Frequently Asked Questions

The COVID-19 outbreak has changed the cyber security threat landscape. There has been a surge in Work from Home, triggered by this pandemic. Our home networks are far more vulnerable than enterprise networks. As usual, cybercriminals are bound to exploit it. Since the beginning of the crisis, nearly 2000 malicious coronavirus-themed websites have been set up every day.

The writing on the wall is clear. Even after the crisis, companies who have discovered value in the gig economy will continue to operate a significant part of their workforce from home. Hence the need for cyber security expertise becomes apparent.

As cyber threats become more complex, cybersecurity is a top priority for organizations worldwide. With global damages projected to reach $10.5 trillion by 2025, the demand for skilled cybersecurity professionals is at an all-time high.

Cybersecurity is among the most in-demand skills today, with around 3.5 million unfilled jobs globally. In India alone, over 100,000 job openings in this field highlight the urgent need for expertise. Companies seek professionals to create secure digital environments, making this a promising career path.

The Advanced Certification Program in Cyber Security and Cyber Defense, by IIT Kanpur and TalentSprint, offers cutting-edge skills for today’s professionals. Its comprehensive curriculum covers advanced concepts and practical applications, preparing you for diverse roles in this growing field.

You will need the following infrastructure to access our platform:

Device: A Desktop/Laptop/Tablet/Smartphone with camera and mic.
Internet: A regular broadband/wifi connection or a mobile 4G connection.
Note: Proctored online assessments can be taken only on a Desktop/Laptop with a web camera and mic (not allowed on tablets/smartphones).

Groups can conveniently connect among themselves at an appointed time for group work, outside the online classes. This feature comes in handy during group activities and projects.

Students can also use the platform 24 x 7 to engage and learn from their peers using our interactive discussion forums available under each course of the Programme.

Our platform also has the provision of group-specific discussion forums for offline discussion among the group members.

Our recorded videos have an AI-generated Table of Content (TOC) to help easy and smart navigation within the videos. Students can click on the items under TOC to directly jump to the relevant section in a video. Video archives also have a Phrase Cloud of keywords/phrases used in the video. Students can click on a particular keyword/phrase to find yellow markers, indicating the points where the selected keyword/phrase was covered on the video timeline.

It is estimated that there will be roughly 75.44 billion connected devices by 2025. Rapid convergence of Mobility, Internet of Things and Cloud Computing is leading to an explosive increase in security threats and the need for Cyber Defense experts to combat these threats is becoming all the more important.

The demand for such professionals is outstripping supply. Companies need sophisticated responders to defend against the growing threat of cyberattacks. There is a huge talent crunch and 59% of the companies have vacant positions suggesting a cumulative global shortfall of 1.5 million such professionals.

The Advanced Certification Program in Cyber Security and Cyber Defense by IIT Kanpur is designed for current or aspiring Cyber Security professionals who are passionate about exploring disruptions in Cyber Security technology. The program combines deep academic rigor with an intense practical hands-on approach to equip participants to master in-demand skills and capabilities relevant to the domain. The program is taught by the faculty at IIT Kanpur, ranked highly by the National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF) in 2024.

TalentSprint with its deep understanding of the industry, access to industry experts, and a state of the art technology platform has been chosen by IIT Kanpur as the right partner for this program.

• A trailblazer in Computer Science Research and Education
• Hosts C3i, India’s #1 Cyber Security research center at IIT Kanpur
• Experts globally recognized for contribution to Cyber Security and Cyber Defense
• Ranked among top 4 engineering colleges by NIRF 2024
• Collaborates with global centers of excellence (Israel and USA) in Cyber Security
• Built on World-class Academic Research Culture

• Build expertise in Cyber Security and Cyber Defense
• Learn from world-class faculty of IIT Kanpur
• Get IIT Kanpur Certification
• Network and collaborate with Cyber Security Experts

• Tech professionals building their Cyber Security career
• Engineers who want to research and build cutting-edge applications in Cyber Security and Cyber Defense
• Professionals who want to build an in-house Cyber Security team
• Startup founders interested in starting their own Cyber Security solutions

Global programs are not customized as per the Indian Market. They are also quite expensive compared to this program.

