News & Analysis

Quotes on “How to retain cyber talent in the Great Resignation wave”

“Technology is critical to governance today. Samagra works across domains to solve complex governance problems in diverse domains such as education, agriculture, health, skilling, public service delivery, and employment. All of this work is powered by tech and data and is housed under the SamagraX vertical of Samagra. This arm focuses on building reusable, scalable, extensible and deployable GovTech products and platforms using open-source tools which can help in solving governance challenges with speed and at scale. Developing and deploying such products require a team of purpose-driven engineers and product managers who can conceptualize and build population scale products. Currently, we are seeing limited awareness among young tech talent on opportunities and career paths in GovTech. They naturally gravitate towards B2C/B2B start ups, or the bigger established tech firms.

Having said that, we believe that the bulk of the responsibility is on organizations to create this awareness and also share the huge potential for learning, growth and impact the GovTech space offers. ‘Code for GovTech’ (C4GT), India’s first open source GovTech coding program, was launched as a way to bring the GovTech ecosystem together to nurture young talent. C4GT is being organised by Samagra and supported by EkStep and Omidyar Network India. Through this experiential summer coding program, engineering students from across India are getting an opportunity to solve governance problems using tech, with close mentorship from the pioneers of the Indian GovTech space. This is a unique opportunity for engineering students to use their skills to create impact at scale.” – Ujjwal Relan, Chief of Staff, Samagra


“Digital transformation has placed IT at the centre of nearly all organisations, further increasing the complexity of protecting critical infrastructure. The growing importance and reliance on data as the lifeblood of business and the global shift towards cloud and mobile computing have also provided new avenues for cyberattacks. While the government has rolled out more rules and policies in place to help combat this, there is now a huge demand for specialised cyber talent and resources – like malware analysts, cyber forensics, or red team operators. The creation of jobs is always positive, but it has also fueled up a lot of unwanted attrition and left a question of where do we find the right talent to fill this? 

Automation is one way to manage the talent shortage as this can take care of the basic routine tasks. This helps the analysts work smarter and put their skills to good use wherever they are needed most. However, in the era of the Great Resignation, this model can be sustainable only if it is supplemented by talent nurturing, upskilling and reskilling strategies. All businesses are trying to fish for talent from the same pond so organisations should actively work on creating a skills pipeline for cybersecurity roles internally and investing in training and retention of the existing workforce. A regular rhythm of review and updation can be set for these specialised roles to increase the relevance and make it more fulfilling both for the employees as well as the organisation. 

The great resignation has meant that employees expect more from their employers, so organisations have to pay closer attention to the individual needs of existing employees and convey the positive intent of the company to invest in their staff to build a robust skill pipeline internally. Some critical cybersecurity roles may face an early burnout, so it is important to acknowledge this and look into planning a job rotation within the firm. This will help retain the staff, protect the enterprise, and keep the key positions covered.”Jaspal Sawhney, Global Chief Information Security Officer, Tata Communications

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