"It could not be postponed; we are heading there. Cybersecurity is the third priority in the states defense efforts after radicalism in addition to terrorism and drugs," Major General Hartind Asrin, head of the education and training department of the Defense Ministry, noted in a press statement, here, Wednesday.
Indonesia should optimize its existing human resources to recruit 10 thousand cybersecurity experts, Asrin stated while attending "Cyber Jawara (Champion)" national hacker competition being held in Kuta, Bali, on Sept 26-29, 2017.
"This Cyber Jawara national hacker competition is one such platform to find potential talent in Indonesias younger generation. We, in the Defense Ministry, also focus on preparing an alert team to fight cyber threats," he noted.
The world needs at least one million cybersecurity experts to fight cybercrimes and threats in the cyber world, according to Dr Rudi Lumanto, chairman of the Indonesia Security Incident Response Team on Internet Infrastructure or the Monitoring Team on Cyber Attack Threats.
Currently, Indonesia has only some hundreds to a thousand internationally certified cybersecurity experts, he said.
"We need to educate more and improve the capabilities of our human resources," he noted.
The competition is being held to coincide with an international seminar and workshops themed "CodeBali 2017."
Prof Andrew Martin from Oxford University is the key speaker at the seminars opening ceremony held on Wednesday.
Prof Martins recent research has focused on the technologies of Trusted Computing and exploring ways in which they can be applied in large-scale distributed systems, particularly cloud computing, mobile devices, and Internet of Things (IoT).
The workshop covers digital forensics, malware analysis, creating and managing a computer security incident response team, and IoT penetration testing, among other things.
The winner of the competition will participate in a regional competition at the level of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in Bangkok, Thailand.
"The winning ASEAN-level team will be sent to Tokyo for an Asian-level competition and then to a world competition in Las Vegas, the US," Lumanto added.
This year, 20 teams, which had entered the final after clearing a nationwide online test, are participating in the national competition.
Reported by Edy M Yakub
Editor: Ida Nurcahyani
Copyright © ANTARA 2017
