HYDERABAD: EC-Council -- which provides information security education, training and certification -- aims to train around 40,000 cyber security professionals in India by 2014.

"We have a target of tying up with 140 partners whom we would train. They would in turn impart education to train 40,000 cyber security professionals by next year. We already have 72 partners," Jay Bavisi, co-founder and president of EC-Council said.

The head office of EC-Council is located in Hyderabad and the expansion as well as execution plans would be monitored from here, he said adding that around Rs 20 crore has already being invested by EC-Council in India.

According the government estimates, India would require close to 5 lakh cyber-security professional to mitigate the threats in the virtual world.

"With the push from the central government to introduce cybersecurity programmes in the educational institutions, I expect the market to grow rapidly in the country," Bavisi explained.

He pointed out that the company is already in talks with various educational institutes to provide cyber security courses and the company is targeting around 300 institutes by the end of 2013.

According to industry estimates, the current Indian cybersecurity market is close to Rs 1,500 crore and it is growing at a pace of 18% per annum.

Meanwhile, the company said that Bavisi had received the Industry Leadership Award 2013 awarded by National Security Agency (NSA) for the outstanding leadership in the cybersecurity industry and information assurance education.

Source : TOI