India to See Growth of Cyber Security Market to $35bn by 2025

The healthy growth is being driven by innovation and newer technologies, says National Cyber Security Advisor Gulshan Rai

In the next decade, India’s cyber security market for products and services will witness a tremendous growth, but at same time will pose higher safety concerns, National Cyber Security Advisor Gulshan Rai has said.

A Nasscom, Data Security Council of India & PwC Report has estimated the cyber security market to grow up to $35 billion by 2025 from the present $4.5 billion, resulting in the creation million jobs and birth of a 1,000 start-ups.

The Report prepared by a Task Force of Nasscom chaired by Rajendra Pawar on the request of the PMO in 2016, came up with a road map for India to become a global hub for cyber security products and services.

Rai noted that while the healthy growth is being driven by innovation and newer technologies, the safeguards to ensure safety of services and products is seeing slow progress. He opined that there is an urgent need to bridge the gap.  

The challenges are three pronged in the cyber space — the boom in consumer applications, use in trade economy and security and sovereignty.

To tackle the emerging issues, there is an urgent need for the research Institutes, industry and academia to focus on developments that make India strong in this space, Rai said at the Aeronautical Society of India (Hyderabad Chapter) event recently.

DRDO in talks with Research Institutes and academia

To create capacity and skilled professional in cyber security, the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) is talking with Research Institutes and academia. The NIT in Kurukshetra and the DIT, Pune the Defence University are already offering Master’s courses in cyber security, said G Sateesh Reddy, Secretary, Defence R&D and Director-General,
DRDO.

The other area of focus will be promoting start-ups in this area. While many developed nations including Israel entered cyber security over a decade ago and India is just about accelerating its engagement, Satheesh Reddy added.

Y Sreenivas Rao, Secretary, ASI Chapter said concerted efforts were being made to bring together industry-academia and strategic institutes to brainstorm and formulate projects for developing new technologies of national relevance.