US-based tech giant Cisco today launched its fifth global cyber range lab here with the aim to train Indian firms and government agencies on real-world cyber attacks.

“The Cisco cyber range lab aims to provide highly specialised technical training workshops to help cyber security professionals build the skills...to combat new-age threats,” Cisco India President India and SAARC Dinesh Malkani said at the Cisco India Summit 2017 here.

The facility was inaugurated by National Cyber Security Coordinator Gulshan Rai. Cisco has four other such labs in Australia.

Rai said an effective implementation of cybersecurity requires IT infrastructure and technical expertise for which the industry should play a responsible role.

“I would like to suggest that Cisco should offer different modules for tech professionals and agencies like police,” he said.

Cisco will also launch a Security Operations Centre (SOC) in Pune — its fourth after the US, Poland and Japan — in the next few months to provide a range of services, including monitoring of threats and its end-to-end management for enterprise needs. It will be linked to other Cisco SOCs across the world.

These centres are part of Cisco’s $100-million investment commitment to India.

According to estimates, the demand for cybersecurity experts has grown three times faster than any other IT jobs.

Therefore, training and skilling of the cybersecurity workforce has become one of the top priorities for many organisations.

According to a Cisco report, there are more than one million unfulfilled security jobs worldwide currently.

Thirty-one per cent of organisations in India (compared to 24 per cent globally) believe that a high requirement of various certifications is a barrier, while 29 per cent organisations in India consider their workload too heavy to take on new responsibilities on cyber security (23 per cent globally), according to another Cisco study.

“As cybersecurity threats have become more complex, targeted and persistent, modern cyber defences require proactive security operations, run by highly trained staff with the experience and expertise to detect and disrupt sophisticated threats,” Malkani said.

The lab will immerse participants in simulated real-world cyber-attacks to train them on how to properly prepare for, respond to, and manage a broad variety of threats, he added.

This experience can be leveraged by companies, academicians, customers and the government and their security teams, he said.

The lab will use 200-500 different types of malware, ransomware and 100 attack cases to deliver realistic cyber-attack experiences.

The training will also educate organisations about the necessary steps required to be taken to respond quickly in the wake of an incident from addressing a basic threat to monitoring and analysing malware infections and providing actionable information and intelligence to customers.

Related Topics