isn't enough information. If you are interested in getting in cyber security into this domain, why not the course will definitely help you out. You can have a conversation with the team to figure out how to

program shedule harshita. Also sorry, silica what's what are the timings of the program? Can you just come online and answer that it's Saturdays. I think I had it somewhere but on Saturdays it is 11am. We have one session from 11am to 1pm. And another session from 2pm to 4pm.

And on Sundays we have it from 11am to 1pm Okay good. So, that that answers

the question

the detailed schedule will be available to you you know once you apply for the program we can we can share that

okay. So Himanshu has there are a few master's degrees offered by universities in the US that go on for 2024 months how does this program compare with that

you should not be comparing a 24 month program with a six month program right. So, that is these are comparing apples to oranges. So, I would not get into that comparison if you are looking at comparing a program.

Again, it's not a fair comparison one. The second thing is that if you are really looking at it you should compare apples to apples look at program are the details of what we teach our program and every program. When I say that every program is created with

Certain philosophy, our philosophy is that we will give you we will make you very strong in your basics. And you can use that to go further. Other programs will teach you, you know, they have their own philosophy. So, you know, you should look at program, our program, the details of the curriculum and all are given on the website, you can do that you can make a comparison whichever one works for you, I would recommend that you go for that.

Okay, considering the nice framework, where would this program fit this program, the nice framework, again, nice framework. This program will cover a lot of the basic aspects of multiple parts of it. Nice program, the nice framework, again, has been defined to create some specific programs also around that. So this will give you have a basic understanding of a lot of those aspects. You need to build something on top of that you will and I'd be very honest, you will need to probably do another program or specialized kind of

program which will do it there is not one program which covers the nice framework that is that those all those frameworks, individuals, they are actually full fledged courses according to the NIC framework that has their

Linux. Okay. of the Raj. It's a long question. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay.

Okay, Avi Raj, you have done a lot of things, which is great penetration testing, escalation and all of that.

You want to start up, okay, you want to start up si si ti is something and you want to economical, economic. I mean, you want financial support for it. So that's what I was seeing on this program, somebody who did that. They had great ideas and two startups form. It's not a guarantee that your startup will also form if you do the program, but this is what has happened as a part of the first program and

And you know we can we can very well if you have a good idea CTI works on incubating people and ideas in the area of cybersecurity, they I'm sure they will be very happy to, you know, excuse me, they'll be very happy to lend support to you. Should you be interested in in doing this program?

I am sorry, should you be interested to have an idea which is worthy of find funding? I'm sure you will get that first caught. Also people came together collaborated, and and and they kind of worked on those startup ideas. So if you have something, that's a good place to go to.

Okay, your 10th and 12th. We don't have to there's this question from Nate. And I've opened up a poll if all of you can give us some feedback that will help improve our webinars.

If you how much percentage do you need, there's no percentage requirement. That's there.

So there's from Roy.

Roy, if you are in the Middle East, I know that I think the team is also talking to them. If you were to look at it the timings you may just need to adjust your timings for the next couple of months because the classes happened in the morning and I know that Sunday's are working over there. We actually have people joining from the Middle East has been in this cohort. I'm already aware of more than seven international participants who are in the cohort one joins from the US at night. So Middle East, also there is a gentleman who's already then the cohort app, he's trying to get it adjusted with, he's going to work in a little late classes that happened with that and that's how he's adjusting. So some of the classes maybe you can miss on a Sunday. So I would not recommend that you do that but you have an option of you know, making up for that or understanding what has happened in the class.

As part of you know the recordings, but you may need to adjust a little bit for a couple of hours with your manager if you can get that done this would be a great program for you to do.

Okay

okay so Rob I've kind of answered the placement question

any specific programming language required again if you have you know if you know C, their

duration course fees degree program are not a diploma. It's not a degree, it's not a diploma. Low six month program is a degree or a diploma in India as per government rules. It's a certain it's an advanced certificate program.

I did try a file in the middle of the program. I find it's not my cup of tea. Is my money refunded No, unfortunately not. You know you if you buy a car and you don't like it, do you go and get an ask for

be fine doesn't work that way unfortunately.

So this progress security management towards cyber analysts position the outcome after finishing the program, okay? So it's it's designed to give you basics D what you get and do with the basics you can move into an analyst position there are people who have been doing that it covers a lot of the aspects of what an analyst does.

And and it also will cover security management. So it covers both the aspects of there is always a scope for you to you know, dive deeper into it. Like I mentioned people I have interacted with so many people who are now focusing on doing going much more deeper into cybersecurity after completing the first cohort. So the path that you want to take is left to you but these aspects will be covered as a part of the program.

Okay, you

without getting any experience okay upendra again and this is the last question that I will take. So, is it okay to get the job without getting the experience and only learning for six months See, upend the getting a job is not only about the certificate, getting a job also there are various other aspects to look getting a job, there are soft skills that are involved in getting a job companies have, you know, they look for certain qualities in people, there are certain competent, there are obviously competencies that are required functional competencies that are required, this will give you some functional competencies, you might you'll definitely be able to manage to get into, you know, entry level positions. So, as a part of doing this program, and that's what is there So, as long as you have these skills,

you can you can go ahead and do anything

So,

That's okay. So this is I think we've overshot time by 10 minutes. I think most of you I thank all of you for being here spending time with us in case you know you've not voted please vote.

And again Okay, one last horrible asked does he require ch or any other thing? I think I already answered that this program is not the end of it. You know, you need to continuously upgrade yourselves, even when you have 1015 years of work experience as you need to do when you are coming in. So you can do other programs, you can always build up on anything if never go for a program and never attend a program thinking this is the only certification that I will get in my life and my entire professional journey of 30 years, 35 years, assuming that you are new into work is set thanks to one degree, it doesn't work that way. You need to upskill yourself technology's changing so fast, the your sector itself, even cyber secure

is changing so fast? How will just one course do it? Even if you were to do it from any other place, you will still need to upskill yourselves. That's that's the, you know, final thing that I will say. I, I have, you know, I thank all of you for doing the program for spending some time with us in case you have questions. Reach out to her she's available on WhatsApp, she Laika I'm sure she can you just share your number in case somebody wants to reach out to you as well on chat. And I look forward to getting to seeing most of you in the class. It's really an exciting program. There isn't a program like this in India at the moment. And if you if you if you think that you want to be a part of it, make an application we have just about five seven seats left till the port fills up and you know, harshita and her team will be more than happy to help you making your application. Thank you all for spending time with us today.

was lovely talking to all of you stay safe bye bye

Watch the entire interview here https://youtube.videoken.com/embed/pOTxi55nZzM