Pune: DIAT to train ‘cyber commandos’ under MHA purview

On Thursday, DIAT vice chancellor Dr BHVS Narayana Murthy, briefed the media on various ongoing and upcoming research as well as academic activities of the institution. Murthy, who was earlier the director general of the Missile and Strategic Systems Cluster of the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO), took over as vice-chancellor of DIAT in March earlier this year. Dr Murthy said the thirteenth convocation of the DIAT will be held on September 7 where DRDO chairman Dr Samir V Kamat will be the chief guest.

Addressing the media on various academic courses, Murthy said, “We have been training young scientists of the DRDO.

We will soon commence an MTech programme for newly inducted scientists, enabling them to start working with the DRDO with an MTech degree. One year of the course will be in the DIAT and one year in their respective DRDO laboratory. We have also been running several customised short-term courses for young executives from public sector undertakings and other entities. Our computer science department has been running a popular online course in cyber security.”

“It was recently reported that the Ministry of Home Affairs wants to train cyber commandos. They have identified 10 institutes in the country for the training and the DIAT is one of them. This will be a six month course in cyber security,” Murthy added.

Manisha Nene, head of the Computer Science and Engineering department at DIAT, said the course will commence from November this year and will be a residential one. “The trainees will comprise officers from the law enforcement ecosystem who will be trained as cyber commandos. The course will entail advanced modules on systems forensics, detection and prevention of unethical access to systems, detecting crimes in the cyber domain, among others. The course has 12 modules.”

Murthy further said, “I am happy to share that this year we were ranked 63rd in the engineering stream by the National Institutional Ranking Framework. We are also executing a roadmap to enhance this ranking and improve it further from 50. DIAT currently runs specialised courses for officers from the Defence wing of the L&T (Larsen & Toubro). In the coming days, we look to expand this to other key industry players and PSUs. These courses are aimed at skill development towards the goal of Atmanirbhar Bharat.”