India needs more than 4 lakh hackers'

According to CERT-In, the national incident response centre, a government nodal agency, at least 42 million Indians were hit by cyber crimes and the recorded loss of the same was a staggering $8 billion loss in disaster in the past 12 months.

Mohan Gandhi, an Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad graduate provides anti-piracy solutions through his company Entersoft Information Systems. In this interview with rediff.com's Vicky Nanjappa, Gandhi speaks about the challenges while dealing with cyber security and also what it is to be an ethical hacker.
How important is it for India to have ethical hackers?
Forty two million Indians were hit by cyber crimes in the last 12 months, with a total of $8 billion recorded in direct financial losses to the corporate world. India is the third-most affected nation due to hackers.
In terms of cyber attacking abilities and fortification standards of India is far below Israel, the United States and China. China filters and monitors almost every packet/piece of information.
Unfortunately, India has seen many government, and defense websites being hacked in the recent times. Our country has been traditionally defensive in terms of information security.
Have we identified the importance of ethical hackers?
Corporate India has now identified the importance of ethical hackers and almost every security company has them as a strategy to perform ethical covet activities. According to latest estimation by Cert-In, India is in need of more than 4 lakh ethical hackers.
The world has seen how important intellectual property in this century is. Firms such as Apple, Samsung and Microsoft of the world use patenting for competitive edge.