Cognitive Security Approach Trends @DSCI Connect #BPM2017

By: Nandita Singh

Consider this.

• A homemaker approaches a police officer to complain about a refrigerator acting up perhaps running auto grocery bills creating credit card even when not instructed.
• Or lets say an autonomous vehicle that you board in the morning to get to your workplace starts speeding around the city demanding immediate payment of ransom in bitcoins for stopping by at your workplace so that you can get off.
• A nuclear facility gets hacked and the control moves to hackers / terror groups…

As Internet of Things (IoT) take root and number of endpoints multiply leading to exponential data growth, the rise of machines is inevitable – making cognitive computing commonplace. Needless to say, when all things become hackable, all things will get hacked, as a keynote speaker emphasized at the recently concluded 9th Best Practices Meet (BPM2017) by Data Security Council of India (DSCI) at Bengaluru, pointing out that cybersecurity is a moving target and India needs to keep up.

#BPM2017 conference and exhibition (June 22-23, 2017) was the annual gathering of about 400 cyber security professionals from Indian IT industry who actively participated in deliberations on issues ranging from automotive security, DevSecOps, GDPR implementation, software defined security, to cyber defence centers… against the backdrop of mainstreaming of artificial intelligence, big data and machine learning technologies.

“With the rapidly evolving technology innovation landscape, the approach to security also needs a paradigm shift,” said Rama Vedashree, CEO of DSCI. The outlook towards cyber security in India is transitioning from reactive risk mitigation approach to readiness against escalating cyber threats and it was evident in the deliberations at #BPM2017.

The DSCI, is part of IT industry association, Nasscom, and was formed with a mandate for data protection in India to ensure that India becomes a trusted hub for global outsourcing via establishing and driving adoption of best practices. Since cyber security is part of its primary agenda, DSCI also works at strengthening law enforcement capabilities via its 4 CyberLabs, largest of which is located at Bengaluru and provides training and certification to Law Enforcement Agencies (LEAs). “From industry perspective, we are focused on increasing India’s share in global security product and services market and aim to strengthen security and privacy culture in India,” said CEO Vedashree.

Cognitive security approach trends at #BPM2017

As technology landscape changes so should security practices. Human intelligence is good at picking patterns and deriving actionable intelligence. Cognitive computing can do the same at a large scale in a fast, more efficient manner. Hence, cognitive security solutions employ predictive technologies and natural language processing to make sense of humongous data to facilitate security related decision-making. This is an approach no security company can ignore. India’s cyber security market is about $4 billion, and is expected to grow to $35 billion by 2025, according to a recent DSCI industry report.

Rapid, accurate responses is the need of the hour in the post wannacry ransomware world as increased automation will throw up newer and complex challenges which cannot be solved by technology alone. Loss of large-scale life and property is a very real threat with IoT and machine learning driven environments. Policy needs to keep up. According to GK Pillai, DSCI Chairman, as Indian economy shifts from informal to formal sector with reforms like GST bringing in greater transparency and ease of business a huge change is in the offing that will make its mark only 10 years from now. “However, ensuring that policy makers understand the cyber security challenges is a real tough job,” he said addressing the gathering of 400 security professionals at the#BPM2017 inaugural session.

Where is India’s cyber security talent pool?

Talent development in cyber security is a critical requirement at this point. DSCI and Nasscom Sector Skill Council have developed a career map, curricula and courseware, which is approved by National Skill Development Council (NSDC). “Several universities and engineering colleges are now getting on-boarded for faculty and student training on this,” said Vedashree talking about the latest initiatives at DSCI.

DSCI has in place a task force with a goal of creating a talent-pool of one million cyber security professionals, and a 1,000 security product companies by 2020 in India. The Council is mentoring about 60 security startups as well.

Vedashree informed that DSCI is also embarking on a new initiative of creating a National Technology Repository, which will be a consolidated repository of India’s cyber capabilities across identified technology areas. “DSCI will be reaching out to industry members, academia and security professionals to get started on designing and developing this repository of national importance,” said Vedashree adding that another new initiative at DSCI that is work-in-progress is the Digital Payments Security Alliance. This is in association with MeitY and Google as founding members. The two key digital payments security focus areas under this Alliance include user awareness and policy building. Vedashree at DSCI extends an open invitation to all digital payments space players to actively participate in these forums and contribute in shaping the security and privacy landscape for India in the digital payments arena.

You can register for DSCI membership here: https://www.dsci.in/membership