‘Ethical hackers’ help is welcome’

Exhorting the youth to contribute to warding off cyber security threats, Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu said the government would reward those exposing the deficiencies in its websites by doing ethical hacking.

Inaugurating the Andhra Pradesh Cyber Security Operations Centre (CSOC) here on Monday, Mr. Naidu said the rapid advances in the IT sector posed many challenges and complacency in identifying the vulnerabilities and in fighting against them would have disastrous consequences.

Perceiving such threats, the State government has set up the CSOC. It would help in controlling cyber crime and, more importantly, securing the government’s online databases which are public assets.

Advisor (e-Governance and electronics and IT) J. Satyanarayana explained the features of the cyber security framework and complimented the IT, Electronics and Communications Department for crossing the major milestone of setting up the CSOC. Minister of Information Technology Nara Lokesh, Principal Secretary (IT) K. Vijayanand and representatives of Tech Mahindra were among those present.