Cisco India unveils three cyber security initiatives

At a time when cyber security has become paramount for digital enterprises, Cisco India on Thursday announced three new initiatives to help the country build a transparent and secure digital infrastructure environment.

Cisco will open a new Security Operations Centre (SOC) in Pune which will provide services ranging from monitoring and management to comprehensive threat solutions and hosted security that can be customised.

The $49.24 billion company also launched a Cisco Cyber Range Lab at its Gurugram facility which will provide specialised technical training workshops to help security staff build the skills and experience necessary to combat new-age cyber threats.

Recognising that cybersecurity is critical to India's drive to digitise its economy, Cisco's global Security & Trust Organization (S&TO) and Cisco India announced the formation of Cisco S&TO-India that will help the government shape the national cybersecurity strategy and initiatives.

To achieve this, Cisco and Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology's (MeitY) Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In) signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) in the presence of Electronics and IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad.

"In light of rapidly evolving cyber tactics and shared risks in cyberspace, the need to work side-by-side with industry partners on pressing cyber-challenges becomes increasingly important.

We are happy to have Cisco collaborate with us to enhance the security of India's digital infrastructure," Prasad noted.

Under the MoU, Cisco and CERT-In will establish a threat intelligence sharing programme wherein personnel from Cisco and CERT-In will work together to address digital threats and learn new approaches to enhance cybersecurity.

Cisco's "Active Threat Analytics" provides round-the-clock monitoring and advanced-analytics capabilities combined with industry-leading threat intelligence and expert investigators to rapidly detect advanced threats.

Cisco has three Security Operations Centres worldwide -- Poland, the US and Japan.

With India as the fourth location, this structure will allow Cisco to provide 24-hour service for customers regardless of time zone.

"As India digitises, security will become fundamental to seizing the unprecedented opportunities for businesses, cities and citizens.

Cisco is committed to enable a digital-ready infrastructure and security everywhere.

Today's cybersecurity announcements reaffirm Cisco's long-term commitment to India," added Dinesh Malkani, President, Cisco India and SAARC.

"By 2020, the Indian digital payments industry will grow 10 times and mobile transactions will grow 90 per cent per year by 2020.

As of 2016, three new Indians join internet every second and by 2030, one billion Indians will be online so digital security is paramount," Malkani told reporters here.

In India, Cisco Network Academy programme has trained 122,000 students and is committed to train an additional 250,000 students by 2020.

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

To help increase the pool of talent with critical cybersecurity proficiency, the company announced a $10 million Global Cybersecurity Scholarship globally in June.