NIIT, EC Council to train 15,000 as ethical hackers in India

With rising incidents of cyber attacks on individuals, government and enterprises, IT training firm NIIT has joined hands with EC Council to skill up to 15,000 people over the next 3 years on ethical hacking.
NIIT will offer a three-month course in information security and ethical hacking, which will include certification from EC Council.
"A report suggests that India lost USD 8 billion in 2011 to cybercrime. As Internet penetration increases in the country, the need for security will also increase. As per a Nasscom report, there are only 22,000 experts in India while the need is for over 4 lakh professionals," NIIT Group President Skills and Careers Shivan Bhargava told reporters here.

This is the need that we aim to serve, he added.
Bhargava said the demand is coming from across sectors like e-commerce, banking and financial services, telecom, IT and IT-enabled services.
"While India has grown rapidly to deliver IT services globally, skills in the area of information security have lagged behind. There is an urgent need to address this gap," he added.

EC Council co-founder and President Jay Bavisi said the body will provide students access to hands on training in the field.
They will have access to EC Council's lab, which will provide them training and skills to combat the menace of cyber crime, he added.

Government's cyber security arm Computer Emergency Response Team-India (CERT-In) had reported 62,189 cyber security incidents in the first five months of the current calendar year.
Besides, the government body reported that 9,174 Indian websites were hacked by groups spread across the world.