The U.S. Consulate General Kolkata and CUTS International, in collaboration with Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC), organized a daylong workshop at Agartala, Tripura, for Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) to equip them with knowledge and hands-on training on how to identify and combat cybersecurity threats and become cyber-resilient.

Participants, mostly women entrepreneurs from more than 50 enterprises, participated in the workshop.  The U.S. Consulate General Kolkata is supporting the initiative across the East and Northeast India to help the region and its people to cope with the growing threat of cyber-crimes for small businesses, especially those led by women entrepreneurs.

Addressing the participants, Juan Clar, Deputy Director of the American Center and Assistant Public Affairs Officer, US Consulate General Kolkata in his inaugural remarks said, “Cybersecurity is one of the top challenges that countries, companies and individuals face in the twenty first century. It is very important that you as an entrepreneur, know how to identify and mitigate cybersecurity risk and hopefully this workshop would arm you with the proper tools to do that”. He further added that “U.S. and India have become closer strategic partners in many areas and cybercecurity is one of them.” He concluded by conveying his best wishes to the participants and thanked CUTS for organizing the workshop and the Department of Industries and Commerce, Government of Tripura for supporting in reaching out to the target group.

Subhas Chandra Das, Additional Director, Department of Industries and Commerce, government of Tripura, mentioned that the initiative is very timely and that it is important for all the participants to carefully listen, and understand the issues discussed at the workshop. He urged the participants to not only limit the knowledge among themselves, rather share the key messages and key learnings among their communities. He further added that the department requested the US Consulate, Kolkata to organise more such workshops to sensitise greater number of people on cyber threats and ways to mitigate them.

Arnab Ganguly, Associate Director of CUTS International, stressed that adoption of digital technologies have accelerated due to the COVID-19 pandemic and many MSMEs went online without the required understanding and safeguards to combat cyber-attacks, rendering them vulnerable. He said: “The workshop would equip the entrepreneurs with the basic understanding of the possible ways of cyber-attacks and methods to combat the threats.” He added that the training would help the entrepreneurs to combat at least 70 percent of the cyber-attacks.

The workshop’s key trainers were Saket Kumar Jha, Principal Technical Officer, C-DAC, Patna, and Jai Bhagwan Singh, Senior Project Engineer, C-DAC, Patna.