WhizHack Technologies, in partnership with NPTI (National Power Training Institute), has set up a Centre of Excellence (CoE) for Cyber Defence in the Power Sector. Together, they have launched India’s first experiential training program that combines advanced concepts and techniques on cyber defence, hands-on personalised virtual labs and internships with power sector. The course is ideal for Electrical, Electronics, Mechanical fresh engineers in joining fast track careers or experienced engineers attempting to shift to the Cyber Security Industry which records one of the highest growths globally with a zero-percentage unemployment rate. The PGDCS programme is a twelve-month long part time programme which engineering students can pursue in their final two semesters (of the engineering course) including an internship at the state- of-the-art infrastructure at NPTI, Faridabad.
The power sector cyberthreat landscape is rapidly evolving and expanding, with more frequent attacks, numerous and varied threat actors, and increasingly sophisticated malware & tools that can be widely deployed across the Power sector and potentially cripple India. According to a 2022 Gartner study, cyber-attacks on organizations in critical infrastructure sectors have risen dramatically by 3900% between 2013 and 2020. Gartner security and risk leaders ranked the Internet of Things (IoT) and cyber-physical systems as their top concerns for the next three to five years. However, most universities and engineering colleges for core sectors like Electrical, Mechanical, Electronics have still not introduced cyber security training in a big way largely due to dated curriculum and unavailability of expert faculty.
Commenting on the COE, Dr. Tripta Thakur, DG – NPTI, said, “The biggest cyber security challenge faced by India, present and future, is debilitating attacks on power systems and other critical assets like Railways, Smart city, Defence and Telecom networks. NPTI has trained over 3,20,000 Power Professionals in regular Programs over the last 5 decades. Our cost effective online PGDCS program will empower engineers on a mass scale to secure power sector organisations in both IT and OT networks.”
According to Mr. Kaushik Ray, Co-founder & COO, WhizHack Technologies, “WhizHack, is India’s only vertically integrated cyber security organisation which has built and deployed TRACE, its ‘Made in India’ cyber threat detection system across prominent infrastructure including Power sector organisations. It has built Cyber Range, that provides simulated experience of tackling a range of cyber-attacks.” “The PGDCS program will create market ready security engineers and build self-reliance in Cybersecurity in the power sector.”
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