Demand for cybersecurity execs in India triples in a year: Study

Demand for cybersecurity professionals in India has gone up three times in the past 12 months, with as many as 15,000 jobs remaining vacant in the field, Press Trust of India quoted a report as saying.

The research was based on data gathered by Belong Technologies India Pvt. Ltd from recruitment platforms over a period of 12 months, co-founder of the online talent acquisition firm, Rishabh Kaul, was quoted as saying. The data show 10,000 to 15,000 job vacancies in cybersecurity in India as tech and non-tech companies, especially BFSI (banking, financial services and insurance) ones, rush to fill posts. 

Most of the demand is for entry-level professionals, Kaul was quoted as saying. "There may be a rise in expat hiring, especially for mid-level or senior-level roles where experience is needed. There is also a possibility of hiring senior-level professionals based in other countries, to lead a team in India," Kaul said.

Kaul said as of now companies are struggling with cybersecurity workload, deputing it to either to mid-senior staff or to third-party players.

Within the tech sector, 25% of the demand is from IT-enabled services firms, followed by software product or shared services or captives (24%), and security companies (9%), showed the Belong report quoted by the agency. It also said that most positions are spread across top 10 IT hubs in the country, which include Delhi, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Mumbai and Pune.

A recent report from US network security company SonicWall said it had identified nearly 9.32 billion malware attacks in 2017, an 18.4% increase over a year ago. The study also saw more than 12,500 common vulnerabilities and exposures for the year.

“The cyber arms race affects every government, business, organisation and individual. It cannot be won by anyone of us,” said SonicWall chief executive Bill Conner. “Our latest proprietary data and findings show a series of strategic attacks and countermeasures as the cyber arms race continues to escalate. By sharing actionable intelligence, we collectively improve our business and security postures against today’s most malicious threats and criminals,” he said.

The company also said that India was one of the most targeted countries owing to reasons such as rapid transition to a cashless economy and increased use of wireless data.    

Encrypted traffic is the major pain area for our customers, said Debashish Mukherjee, director, India and Saarc (South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation), SonicWall. “Hence, we developed proprietary technology, Reassembly-Free Deep Packet Inspection, which opens and checks every packet of data for threats,” he said.