As an Institution of National Importance, IIT Kanpur enjoys autonomous status under the MHRD, and operates outside the purview of UGC/AICTE guidelines.This program is a fully approved certificate program offered through the IIT Centre for Continuing Education.

All participants are required to execute, before the start of the program, an agreement that consists of the standard Program Terms and Conditions. It has the following components:

• Part A: Etiquette and Platform Rights
  • Classroom Etiquette & General Policy Guidelines
  • Tools and Platforms in Use
  • Tools and Platforms: Terms of Use
• Part B: Honor Code
• Part C: Certification
• Part D: Program Fee, Refund and Termination Policy

The eligibility criteria to join this program is as follows:

Education

• Computer Science background

Experience

• Graduate with 1+ year experience (or)
• Diploma with 3+ years experience
• Coding experience is mandatory to join this programme

Selection for the program will be done by IIT Kanpur and is based on the education, work experience details and Statement of Purpose submitted by candidate along with their application.

• Current and /aspiring Cyber Security professionals across India and abroad
• Tech professionals seeking a role change or career advancement
• Graduate with relevant background and 1+ years experience
• Diploma with relevant background and 3+ years experience
• Professionals having prior coding experience

You can apply for this program online by submitting your duly filled application. Applicants will have to pay an application fee of ₹2000 + GST.

Participants who are not holding an Indian Passport or are not residing in India will be considered as an International Participant.

For programme fee-related details, please visit Fee Page

Yes. Flexible EMI options can be availed to pay the program fee.

Please refer to the fee section on the program page to know all the important dates.

No, the application fee is non-refundable.

No, the program fee is non-refundable and non-transferable under any circumstances.

Building deep-tech expertise is an absolute necessity for professionals in this fast-changing world that is constantly disrupted by technology.

Professionals have multiple options for funding.

1. Sponsored by employer
2. Self-funded

Based on our experience in enabling 3000 professionals who have participated in our executive programs, self-funding seemed to be the most preferred option with over 80% choosing this.

Three key reasons why professionals opt for it:

1. Freedom: To opt for a program of their choice, at a time of their choice, with an institution of their choice and not be restrained by organisation’s policy.
2. Flexibility: To pursue greater career opportunities well even beyond their current employer or to nurture their entrepreneurial ambitions.
3. Funding: Access to flexible EMI schemes (Paying as low as Rs. 7,943 per per month).

We have also observed that the commitment levels were higher among self-funding participants.

Our Career Support platform will provide you the resources to help you showcase your professional profile with certification and capstone project experience on TalentSprint Alumni Network, LinkedIn, GitHub, Kaggle, among other platforms.

After the successful completion of your cohort of the program, you will get priority access to career opportunities in the industry through an exclusive Alumni portal. This will include internal job postings, job opportunities notifications shared by your peers, and personalized mentorship based on industry and experience.

Guidance on building a compelling professional profile with a DeepTech edge on various platforms., interview preparation and more.

No, TalentSprint will not be conducting placement drives. However you will get access to job opportunities and right guidance to help you in getting selected.

Career opportunities are updated as and when a program alumni posts it or when there is a suitable opportunity through our wide industry, alumni and peer network.

You get inputs from the alumni and peer network.

Yes, they can always update their profile at TalentSprint's alumni page. In case they come across any issues doing that, then our Career Accelerator Executive will be happy to help.

With TalentSprint's exclusive DeepTech community, you get a chance to network with industry peers and peers from different programs of TalentSprint. You get to find complementing synergies of common interests and learn about market developments and opportunities. Plus, you can get exclusive invitations for the DeepTalk Interactive Series, where leaders discuss all things DeepTech.

This program has an intensive curriculum that fosters hands-on learning. Important areas of focus are given below:

Introduction to Cyber Security and Cyber Defense

• Threat Landscape and Need for Cyber Security and Cyber Defense manpower
• Our Cyber Security Training Philosophy
• Risk Assessment
• ISMS (Information Security Management System)
• Risk Identification
• Indian Cyber Law
• Introduction to C3i Center

