TOKYO: Japan is promoting programs to produce computer hackers as the country needs about 80,000 more information security engineers to deal with cyberwarfare, a report said.

More than 160,000 of the 265,000 already involved in the service need further education, The Mainichi reports quoting government panel of experts on information security.

In addition to increasing the number, it is imperative to secure “manpower with outstanding abilities,” the panel stressed.

In August, 41 high school and university students, aged 16 to 22, gathered at a training institute in the city of Chiba for a five-day “security camp” hosted by the Information-Technology Promotion Agency, or IPA, to learn from experts about computer viruses and cyberterrorism. The participants, chosen from 250 applicants based on computer-related knowledge and skills, also engaged in a hacking competition.

A 20-year-old female student from OkinawaPrefecture said the annual camp offered programs that were of “high levels I’ve never experienced.”

Masahiro Uemura, head of the information security policy section at the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry which oversees the IPA, said, “It is essential to have young hackers with initiative to cope with sophisticated (cyber)attacks.”

The ministry supports Japan’s biggest hacker competition, launched in August, in a bid to recruit young talent.

The ministry has added a plan to its budget request for fiscal 2014 to establish a task force in the IPA to hire a dozen young hackers every year and send them to companies suffering cyberattacks.