AI skills are a priority for employers, but 79% struggle to find qualified talent, says top AWS exec

Retail giant Amazon’s cloud computing arm, Amazon Web Services (AWS), has partnered with the Data Security Council of India (DSCI) to launch an initiative aligned with DSCI’s National Centre of Excellence for Cybersecurity Technology Development (N-CoE), a joint effort with MeitY. The initiative aims to empower start-ups and independent software vendors (ISVs) to leverage generative AI for innovation in cybersecurity and the development of commercially deployable solutions. VG Sundar Ram, Head of Business Development, AWS India and South Asia, shared insights with Business Today on the role of generative AI in cybersecurity. Edited excerpts:  

BT: How do you envision Generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) transforming cybersecurity in industries like healthcare, which handle sensitive patient data?

VGS: Patient data is highly valuable, encompassing both personal health information and financial details, making healthcare data particularly sensitive and critical. Generative AI offers significant potential to enhance cybersecurity, with applications across various domains, including healthcare.

For instance, in threat detection and analytics, generative AI can enable real-time anomaly detection in user behaviour or develop predictive threat models based on historical attack patterns. In incident response and recovery, it can assist security professionals by automating incident playbook generation and visualising real-time attacks, thereby improving preparedness and solution development.

In the realm of threat intelligence, generative AI can significantly aid in profiling threat actor behaviours, generating automated threat intelligence reports, and monitoring the dark web for analysis.

BT: Can you provide examples of how generative AI has already been applied in enterprise settings, particularly in health and pharma?

VGS: Speaking specifically about healthcare, AWS plays a pivotal role in driving new discoveries in patient care, diagnostics, therapeutics, and more. Our cost-effective, scalable, and secure compute, storage, data analytics, and database capabilities accelerate breakthroughs.

For example, Genomics England, a leader in human genome research, is developing a solution using Claude 3 models on Amazon Bedrock to identify associations between genetic variants and medical conditions. This solution can process millions of pages of literature to identify high-likelihood gene associations for further investigation, significantly faster than manual reviews, with 20 clinically relevant associations already identified.

In India, AWS collaborates with Eka Care, a healthcare start-up addressing the rising prevalence of non-communicable diseases such as diabetes and hypertension. Eka Care developed a digital solution, Eka Doc, using Amazon Bedrock. It streamlines patient management by enabling doctors to easily access and update medical histories, diagnoses, and treatments, thereby saving valuable time.

BT: How can cybersecurity start-ups in the healthcare and pharma domains leverage the DSCI National CoE initiative to innovate and grow?

VGS: Building a safe cyberspace is crucial for the growth of India’s digital economy, as organisations across sectors increasingly develop digital products and solutions and adopt cloud computing to innovate. In healthcare and life sciences, organisations are transforming how they collaborate, make data-driven clinical and operational decisions, enable precision medicine, and reduce the cost of care. This transformation involves working with open datasets, adhering to healthcare compliance requirements across multiple countries, and protecting sensitive data.

AWS’s collaboration with DSCI will provide Indian healthcare start-ups and ISVs with resources, training, and access to AWS services in generative AI. They will benefit from industry-leading large language models (LLMs), foundation models (FMs), and AI tools to accelerate product development and gain expertise in rapid prototyping and scaling. Mentorship from AWS experts in security solutions and AI, along with leaders from DSCI, will facilitate hands-on learning and collaboration, covering technical concepts, security controls, compliance, and privacy requirements.

Additionally, start-ups and ISVs will explore opportunities for commercialisation and expansion via AWS Marketplace, a curated digital catalogue catering to specific customer needs, and other tailored programmes for both domestic and international markets.

BT: What are the biggest challenges you foresee in implementing generative AI in health sector cybersecurity, and how does AWS aim to address them?

VGS: Generative AI is a relatively new technology, and a major challenge is the lack of specialised talent capable of harnessing it for disruptive applications, advancing healthcare missions, and delivering better patient outcomes. Helping start-ups, ISVs, professionals, and students acquire skills in generative AI within a cybersecurity context is critical.

A study titled “Accelerating AI Skills: Preparing the Asia-Pacific Workforce for Jobs of the Future,” conducted by Access Partnership and commissioned by AWS, found that over 90% of Indian employers prioritise hiring AI-skilled talent, yet 79% struggle to find the required expertise. Moreover, the report “Building Digital Skills for the Changing Workforce,” prepared by AlphaBeta and commissioned by AWS, highlights that cybersecurity skills will be among the top five most in-demand digital skills by 2025.

To address this gap, AWS has launched “AI Ready,” a commitment to provide free AI skills training to 2 million people globally by 2025. This initiative includes eight new and free AI and generative AI courses, the AWS Generative AI Scholarship, offering over 50,000 high school and university students access to a new generative AI course on Udacity and a collaboration with Code.org to help students learn about generative AI. Through these programmes, AWS aims to remove barriers to accessing critical skills, ensuring the workforce is equipped to handle AI-powered cybersecurity tools effectively.