The Bengal government is all set to produce cyber security professionals and will create around one lakh new jobs in the field annually. Bengal is the first state in the country, which will ensure a supply pool of cyber security specialists in various government departments, to iron out the cyber threats which are major causes of concern for the government. Following the instruction of the Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, Bengal government will introduce a course on “Cyber Security” in the undergraduate level, so that students get an edge in getting jobs not only in the Information Technology (IT) sector, but also in the police force.
With the job market for cyber security professionals thriving, the state government is very active in supporting both private enterprises and government entities to prevent new cyber threats.According to a top government official, there is a plan to create one lakh jobs in the field of cyber security annually. To fill up various posts, the state government will roll out a specific curriculum for the new course.
According to the initial plans, the cyber security course will be started in IIIT and all the colleges under Calcutta University. Students would be provided the basic knowledge on networking and operating system.According to sources, around 250 government websites are vulnerable to security threats, as various preventive measures like ‘auditing’ and ‘version control’ are not properly followed. In more than 50 percent cases, security audit is not properly done in various levels of software coding.Nabarun Bhattacharyya, director, Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (CDAC) in Kolkata, said: “It’s good to hear that the state government is introducing a course on cyber security, thereby creating huge job opportunities. Cyber security has become more sensitive nowadays. Few of us know the rule of the road and how to keep a password. We do not even know which version of an application is running in the system.”