Network Security

• Cryptography Basics
  • Confidentiality, Encryption and Decryption, Symmetric and Asymmetric Key Cryptography, RSA algorithm and Weakness, Key Strength Integrity, Non-Repudiation, Message Authentication, Cryptographic Hash Function, Digital Signature, Public Key Infrastructure, Digital Certificate and Self Signed Certificate.
• Application Layer Security
  • SSL/TLS, Heart Bleed, SSH, DNS, DNSSec, Email Security and PGP, Wireshark.
• Transport Layer Security
  • DoS/DDoS attack, TCP SYN flood attack, UDP chargen-echo flooding, SCTP, Port Knocking, TCP dump.
• Network and Data Link Layer Security
  • IP Spoofing, IPSec, IKE, VPN, BGP/SBGP, ICMP vulnerabilities (DoS, OS fingerprint, Covert Channel) and fixes.
    MAC spoofing, ARP Poisoning, Man in the Middle Attack, Address Binding, RARP.
• Wireless Security
  • 802.11, Attacks on WLAN, Evil Twin, WEP weakness, WPA, KRACK. EAP, VLAN, Fragmentation and Aggregation Attack, Aircrack Penetration Testing.

Hardware Security

• Basic Introduction to Side Channel Analysis, Trojans and other hardware level Threats

Cloud Security

• Cloud Security
  • NIST Security Framework, Hypervisor, Attack Surface, Security Requirement, Misuse Pattern, TPM, Meltdown and Spectre
  • Infrastructure Security, Data Security, Merkle Tree, Data Completeness, freshness and Correctness, Google Cloud Storage Security
• Web Client Security
  • Session, Hidden Attributes, HTTP Auth, Cookie, Session Hijacking, HTTP Referrer, Insecure Deserialization, JSON Web Token (JWT).
  • Cross Site Scripting (XSS), Stored and Reflected and DOM based XSS, Input Filter.
  • Cross Site Request Forgery, Token Validation, Referrer Validation, Denial of Service.
  • Phishing, Tabnabbing, Side Channel Attack, XS-Leak, Filejacking, Mixed Content, HTTP Strict-Transport-Security, Content Security Policy, Chrome Security.
• Web Server Security
  • Command and SQL Injection – First order, Secord order, Blind and Out of Band injection, Prepared Statement, Input Sanitization, Tips to avoid SQL injection.
  • Response discrepancy, Information Exposure, CAPTCHA, Clickfarm, Access Control, Privilege Escalation, OAuth, Single Sign On and Apache Log.
  • NoSQL injection, Server Side Request Forgery, Improper Coding exploit, XXE Injection, Insecure Direct Object References, HTAccess, Server side DoS, Web Crawler and robots.txt.

IoT Security

• IoT Communication, IoT Attack Surface, OWASP top 10 Vulnerabilities, Mirai Bot, Zero-Trust Approach, MQTT and CoAP, MQTT Vulnerabilities, Bluetooth Security, IoT Device Audit.

Access control- MAC DAC UNIX

• Introduction of basic control Hijacking attacks
• Confidently, Isolation and Confiment Principles
• Isolation Subversion Techniques
• Unix Fundamentals

Reverse Engineering

• Computer architecture
• Interpreter & Compilers
• Computer networks
• Debugging
• Binary exploitation
• Buffer overflow
• Control hijacking
• Shell coding

Deception & Honeypots

• Cloning
• Virtualization
• Containment
• Local deployment
• Virtual private server
• Cloud deployment

Web Security

• Web Security Introduction
  • HTTP, DOM, IMG Tag issue, Same Origin Policy, Web Server and Database Setup (XAMPP), Self-Signed Certificate Integration, HTTPS .
  • IFrame hack, Cross Domain Messaging/Cross Origin Message Sharing, Web Socket, Introduction to OWASP top 10 Vulnerabilities, Authentication.

Malware Analysis

• Static and Behavioural analysis of PE, ELF and PDF file
• Setting up of controlled environment and extraction of loCs
• AI-ML based malware detection

Memory Forensics

• Windows Memory forensic using Volatility Frame work.

