Bharat Bytes: Equinix’s new data centre; Clover Infotech to hire; SentinelOne opens tech centre; Cabinet approves 5G auction; Cybersecurity gaps

Equinix builds third data centre in Mumbai

To serve the rapidly increasing digital infrastructure demand, digital infrastructure company Equinix has announced an initial investment of over US $86 million to build its third International Business Exchange (IBX) data centre in Mumbai, to be named MB3, a release from Equinix said.

This initial investment includes an acquisition of a parcel of land, which provides a total space of nearly four acres, allowing Equinix to continue growing its rich ecosystem on Platform Equinix across India, supporting the country’s growing digital economy.

As the financial and commerce hub of India, Mumbai is the country’s top data centre market and is expected to grow over 2.5 times to nearly 530 megawatts (MW) by 2023 as per a recent report by JLL.

MB3 IBX will be adjacent to Equinix MB2 IBX data centre and 1.5 kilometers away from MB1 IBX data centre. The first phase of MB3 is scheduled to open in Q2 2024, providing an initial capacity of more than 1,375 cabinets, and more than 4,150 cabinets when fully built out, the release said.

Globally, Equinix operates more than 240 data centres across 70 metros, providing digital infrastructure for more than 10,000 of the world’s leading businesses. In Asia-Pacific, Equinix currently has 52 data centers in key metros across Australia, China, Hong Kong, India, Japan, Korea and Singapore, the release added.

Clover Infotech to hire 2500 freshers across India

Clover Infotech, IT services and consulting firm, has announced its plan to hire 2500 freshers. Through this initiative, it will cater to the increasing demand from its clientele for trained resources skilled in handling critical technology areas and transaction-oriented environments such as banking, a release from the company said.

The company is hiring from tier-2 and tier-3 cities such as Shirpur, Dhule, Akola, and Jalgaon, in addition to cities where it serves key customers across the banking and financial services space. These cities include Mumbai, Pune, Delhi NCR, Chennai, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, and Cochin.

Clover Infotech, through its training and knowledge arm, Clover Academy, is planning to conduct placement drives at various campuses to undertake a structured hiring process. Since most of its customers are from the banking, insurance, and financial services space, Clover Academy ensures special emphasis on imparting training to manage mission-critical technology environments. Clover Academy’s training program also incorporates modules on soft-skills and interpersonal skills. The objective is to equip freshers with the necessary technical, functional, and communication skills to enable them to thrive as IT professionals, the release said.

The company serves over 150 customers across India, Middle East, Europe, and the US. The customers range from leading global corporations to promising start-ups in sectors such as banking, insurance, financial services, manufacturing, retail, and information and communication technology.

SentinelOne opens technology centre in Bengaluru

US security software maker SentinelOne has launched a technology and operations centre in Bengaluru. The centre will develop product roadmaps, conduct threat research, do engineering, and recruit top talent to modernise cyber defence.

As part of the investment and build out, customer data will be stored in a local data centre. In the coming years, SentinelOne plans to invest $50 million in India.

“SentinelOne’s Bengaluru operations centre represents an investment in talent and technology to serve the local market and our global customer base,” said chief technology officer Ric Smith.

SentinelOne’s purpose-built AI-powered extended detection and response (XDR) platform to make cybersecurity defence autonomous, from endpoint and beyond.

Cabinet approves 5G spectrum auction

Taking the first step towards rolling out 5G services, the government has invited bid applications for spectrum auctions starting 26 July 2022 after the Union Cabinet on 15 June 2022 cleared a proposal to auction over 72,000 megahertz, or 72 GHz, of airwaves with a validity period of 20 years.

The auction will be held for spectrum in the frequencies of 600 MHz, 700 MHz, 800 MHz, 900 MHz, 1,800 MHz, 2,100 MHz, 2,300 MHz, 3,300 MHz, and 26 GHz bands. At reserve price, the entirety of the spectrum is valued at over Rs 5 lakh crore. “It is expected that the mid and high band spectrum will be utilised by telecom service providers to roll out 5G technology-based services capable of providing speed and capacities which would be about 10 times higher than what is possible through the current 4G services,” an official statement said.

Visibility, control gaps are undermining security in India: Study

Trend Micro’s new global study indicates that organizations are struggling to define and secure an expanding cyber-attack surface, hampering risk management efforts.

The study revealed that on average, organisations in India have only 67% visibility over their complete attack surface while 95% of organizations have been able to define their attack surface to an extent. Over a 39% of organizations feel completely exposed to cyber risk in case of a cloud outage, a release from Trend Micro said.

Trend Micro surveyed 6297 IT and business decision makers across 29 countries including India to compile the study.

Visibility challenges appear to be the main reason organizations are struggling to manage and understand cyber risk in these environments. 92% of respondents are concerned about the ever evolving and broadening attack surface, the release said,

Major investments done in IT modernization in recent years seems to have created a momentum that is becoming increasingly difficult to manage.64% of the survey respondents highlighted that their organization’s digital attack surface is complex but can be controlled.

The attack surface visibility is extremely challenging in the current times due to various reasons such as lacking the right tool, or organizations have too many tools that is keeping information in silos, constant technology innovation, lack of visibility, etc. 41% of respondents feel that their organization’s attack surface has the least visibility over network assets, the release said.