India’s Ministry of Education has launched a joint initiative with All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE), along with the CyberPeace Foundation (CPF).
The project is called eSaksham (Capable), aims at developing skills in the area of cyber security and train 5 lakh students and educators and create 25,000 CyberPeace Corps volunteers and 500 CyberPeace fellows along with setting up 50 CyberPeace clubs along with creating awareness about data privacy, cyber ethics, cybercrime and reporting.
It also aims at building a community where the youth is skilled and ready for the industry and where resources are used to create a secure ecosystem where research can be translated into market-ready products.
The launch was attended by Professor Anil D Sahasrabudhe, Chairperson of AICTE over an online Zoom meeting, along with Buddha Chandrasekhar, Chief Coordinating Officer of AICTE; Lieutenant General (Dr) Rajesh Pant (Retd), National Cyber Security Coordinator (NCSC) and Captain Vineet Kumar, Founder and President, CyberPeace Foundation.
According to NASSCOM, India had a shortage of one million cyber security professionals in 2020. The labor crunch is expected to hit approximately 3.5 million unfilled jobs by 2021, added an official statement.
“Everyone wants to be happy and safe… As civilization grew and we developed the World Wide Web, there were new challenges thrown to us. The eSaksham project will teach the participants how to identify and mitigate those challenges. Indian students are already very tech and IT savvy, participating in the eSaksham training will be a way to contribute to society,” said Professor Sahasrabudhe launching Project eSaksham.
The training will be conducted at four different levels
The first level will be a two-hour-long online workshop on basic safety and cybersecurity, netiquette and introduction to new technologies.
The batch will include 6,000-10,000 students and educators. In total 5 lakh participants will be trained through level one training workshops.
The second level will consist of a 4-day long training session for 25,000 participants shortlisted via an online assessment.
The training will focus on enhancing cybersecurity skills in a batch of 1,000 participants. The participants will also be enrolled in the CyberPeace Corps Volunteer program and will work on ongoing and independent projects.
In the third level, 5,000 participants will be shortlisted and will go through a 5 day long customised training session suiting their area of interest. This level will focus on specialised verticals as IoT Security, Cloud Security, Block-chain, Infrastructure security and other areas.
In the final level, 500 participants will be shortlisted after going through a series of assessments along with a psychometric test.
A 30-day intensive session will be conducted depending on their skill set. The participants will also get an opportunity to work on Capstone projects with different partners from the Government, academia, industry, and others.
The participants will also be connected to mentors and subject matter experts from the industry along with access to labs, cyber ranges, and others.
On successfully completing the training the participants will be awarded a certificate/diploma by AICTE and CyberPeace Foundation.
CyberPeace Clubs
These clubs will be community interfacing endpoints for executing collaborative initiatives with stakeholders. The clubs will be nurtured by experienced personalities from the advisory board and team from the CPF. The members will engage in various activities relating to cyber law, child and women online safety, community network, entrepreneurship, cybercrime, IoT security, blockchains, innovations, ransomware and malware research to name a few.
