apart from pursuing a degree in engineering a number of students are also considering pursuing niche shortterm courses to upgrade their technical skills says pratibha jain several public and private institutions across india offer shortterm programmes to help students develop specific skills focused on the application of technology here are a few certificate courses that engineering students can opt for hacking a course in hacking and cyber security develops a students competence to use softwares to protect sensitive data among the modules covered in this course are ethical hacking web application security network security penetration testing forensics etc the indian school of ethical hacking offers online courses in this field the institute of information security offers similar training at its centres in mumbai chandigarh and pune esecurity ninja the certified cyber security ninja ccsn is an online certification that can be pursued by students in the field of information security the course trains students to use it technical tools to detect loopholes in the transmission and storage of information erp and sap a certification in enterprise resource planning erp with a specialisation in sap equips students with skills to develop and use softwares in the functional areas and business processes of small and midsized organisations sap is an erp system that handles almost all departments of an organisation like finance controlling hr warehouse security research etc the certifications are offered online and onsite by private institutions computers training in c java oracle web design and software engineering are offered by several institutes through online and onsite programmes saurashtra university in gujarat kj somaiya dj sanghvi college of engineering in mumbai ignou etc offer courses online as well as through study centres automation a certificate in the robotics and automation field equips engineers to test automated machinery and implement concepts of efficiency quality safety and reliability private institutes offer certifications in automation technologies analytics iim kolkata offers a oneyear certification in business analytics through distance learning the programme trains students in data mining soft computing design of experiments survey sampling statistical inference etc the writer is an education counsellor based in mumbai