India ranks second only to the US in most security threats on cloud, followed by Australia, Cannada and Brazil (according to McCafe Enterprise Advanced Threat Research Report).  Cybersecurity skills demand in the country is slated to grow, reflecting the global trend of an increasing skills gap in cybersecurity and a workforce unable to meet industry demand. The eighth annual cybersecurity survey from reputed global IT association ISACA, unveiled in India today, reveals an increase in cybersecurity hiring and retention challenges in the country.

According to ISACA’s new survey report, State of Cybersecurity 2022: Global Update on Workforce Efforts, Resources and Cyber Operations, sponsored by Looking Glass Cyber Solutions, organisations are struggling more than ever with hiring and retaining qualified cybersecurity professionals and managing skills gaps. This year’s survey results in India depict that 60% of the organisations have unfilled cybersecurity positions and that 42% report their organisation’s cybersecurity team is understaffed. Even more concerning is that 59% believe that less than half of their applicants are well qualified for the position they are applying.

Hiring and retention challenges

As in past years, filling cybersecurity roles and retaining talent continues to be a challenge for many enterprises. Sixty-three percent of global respondents indicate they have unfilled cybersecurity positions and India reflects the same trend with 60% unfilled positions. Sixty-two percent of India-based respondents say it takes three to six months for their organisations to find qualified cybersecurity candidates for open positions, compared to 47% globally. For respondents in India, the top factors hiring managers use to determine whether a candidate is qualified are prior hands-on cybersecurity experience (77%), credentials (45%) and hands-on training (38%). Two in three (65%) respondents report difficulties retaining qualified cybersecurity professionals, a 14 percentage -point increase from 2021. The top reasons that India respondents believe cybersecurity professionals are leaving their jobs include:

1. Poor financial incentives in terms of salary or bonus (51%)
2. Limited promotion and development opportunities (50%)
3. Recruited by other companies (47%) 
4. High work stress levels (38%)
5. Lack of management support (38%)

Skills gaps and mitigation

Respondents from India indicate they are looking for a range of skills in candidates, noting the top skills gaps they see in today’s cybersecurity professionals are soft skills (53%), cloud computing (48%)—a new response option for this question—and security controls implementation (42%). Soft skills is also the second-highest skills gap cited for recent graduates (after security controls), and has seen an 11-percentage-point increase in perception as a skills gap among Indian respondents since 2021.

The top three most required security skills are cloud computing (51%), identity & access management (45%) and data protection (44%). Among the top soft skills deemed important are critical thinking (53%), communication (52%) and problem solving (44%).

Fifty-nine percent of respondents in India believe that less than half of their applicants are well qualified for the position for which they are applying. India-based respondents note that their organisations are undertaking multiple measures to decrease cybersecurity skills gaps such as training to allow non-security staff who are interested to move into security roles (58%), increased use of reskilling programmes (44%), increased usage of consultants and external staff (38%), and increased use of performance-based training (36%).

Speaking at a press briefing to unveil the report, Chris Dimitriadis, ISACA Chief Global Strategy Officer, said, “Challenges in hiring and retaining cybersecurity professionals have impacted organizations around the world for years, and have only become more complex amid the pandemic and larger shifts in the global workforce. ISACA is addressing those challenges globally by building a workforce of digital trust professionals, who have more holistic and correlated views from the adjacent professions of cybersecurity, IT audit, risk, privacy and digital technology governance, while also offering state of the art tools in cyber maturity assessments.”

R.V Raghu, ISACA Ambassador in India and past ISACA board director, added, “A strong cybersecurity workforce with cutting-edge skills is essential in the face of evolving technology and an ever-changing cyber threat landscape to support much needed digital trust. Hands-on training, credentials, networking and sharing best practices through the cybersecurity community globally and in India, including through organisations like ISACA, can help cybersecurity professionals in India not only strengthen their skillsets and keep advancing their careers, but also ensure they are keeping their enterprises protected against the latest cyber threats.”

“It’s important to understand the trends across the community over time as well as how one’s organisation compares. This is necessary information to help advance the field as a whole, and we’re proud to be a part of sharing and disseminating these insights,” says Mary Yang, Chief Marketing Officer at Looking Glass Cyber Solutions. “Looking Glass is thrilled to support the cybersecurity community by partnering with ISACA on this report.”

