India needs to invest 50% education budget on skilling engineers in handling cyber threats

The Indian government needs to invest at least 50 per cent of its annual education budget in skilling engineers to handle cyber threats, given the massive digitalisation taking place across the country, an industry expert has suggested.

“First thing is that India needs to have a lot of cybersecurity awareness programmes across the country, covering all – big and small enterprises, government departments and citizens,” said Nilesh Jain, Vice President for South East Asia and India at the Japanese-origin Trend Micro.

India produces a lot of engineers but they are not explicitly trained to handle cyberattacks, he said, adding that the time is now to “invest heavily in specialists. Universities must come out with specialists to handle threats.”