Dire shortage of security experts spurs gov't to help IT training
Source: Mainichi Daily News
Date: July 14, 2003
Facing a severe shortage of information technology (IT) experts, the government will set up Japan's first institution to help firms train counter-terrorism experts able to deal with hackers, the Mainichi has learned.
A government survey estimated that the world's second largest economy is in need of an incredible 420,000 more IT experts than it currently has, some 120,000 of whom should be security experts.
The government hopes that the special "counter terrorism" center will train at least 1,000 IT security experts annually. To help the center provide effective training programs and education materials, the government will subsidize half their costs.
"To protect Japan's information infrastructure, we must train experts," said an official in charge of the project. He added that the government has decided to spend taxpayers' money on the institution because counter-terrorism programs need a large amount of initial investment.
Under the government's plan, trainees will have to deal with cyber-terrorism scenarios such as how to deal with computer virus that invade their own computer terminals.
Their computers will also be the target of what is called "distributed denial of service attacks" that try to destroy computer networks by sending a huge amount of information to terminal and host computers.
Officials added that cyber-space terrorism is currently one of the most critical problems around the world.
In January this year, a virus hit computers across South Korea, blocking Internet access for at least 9 hours. (Mainichi Shimbun, Japan, July 13, 2003)
Original article: http://mdn.mainichi.co.jp/news/20030713p2a00m0fp029000c.html
^macro[showdigestcomments;^uri[];Dire shortage of security experts spurs gov't to help IT training]