Threat Landscape

This year, 33% of respondents in India indicate that their organisation is experiencing more cyberattacks compared to a year ago. When asked about their main concerns related to cyberattacks, organisational reputation (86%), data breach concerns (78%) and cyber-attack on supply chain or business disruption (63%) rank top of mind for India-based respondents. They also indicated that the top types of cyber-attacks they experienced in the past year include:

• Advanced persistent threats (18%)
• Ransomware (14%)
• Denial of services (13%)
• Injection flaws (12%)
• Sensitive data exposure (12%)

Despite the threats they face, 79% of respondents in India indicate they are confident in their organisation’s cybersecurity team’s ability to detect and respond to cyber threats.

Cyber maturity

When it comes to cyber risk assessments, 77% of respondents based in India say their organisation currently assesses its cyber maturity. Eighty-six% say their executive leadership team sees value in conducting a cyber risk assessment and 35% say their organisation performs a cyber risk assessment every 1-6 months.  

Cybersecurity Budgets

While 48% of respondents in India opine that their cybersecurity budgets are appropriately funded, 31% perceive their budget is underfunded, compared to 54% globally. Fifty-nine percent of India respondents expect some level of increase in cybersecurity budgets, while only 17% of respondents in India, almost half of the global number of 38%, expect no change in budgets.

The survey features insights from more than 2,000 cybersecurity professionals around the globe, and examines cybersecurity staffing and skills, resources, cyber threats and cybersecurity maturity. A complimentary copy of the State of Cybersecurity 2022 survey report can be accessed at www.isaca.org/state-of-cybersecurity-2022, along with related resources. Additional cybersecurity resources can be found at www.isaca.org/resources/cybersecurity.

About ISACA: For more than 50 years, ISACA® (www.isaca.org) has advanced the best talent, expertise and learning in technology. ISACA equips individuals with knowledge, credentials, education and community to progress their careers and transform their organizations, and enables enterprises to train and build quality teams. ISACA is a global professional association and learning organization that leverages the expertise of its more than 150,000 members who work in information security, governance, assurance, risk and privacy to drive innovation through technology. It has a presence in 188 countries, including more than 220 chapters worldwide. In 2020, ISACA launched one in Tech, a philanthropic foundation that supports IT education and career pathways for under-resourced, under-represented populations. To know more: https://www.isaca.org

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Strobes Security today announced the strategic partnership with TechStar Group, a global digital solutions and professional services firm that empowers companies to complete by leveraging emerging technologies. TechStar Group has helped Fortune 500 companies with their digital transformation.

The Strobes Security and TechStar Group partnership is a perfect marriage enabling TechStar to deliver their offerings in a more secure manner using Strobes Security products: Strobes VM365, Strobes DevSecOps and Strobes Penetration Testing as a Service (PTaaS).

TechStar Group has been catering to companies to help deliver their digital transformation for years. As far as emerging technologies, Strobes is well positioned to meet the needs of Enterprise and SMB customers who are struggling with vulnerability management.

“Strobes offerings are not like the rest in the vulnerability management space,” said Ashok Chitiprolu, Co-founder and Managing Partner at TechStar Group. “There is true ROI when it comes to time, money and resource savings. One of our favorite aspects of the platform are the dashboards and reports. My team no longer needs to spend hours helping our customers generate reports from Excel, which is welcome!”

Strobes CEO Venu Rao is pleased with TechStar’s overall approach to customers and the alignment the two organizations share. “TechStar, like Strobes, is customer first,” shared Rao. “It’s important to us to share the same values and approach to customers since they are the most important aspect of our businesses. TechStar became who they are because of this and we relish in sharing similar attitudes. I’m looking forward to doing great things together.”

TechStar will soon begin adding Strobes Security products to its offerings for existing customers.

About TechStar:
TechStar Group is a niche Product Development, Business Solutions, and global IT Services firm headquartered in Dallas, TX. TechStar helps drive Customer Success by leveraging expertise in Applied AI, Automation, Data Engineering, Digital Infrastructure and BPM Solutions.