Network Intrusion Detection Systems (NIDS) NDR

• Network Borne Attacks
• Network Intrusion Methods
• Network Intrusion Detection and Evasion
• Snort NIDS
• Zeek NIDS
• SecurityOnion

Introduction to Privilege Escalation

• Modelling of an infrastructure
• Basics of recon
• HTTP verbs
• Reverse Shell
• File permissions
• Privilege Escalation

Host Intrusion Detection Systems (HIDS) Or EDR

• Endpoint Detection and Response
• Endpoint Indicators of Compromise
• Wazuh HIDS
• Security Content Automation Protocol (SCAP)
• CVE, CVSS, CPE, CCE
• OVAL, XCCDF
• OpenSCAP Tool Usage
• STIG and STIGViewer

Secure Coding using Static Code Analysis

• Secure Coding fundamentals
• Introduction to tools for Static code analysis

Devops and Devsecops

• Fundamentals of Devops and Devsecops.
• Tools Used for Continuous Integration like Jenkins.

Android Security

• Android Security Framework
• APK structure and its analysis
• Tools to extract features from an APK
• AI-ML based Malware detection

CTF & Hand’s ON

• Debugging and control hijacking with canaries
• Debugging and control hijacking with 2’s complement
• Debugging and control hijacking with Heap
• Debugging and control hijacking with crypto

Capstone Projects

• Network based Intrusion Detection System (NIDS)
• Host-based Intrusion Detection System (HIDS)
• Honeypot
• Memory Forensic
• Secure Inventory Management
• Application Communication Protocol Testing Tool
• Application Control
• Device Control

• A quiz will be conducted in the first week to gauge the understanding of participants. However, this will not be used for evaluation.

Evaluation will be done based on the following:

• Short online quiz every week
• Capstone Project (to be done in groups)

The tentative timelines for project submission are as given below:

Description	Week
Project Discussion and team (Maximum 5 people in a team)	3
Preliminary Documentation & finalization	5-7
Project specification and requirement document submission	11
Project report submission	23
Project Demo	24

A certificate of successful completion is provided upon completion of all requirements of the program. All examinations and evaluations related to the certification are carried out by IIT Kanpur.

Following are the prerequisites to join this program:

1. Familiarization with the usage of computers, smartphones, and technology
2. Basic knowledge of C/Java/Python programming
3. Basic Knowledge of shell scripting

The total duration of the program is 20 weeks (120 Hours).

Batch 10 starts in March 2025.

The program will be delivered through faculty-led interactive live classes on TalentSprint’s direct to device platform during the weekends.

Online sessions will be held twice a week as given below:

• Saturdays : 11am to 1 pm and 2 pm to 4 pm
• Sundays : 11 am to 1 pm

All sessions will be conducted by IIT Kanpur faculty. Industry experts may be invited for sharing their valuable experience.

Reading material like papers, notes and manuals will be shared regularly through TalentSprint’s Online Learning Management System.

The attendance criteria is as follows:

• Campus visits to IIT Kanpur: Mandatory.
• Online sessions: 75% of the sessions have to be attended in full.

Yes, attendance will be recorded regularly during this program. Participants need to maintain a minimum 75% attendance for the online sessions.

Do not worry. In case you miss a session, you will be given access to view the recorded version of the session till the duration of the program. However, attendance would not be considered for watching the recorded archive.

No. This program caters to working professionals who aspire to hone their skills to better adapt and grow in the Cyber Security space. No placement assistance will be provided to the participants.

An internet connected device, Computer/Laptop/Tablet/Smartphone, is enough to access the platform and online interactive sessions. Web-camera and Mic with necessary power backup will be needed for proctored online assessments.

TalentSprint’s platform is very robust and designed to have very high uptime. However, in case of any technical difficulty, you can write to TalentSprint’s technical support on cybersecurity.support@talentsprint.com and they would do their best to resolve your issue at the earliest possible.

IIT Kanpur has designed the curriculum of this program. All the program content will be delivered by the faculty from IIT Kanpur. The selection and certification will also be done by them.

IIT Kanpur took its pioneering steps towards Cyber Security by setting up C3i (Interdisciplinary Centre for Cyber Security and Cyber Defense of Critical Infrastructures). The C3i is now on its way to create India’s first research centre whose mission is to research, educate, train and also spawn startups to create technological safeguards to protect critical infrastructure. The center is also engaged with International partners from Israel, and the USA to develop a world-class research in the field of Cyber Security.

Please refer to the link given below to know about the infrastructure at C3i.
https://cdn.talentsprint.com/misc/infrastructure_C3i.pdf

TalentSprint is the technology partner for this program. All the program content and online sessions will be delivered through TalentSprint interactive direct-to-device platform.