India requires 64,000 cyber security professionals, according to an estimate by the Data Security Council of India (DSCI), which is an association of the cyber security ecosystem players.
“Of the 64,000 open positions, about 11,000 are for cyber security product developers and about 53,000 job positions are on offer in cyber security services space,” Rama Vedashree, chief executive officer of DSCI, said.
DSCI said that the cyber security industry employed around 1.30-2 lakh people in 2020 as against 1.10 lakh in 2019.
DSCI said this niche space is expected to have 10 lakh employees by 2025. With digital payments, transactions and need for work-from-home the current need, the DSCI expects the demand for cyber security products and services to rise.
“The growing popularity of connected devices, bring your own device (BYOD), and IoT technologies is projected to increase impact in the endpoint security segment. Regulations and increasing volume of data are driving interest in data security,” DSCI said.
The cyber security services industry generated a cumulative revenue of $4.3 billion in 2019. “This is expected to reach about $7.6 billion in 2022, registering a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 21 per cent,” DSCI said.
A part of the demand for skilled human resources in cyber security would come from global companies. DSCI estimates that global cyber security services market is expected to about $89 billion by 2022 and $116 billion as against $64 billion in 2019.
Research firm Gartner says information security spending is expected to grow 2.4 percent to reach $123.8 billion in 2020. The IT industry is expecting a pause and a reduction of growth in both security software and services during 2020 due to Corona-19 virus spread, the report said.
