Cybersecurity training

Executive Summary

With an overwhelming change in the security landscape enabled by new technologies and by new paradigms of terror and criminal groups, there is a need to develop cybersecurity skills in government organizations.

In this document, we establish the needs for such skills and describe the training programs, including the location, course structure, and schedule.

Security and law enforcement today

There is a significant shift in the security environment today.  Till about 20 years ago, our threats were organized and structured, and there were directed efforts to neutralize such threats.   Now satellite and airplane surveillance is obsolete. Even patrolling and deployment of extra manpower is often not effective in the same proportion.  Now, the threats have changed their form and shape.

An asymmetrical war is more prevalent than a full-fledged military attack

The rules of the game have changed today.  There are hundreds of small and distributed terror elements connected only by ideologies and possibly even without central control. It is increasingly hard to assess the threats and eliminate the terrorists. In fact, there is now crowdsourcing of terror, where unconnected groups far from each other are committing terrorism.

Domestic and international threats have also become similar

With the ubiquity of the Internet and telecommunication, it is easy to run international operations. The asymmetrical nature of terror and its crowdsourcing have also made domestic ones similar to internationally controlled threats.  With newer technologies, tracing the source and its control centres for domestic threats are as challenging as they are for an international terror centre.

Cyberspace is the central nervous system of security threats

The platform of modern terror and other crimes has now moved to the cyber world.  The physical address, physical people and physical weapons have now been replaced by digital identities, digital systems controlled messaging and control systems.

Email, chats and social media will reach epic proportions with the Internet of Things (IoT).  With about $7bn people today, we expect intelligent devices to number around 60 billion.

Analysis of social networks to detect covert networks is now needed.  Terror networks are carved out as a small part of the larger social networks and deep analysis using modern techniques of big data analytics and artificial intelligence provide meaningful insights into the workings of the organized crime networks.

Bulk detection of digital transactions is now the holy grail.

98% of the information is in the public domain

Only 2% is classified.  So, the terror groups and enemies have access to 98% of raw information and intelligence agency has.

Extracting meaningful information out of the public domain and also figuring out how the terror groups may be using the data is critical.  Human intelligence and digital intelligence both must now be used in tandem to solve our crime and terror-related challenges.

Need to reimagine intelligence

A significant part of the world of intelligence has now moved from the physical world to the digital world.  Considering the fast-changing landscape of security, it is time to rethink security readiness. An updated training of all law-enforcement and security staff in the new framework is desired.  The private sector must collaborate with the government and complement the government’s efforts. State-of-the-art

The proposed program overview

The proposed programs will help the participants improve their understanding of cybersecurity and enable them to learn about the new world of threats and technologies, tools and techniques, information analysis and deriving intelligence, detecting and discovering law violations and attacks, and develop strategies of preventing any attacks.

Location

The classes will be conducted offsite in dedicated classrooms, and a full-time leave from the current commit is required.   The exact location will be selected depending on the time of the sessions from one of our university partners.

Knowledge Partner

These courses have been developed by the world’s leading organizations including IBM and HP.  The knowledge partner will also train and certify the faculty, drawn from academia and industry to ensure the standard of faculty is commensurate with global standards of the knowledge partner.

Course duration

These programs will run for 200 hours which will take about six weeks of full-time training.  50% of these classes will be lecture and discussions, and 50% hands-on training.

Class size

A class size of 30 is optimal as it allows interaction of the faculty with each student and encourages discussions amongst the students as well.  Minimum class size is 25.

Training delivery

Delivery method will be multi-mode, including classroom teaching, lab work and online 24×7.  Classroom lectures and discussions will be interactive followed by hands-on lab experience, mimicking real-life situations.

Expected training outcome

The program uses a simulated government or a private organization office network environments to provide students with valuable first-hand experience in handling a full cyber-attack, from the onset of an information security issue to its final resolution.

The agents graduating out this training program will

  1. Learn the technology of the cyberspace

  2. Learn real-life situation and cases where these technologies can be used to seek the desired result

  3. Learn the technologies, the nomenclature, basic programming techniques to showcase how the systems work behind the scenes

  4. Learn to operate the cyber and computing systems

  5. Operate a system independently

  6. Input commands and seeks results independently

Prerequisites

Basic computer knowledge is expected for the foundation course.

Course plan

Course 1: Foundation course

  • Fundamentals of computer science.
  • Fundamentals of cybersecurity
  • Computer and network security
  • Web development and telecommunications
  • Operating systems security protocol
  • Cyber warfare preparation and tactics
  • Information assurance
  • National cybersecurity and police law
  • Applied cryptography
  • Ethical hacking and systems defence techniques
  • Cyber Incident Response
  • Cyber Risk and Strategic Analysis
  • Vulnerability Detection and Assessment
  • Intelligence and Investigation
  • Networks and Systems Engineering
  • Digital Forensics and Forensics Analysis
  • Software Assurance

Fee

The fee will be determined based on the number of participants, duration, location and the type of course.