Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Jodhpur and WhizHack Technologies Private Limited signed an MoU for the establishment of a new Centre of Excellence (CoE) for new innovations in Cyber Security, AI and IoT. The signing ceremony was held at IIT Jodhpur campus in the presence of Professor Santanu Chaudhury, Director, IIT Jodhpur, Dr. Ram Prakash, Prof. Surajit Ghosh and co-founders of WhizHack Technologies – Kallol Sil, Kaushik Ray & Sanjay Sengupta.

WhizHack Technologies’ vision is to be the first truly Indian product engineering and human capital development company for managing the complete value chain of a secured cyber environment. Given the dearth in India’s cybersecurity workforce, the burgeoning security breaches and the Government’s priority to strengthen India’s cybersecurity resource, this collaboration comes at a pertinent time. 

This CoE is being set up for the purpose of advancing scientific and technological products and services IPs for protecting assets of India’s strategic importance like Government infrastructure, Enterprises and digital forensics for Police and Defence forces. The CoE will also launch Certificate Learning Programs for placement linked skill training in Cyber Defense and Part-time M.Tech. programs specializing in Cyber Security for young graduates and working professionals.

Prof. Santanu Chaudhury, Director IIT Jodhpur, said, “Emerging technologies like Cyber Security are crucial for India’s self-reliance in national digital security and youth empowerment by bringing together the best of Indian and global academic excellence and industrial knowledge. He believes nowadays most of the focus is on cybersecurity offense wherein the real need is to teach our youth cybersecurity defense from Advance Persistent Threats (APT’s)”.

According to Mr. Kallol Sil, MD, WhizHack Technologies, “This collaboration with IIT Jodhpur, provides a great opportunity for capacity building and exporting talent in an accelerated manner for the skill-intensive cybersecurity industry. Globally, we want empowered Indians to leverage the huge cybersecurity market due to higher digital adoption, post-Covid, and increased proliferation of sophisticated cybercriminals.” 

According to NASSCOM, in the rising networked digital economy, global cyber-attacks along with data protection and privacy laws are estimated to lead to a USD 35 billion revenue opportunity creating over 2 million new cybersecurity jobs to India’s workforce by 2025.  However, India’s cybersecurity workforce shortage already stands nearly 10% higher than the global average and there is a critical need to address the demand for job-ready security professionals through skills-based initiatives.