About Strobes:
Strobes Security develops products and solutions for all organizations to solve challenges in the vulnerability management space using security automation and predictive prioritization. The current product offerings include Strobes VM365 and Strobes DevSecOps. Additional services are available including Strobes PTaaS (Pen Testing as a Service). https://www.strobes.co/

Computing-in-memory technology is poised to eliminate the massive data communications bottlenecks otherwise associated with performing artificial intelligence (AI) speech processing at the network’s edge but requires an embedded memory solution that simultaneously performs neural network computation and stores weights. Microchip Technology Inc. (Nasdaq: MCHP), via its Silicon Storage Technology (SST) subsidiary, today announced that its SuperFlash memBrain neuromorphic memory solution has solved this problem for the WITINMEM neural processing SoC, the first in volume production that enables sub-mA systems to reduce speech noise and recognize hundreds of command words, in real time and immediately after power-up.

Microchip has worked with WITINMEM to incorporate Microchip’s memBrain analog in-memory computing solution, based on SuperFlash technology, into WITINMEM’s ultra-low-power SoC. The SoC features computing-in-memory technology for neural networks processing including speech recognition, voice-print recognition, deep speech noise reduction, scene detection, and health status monitoring. WITINMEM, in turn, is working with multiple customers to bring products to market during 2022 based on this SoC.

“WITINMEM is breaking new ground with Microchip’s memBrain solution for addressing the compute-intensive requirements of real-time AI speech at the network edge based on advanced neural network models,” said Shaodi Wang, CEO of WITINMEM. “We were the first to develop a computing-in-memory chip for audio in 2019, and now we have achieved another milestone with volume production of this technology in our ultra-low-power neural processing SoC that streamlines and improves speech processing performance in intelligent voice and health products.”

“We are excited to have WITINMEM as our lead customer and applaud the company for entering the expanding AI edge processing market with a superior product using our technology,” said Mark Reiten, vice president of the license division at SST. “The WITINMEM SoC showcases the value of using memBrain technology to create a single-chip solution based on a computing-in-memory neural processor that eliminates the problems of traditional processors that use digital DSP and SRAM/DRAM-based approaches for storing and executing machine learning models.”

Microchip’s memBrain neuromorphic memory product is optimized to perform vector matrix multiplication (VMM) for neural networks. It enables processors used in battery-powered and deeply-embedded edge devices to deliver the highest possible AI inference performance per watt. This is accomplished by both storing the neural model weights as values in the memory array and using the memory array as the neural compute element. The result is 10 to 20 times lower power consumption than alternative approaches along with lower overall processor Bill of Materials (BOM) costs because external DRAM and NOR are not required.

Permanently storing neural models inside the memBrain solution’s processing element also supports instant-on functionality for real-time neural network processing. WITINMEM has leveraged SuperFlash technology’s floating gate cells’ nonvolatility to power down its computing-in-memory macros during the idle state to further reduce leakage power in demanding IoT use cases.

For information, contact This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or visit the SST website.

Resources

• Application Image: [In development]

About Silicon Storage Technology (SST)

Microchip Technology’s SST subsidiary is a leading provider of embedded flash technology. SST develops, designs, licenses and markets a diversified range of proprietary and patented SuperFlash memory technology solutions for the consumer, industrial, automotive and Internet of Things (IoT) markets. SST was founded in 1989, went public in 1995 and was acquired by Microchip in April 2010. SST is now a wholly owned subsidiary of Microchip, and is headquartered in San Jose, Calif. For more information, visit the SST website at www.sst.com.

About Microchip Technology

Microchip Technology Inc. is a leading provider of smart, connected and secure embedded control solutions. Its easy-to-use development tools and comprehensive product portfolio enable customers to create optimal designs which reduce risk while lowering total system cost and time to market. The company’s solutions serve more than 120,000 customers across the industrial, automotive, consumer, aerospace and defense, communications and computing markets. Headquartered in Chandler, Arizona, Microchip offers outstanding technical support along with dependable delivery and quality. For more information, visit the Microchip website at www.microchip.com.

About WITINMEM (Zhicun)

WITINMEM (Zhicun) technology Co. Ltd. is a leading provider of computing-in-memory chips and system solutions. WITINMEM designs computing-in-memory technology for high-efficient AI computation. Its SoC chips and development toolkit help customers to develop low-power AI system. Headquartered in Beijing, China. For more information, please visit the WITINMEM website at www.witintech.com.

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Note: The Microchip name and logo, the Microchip logo, SuperFlash and SST are registered trademarks of Microchip Technology Incorporated in the U.S.A. and other countries. memBrain is a trademark of Microchip Technology Inc. in the U.S.A. and other countries. All other trademarks are the property of their respective companies.

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