Cyber Security

Building Self-Reliance in Cybersecurity

Cybersecurity is an area where, India should be self-reliant and not depend on any other country. India, with its largest population in the world, must have its own solutions. Our country must become capable of developing Indian-designed products and solutions, with end-to-end service capabilities, to build a solid foundation for a secure digital future

Data of each individual, each company and each department of State and Central Government must be secure, not only from external attackers, but from internal risks as well. To build such solutions, one needs to strengthen scientists and researchers, start-ups, and the industry, ensuring that we do not depend on external expertise.

As a first step, we bring researchers and scientists to work together. We have thus enabled an Indian Cybersecurity Academic Network (ICAN), consisting of scientists, researchers and experts at academic institutions in India. While ICAN will be the central pillar, the broader program is aimed at bringing industry and the government together, to build India's cybersecurity infrastructure and strengthen our nation's digital sovereignty.

Rising Cyberthreats

The nature, scale, and complexity of cyber threats are increasing, as we transform into a digital nation. These threats, whether they are ransomware, phishing, data breaches, or sophisticated attacks on critical infrastructure are real for individuals, corporates, industries, institutions, and the Government alike.

As digital adoption increases in the country, it has become imperative for India to have strong and resilient protection against cyber threats. As the country embraces the digital route for critical services such as identity creation (Aadhaar) and payments (UPI), in addition to AI and IoT, the risk is further enhanced.

This digital ecosystem, which is evolving constantly, is adding new layers of risk. This mandates that as a country, we build a security infrastructure that is not only strong and flexible, but also agile for constant updates. We are today dependent on solutions created outside India to protect our digital infrastructure and this leaves serious gaps for adversaries to exploit.

Adding to this, India faces a massive shortage of trained professionals, who are skilled to address this growing challenge. There is an urgent need for the country to scale up its academic and R&D efforts to address these challenges

ITEL's Goal

Our goal is to create an all-encompassing approach to strengthen India's cybersecurity infrastructure by bringing together academia, industry, experts, institutions, and governments to build an indigenous ecosystem that strengthens India's cyber infrastructure, by improving capabilities and reducing vulnerabilities.

Indian Cyber Security Academic Network aims to be a catalyst and multiplier, which brings together academia, industry, experts, start-ups, technologists, and government to build a strong, resilient, yet agile cybersecurity infrastructure that is indigenous and secures India's digital future.

Through ICAN, we are building an all-encompassing ecosystem, with focus on three major areas:

Faculty Training Program

Through this initiative, we are training the trainers (faculty) to nurture and transform budding engineers into talented cybersecurity professionals. The intensive 8 to10-day online program, followed by 8 to 10-day in-person program, including hands-on experience, is being conducted twice a year in summer and winter at different IITs and IIITs.

This program, which trains faculty from tier-2 engineering colleges and research scholars, is led by faculty from IIT Madras, IIT Bombay, IIT Kanpur, IIIT Hyderabad, and IIIT Delhi. Through this program, ICAN aims to equip the faculty with the right curriculum and tools to impart knowledge to talented engineers, so that they can inspire the next generation of engineers to become cybersecurity professionals.

Industry Academia Collaboration

We will create a platform for industry and academia to identify and address real-world security challenges in the digital space. The platform will also support SMEs that lack dedicated resources by providing them with the knowledge to create safe and secure digital frameworks to protect their businesses.

The focus will be to create Indian-designed product development and commercialisation. In addition, plans are underway to collaborate with the industry and experts to create short courses on real-world cybersecurity practices that will help onboard employees. This program is aimed at start-ups and SMEs

Government

ICAN will work closely with the Government on policy reforms, to safeguard and strengthen critical digital infrastructure. In addition, we will work with industry and cybersecurity experts to nurture and guide start-ups to design and develop innovative security frameworks to protect India's digital space.

Through ICAN, we also plan to design customised cybersecurity and training programs for government departments and public sector institutions to address their specific needs.

As part of its long-term plan, ITEL aims to identify national-level R&D challenges and support addressing them by nurturing and strengthening start-up engagements to improve capabilities, reduce vulnerabilities, and fortify India's cybersecurity infrastructure for a secure digital future.

Through ICAN, we are laying a foundation to ensure long-term cybersecurity resilience for India.

Outcome Expected

We believe that through our all-inclusive approach of bringing together scholars, students, faculty, experts, industry, start-ups, and government, we will

Expand India's talent pool
Increase the current pool of research scholars (PhD)
Establish and nurture an innovation pipeline to create a thriving academic & industrial ecosystem for cybersecurity research and application
Support industry to tackle cyberthreats through a knowledge framework for developing Indian designed products
Design customised training programs for start-ups, SMEs, Public Sector Institutions, and Government Departments to address their specific training needs
Strengthen the country's digital infrastructure with future-ready policy reform recommendations, along with national-level R&D Roadmaps

By improving capabilities and reducing vulnerabilities, we strongly believe that India can establish and build an indigenous, strong, and agile infrastructure that can weather any digital storm.

Progress So Far

Through our Faculty Training Program, we have already begun training faculty. The first program was held at IIT Madras, with 180 faculty members and research scholars attending from across India. The team is currently working towards scaling the training program to reach and train more trainers, and support many more educational institutions, specifically the tier-2 educational institutions that need support.

As part of this plan, ITEL has tied up with IIIT Hyderabad to provide training programs, both offline and online, in the near future.

Future

ITEL's long-term plan includes building an annual academic conference platform that encourages research scholars to present their innovative ideas to all stakeholders, and transform them into workable projects that bolster our nation's cybersecurity initiatives.

Through this multi-pronged approach, we are confident that India can create a robust, resilient, and future-ready cybersecurity infrastructure

Partner Institutions

ITEL brings together a consortium of institutions to work collaboratively on advancing cybersecurity research, education, and innovation. Our partners include leading academic institutions and industry organizations that share our vision of building a secure digital future for India.

The partner institutions for the Cyber Security initiative are:

Academic Partners

IIT Madras
IIT Kanpur
IIT Bombay
IIT Hyderabad
IIT Delhi

Industry Partners

C3iHub (IIT Kanpur)
CyStar (IIT Madras)
Trust Lab (IIT Bombay)
Manthan (IIIT Hyderabad)

We invite institutions to become a part of our consortia and let us together think and create scalable and sustainable solutions for the most complex, toughest and impossible challenges and make our country a technology leader!

ICAN Members

Meet the distinguished members of the Indian Cybersecurity Academic Network

Building Self-Reliance in Cybersecurity

Rising Cyberthreats

ITEL's Goal

Through ICAN, we are building an all-encompassing ecosystem, with focus on three major areas:

Faculty Training Program

Industry Academia Collaboration

Government

Outcome Expected

Progress So Far

Future

Partner Institutions

Academic Partners

Industry Partners

ICAN Members

John Augustine

Chester Reberio

KC Sivaramakrishnan

Aishwarya Thiruvengadam

Shridhar Shukla

Ram Mohan

Mathanan Kailas

Kameswari Chebrolu

Arun Balaji Buduru

Mukul Joshi

Tanima

Urbi Chatterji

Debapriya Basu Roy

Nikita

Sandeep Shukla

Ashok Jhunjhunwala

Sandhya Ravikumar

Reema Saha

Vadlamani Anand Kumar

Prasanna Souresh

Mr. Sreehari Nagarajan

We Welcome You to Partner in Our Journey!