Ethical hacking is going to be the next big employment opportunity for students, said V Kamakoti, Director, IIT Madras. He told students to not get carried away by the negative perception of ethical hacking. He added that there is a great future in this sector. “Please work on this sector and pursue this as a career and I am sure, if not today, but in the next couple of years. You will have great years ahead,” he said at an event on cyber security held in the institute on Wednesday.

He emphasised that those who are working in the area of cyber security should continue to work on it. There are very big challenges in the sector, he said in his address at the PALS, an IIT Alumni Initiative - PALS - ECU (Edith Cowan University, Australia) “CYBER EDGE 2024” Building Cybersecurity Capabilities.

He said that the students have a great career opportunity in front of them as the whole world is facing big challenges in cyber security. Like the Chartered Accountants signing the audited reports, in the future there will be certified cyber audited professionals to sign cyber audit reports, he said.

“Staying safe in the digital world is something that is evolving on a daily basis. I have been working in this [cyber security] area for the last 15 years. I am a member of the National Security Board. If you ask me the question if you are safe in the cyber world, the answer is no,” he added.

He mentioned that in G20 there was a separate vertical for cyber security. To add salt to the wound, there is now the bad part of Artificial Intelligence adding more worries on the issue of cyber security, he said.

Cyber security needs a holistic treatment, he said. A big combination of government for regulation for policies; academia for putting certain processes in place and the industry to implement it and take it forward, he added. For a safe cyber world, the one and only way required is a strong academia-industry-government collaboration, understanding the policies and putting them together, he said.

Tamil Nadu’s IT minister Palanivel Thiaga Rajan quoting a speaker at the recently held Umagine in Chennai about cyber security, said, “if you are going to be in cyber security, you will not be unemployed for the next 40-50 years.” This gives a sense of the job opportunities in the cyber security sector. A case in point on the challenges of cyber security was the attacks on Facebook and Instagram on Tuesday. These are small organisations, he said.

The minister said a lot needs to be done in cyber security in Tamil Nadu, and the government is looking at partners and a new approach as soon as the Model Code of Conduct is over. “We need to standarise and bring everything in to same framework. Right now, the government of Tamil Nadu has 50 different platforms, applications, interceptors. I have no idea [as an IT minister] about the scale of the risk profile and the shape of it,” he said.

For students, cyber security is a wonderful career opportunity and the government needs more specialists as the threat is increasing day-by-day. With the advent of AI, there will be new forms of threats, he said.

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