More IITs may offer B Cyber next year as JEE Main route is dropped

India’s undergraduate cybersecurity programme could expand to three or four more Indian Institutes of Technology next year, while its existing institutions plan to abandon JEE Main as the main admission route.

IIT Kanpur and IIT Madras launched the four-year B Cyber programme this year, offering 40 and 50 seats respectively. Together, they admitted 52 students, with 32 at Kanpur and 20 at Madras, leaving seats unfilled. Both institutes hope to fill their places next year.

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We want to do away with the JEE Main from next year

Soumitra Sanadhya, the programme director at IIT Kanpur’s Wadhwani School of Artificial Intelligence and Intelligent Systems, said the institutes intend to introduce an aptitude test at the initial stage. A few hundred candidates would then be invited to participate in a hackathon, potentially held across several IITs, to select the final candidates.

The proposed test will assess problem-solving and basic computer science skills, including programming and networking. Its syllabus remains under discussion, with the final syllabus and examination schedule expected within the next three to four months. This year, JEE Main served only as an initial cutoff before the hackathon stage.

Three or four additional IITs, including newer and older institutions, are highly likely to join the initiative by the time next year’s entrance test is held, Sanadhya said. The total number of seats could eventually reach roughly three times the current level.

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In India, since we have started with such a low number of cybersecurity professionals and cybersecurity degrees, cybersecurity is still taking hold in a formal sense

The expansion reflects concerns about the shortage of trained cybersecurity professionals. Nitin Saxena, the inaugural dean of the Wadhwani School, said the programme was created to narrow the gap between rising cyber incidents and India’s capacity to produce cybersecurity talent. The curriculum combines cybersecurity, computer science, artificial intelligence and systems courses.

Saxena estimated that the cybersecurity market could grow by about 15% annually over the next five to 10 years. He said premier institutes would not expand student numbers at the same pace, leaving a gap between industry and national-security needs and the supply of trained workers. That shortage, he said, could create strong demand and competitive salaries for graduates.

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There will be a lot of demand and competition to attract them. They will get decent salaries