Future IT engineers and coders do not have the skill necessary to create secure programs, a study by a certifying agency has found. Commissioned by the International Council of E-Commerce Consultants (EC-Council), the study considered skills of 10,000 students who took part in a coding competition earlier this year.
EC Council is gearing up to provide it’s popular ‘Certified Ethical Hacker’ program to around 40,000 students by March next year. The program has been made mandatory by many government agencies in the US, including the National Security Agency and the US Department of Defence.
Addressing a press conference here on Wednesday, president of the EC Council Jay Bavisi said, “Cyber attacks are getting more complex. What we are doing in India is not enough. Media reports state that the government has decided to recruit 4,000 cyber security experts, where will these employees come from?”
Taking the example of the USA, Bavisi said the US was ramping up it’s training programs for cyber security and that many universities were now offering certification courses in the field. “In India there is no standard to the kind of cyber security programs being offered in colleges. There is no benchmark to relate these to courses around the world,” he said. However, while the report released on Wednesday was only for students, the EC council said a further report would include results based on IT professionals who were also measured for their skills.