AIBC hosts webinar on cyber security global collaboration

Australia India Business Council (AIBC), a non-profit organization, established in 1986 to foster the bi-lateral relations between India and Australia, conducted an online interactive workshop on Australia India cyber security collaboration opportunities and market launch on October 28.

As part of the Australia Cyber Week, the October 28 AIBC webinar was organized under the Australia India Innovation Bridge series. The event which was moderated by Irfan Malik, the AIBC National Chair for Startups and Innovation had among its speakers and workshop panelists Manish Gupta, Consulate General of India, Sydney; Ashok Mysore, the AIBC National Chair for Digital and ICT; Dr. Sriram Birudavolu, CEO, Cybersecurity Centre of Excellence (CCoE); Prerana Mehta, Chief of Ecosystem Development, Aust Cyber, Australia; Penny Wong, CEO, Radmis Advisory, Australia; and Prasanna Lohar, Head of Innovation, DCB Bank, India. Mysecurity Media, Sumeru Solutions and Vertex security were the three cyber security specialist start-ups that were presented towards the end of the webinar.

Burgeoning cyber vulnerabilities with expanding digital economy

Talking about the pathbreaking reforms that have been undertaken in the last years hastening India’s transformation into a digital economy, Manish Gupta, Consulate General of India, Sydney expressed his concern over the extremely high cyber vulnerabilities which have been laid bare. While the Indian government’s flagship programmes such as Digital India and Skill India have been aiming at harnessing the power of digital economy to develop digital backbone for urban areas; much needs to be done for the cyber disruptions which the Indian business ecosystem faces in the form of phishing, malware and ransomware. However, he feels that there are a lot of opportunities for collaborations between India and Australia to strengthen cyber security, in the form of innovative partnerships between Australian universities and Indian institutions. He suggested that these partnerships need to be leveraged so that the Australian universities can share cutting-edge cyber security know-how with India and even establish centres of excellence in India.

Awareness, Accessibility and Adaptability- keys to combat cyber attacks

Ashok Mysore, the AIBC National Chair for Digital and ICT asserted that with massive digitization right across the industrial sector and with the advent of cloud computing, government and private business have a wide network over the internet like never before. In the wake of the pandemic, work from home has become the new normal with people conducting business through laptops, mobile phones and tablets. This has exponentially increased the points of connectivity in the world wide network but at the same time opened up multiple points of cyber intrusion and failure. According to him, cyber security is about staying ahead of the threat as otherwise it can spread like a pandemic. With 83% workload expected to be carried out through cloud computing by 2025, it has become all the more necessary to counter the top cloud security threats of data breaches, misconfiguration and account hacking. In the last 12 months, there have been around 2200 cyber security incidents in Australia and of these 35% have affected the critical service providers such as health care and education. The only solution here is to make the government, industry and citizens more aware about cyber threats, and have access to the best cyber security measures through regular cyber security audits and upgradation in which help of white hat hackers needs to be sought. AIBC can play an even more significant role in creating more business networks, providing regular updates on ICT and help in organizing more trade and business delegations between Australia and India especially since the private sector has a lot of collaborative opportunities to fortify cyber security.

Aust Cyber enabling cyber security growth

Prerana Mehta, Chief of Ecosystem Development, Aust Cyber, Australia highlighted the significant role that Aust Cyber- a federally funded autonomous agency- has been playing in assisting the government in policy formulation for cyber resilience and representing the industrial sector in Australia. Stating the need to increase awareness regarding cyber security among the public, small businesses and government, she gave a brief overview of how Aust Cyber is providing opportunities to the cyber security businesses to connect directly with small and medium enterprises and also by providing a range of inexpensive solutions to counter cyber threat issues. She emphasized the need for multiple level involvements between the Australian and Indian governments, business to business involvements, and business to customer as well as customer to customer involvements to achieve outcomes in cyber security sector in both the countries.

CCoE building cluster of cyber security companies

Hyderabad-based Cybersecurity Centre of Excellence (CCoE) which is a part of Data Security Council of India, a cyber security arm of India’s largest IT industry body, NASSCOM is working on building a cluster of cyber security companies in the Indian state of Telangana. Participating in the webinar on behalf of CCoE, Dr. Sriram Birudavolu, CEO reiterated the importance of a strong and resilient business ecosystem to combat cyber security threats and the need to build a talent pool keeping in mind both the quantitative and qualitative aspects to service the rapidly burgeoning market of cyber security. He also stated that collaborations between India and Australia involving start up cyber security agencies and large corporations both in India and Australia having sufficient venture capital, is the key to a robust cyber environment in both the countries.