Cybersecurity to create $35 bn opportunity and 1mn jobs: Nasscom

Increasing incidents of cyber attacks and data protection efforts globally are expected to create USD 35 billion revenue opportunity and employment opportunities for about a million professionals by 2025 for India, IT industry body Nasscom said today. “We estimate that cybersecurity is about USD 2.5-3 billion or about 2 per cent of the close to USD 150 billion Indian IT sector. With the sector on track to reach USD 350 billion by 2025, we estimate 10 per cent of this to be cybersecurity,” Nasscom Chair Cyber Security Task Force Rajendra Pawar said here. He added that this will create an employment opportunity for about a million people as well. “Another important aspect will be start ups. We expect to see about 1,000 start ups coming up in this area. This is because these smaller companies are light footed and yet have the best of technologies. Also, there has been a lot of investor interest in this area as enterprises look to stay secured against rising incidents of cyber attacks,” he said. Last year, Nasscom had set up the task force, aimed at positioning India as a global hub for providing cyber security solutions, developing cyber security R&D plan and developing a skilled workforce of cyber security experts. It had estimated the IT security market to be about USD 77 billion in 2015 and growing at over 8 per cent annually. It had estimated demand for security workforce to rise globally to six million by 2019, up from 4 million in 2015, with projected shortfall of 1.5 million. Nasscom, along with Data Security Council of India (DSCI) and security software firm Symantec, today launched the ‘National Occupational Standards’ for 10 cyber security job roles, aimed at creating a pool of certified cyber security professionals in the country. Symantec has also instituted scholarships to 1,000 women undertaking the cyber security certification by SSC NASSCOM. “Building the next generation of cyber professionals is key to securing India’s critical information infrastructure, battling cybercrime and making the Digital India initiative successful,” Nasscom President R Chandrashekhar said. PTI