Indian geeks rated good citizens in cyber city

Indian geeks are among the most sought after worldwide to tweak, maintain and test code but when it comes to cyber crime, thankfully they are not among the leaders. Research by US-based IT security and control firm SophosLabs shows that though India is one of the world’s most technologically booming nations, it ranks surprisingly low when it comes to churning out malware.

The study shows that only 2.8% spam is relayed from India, whereas the US tops the chart at 19.8% followed by China at 7.5%. The study suggests that the onus for low cyber-crime in India goes to a ‘cultural difference’.

Though the US still produces more malware , viruses and spams than any other country in the world, such jobs are increasingly getting outsourced to countries where labour is cheap and legitimate IT jobs are scarce. So scammers in these countries (like China ) are insulated from laws that protect their victims .

That explains China, Brazil and Russia’s inclusion in the top 10 spam-relaying countries of the world. India ranks 11th in the dirty dozen list.

When compared to other countries which feature in the list, India has legitimate IT jobs and good programming knowledge, which can reasonably establish why Indians shy away from the illegal use of such knowledge. “In India, strong cultural values act as a dampener for any illegal activities and we have already seen cyber-crime cells cropping up in different parts of the country, further reducing chances of relaying malware,” contends Nandkumar Saravade, director of cyber-security at the National Association of Software and Services Companies (Nasscom).

There are 20-million computers in India, under 2% of the population, which indicates below par penetration. “Cyber-crime increases with PC penetration,” claims Deepankar Sanwalka , head of KPMG’s forensic department.

He cites stringent control measures by the ITeS sector off late as a reason why cyber-crime in the country has been under check. New analysis from Frost & Sullivan’s ‘World Anti-Malware Products Markets’ reveals that the world market for anti-virus solutions reached $4.7 billion in 2006, up 17.1% from about $4 billion in the previous year and expects this market to grow at a 10.9% CAGR from 2006 to 2013, reaching $9.7 billion by 2013. According to the Sophos study, the overall volume of spam rose by around 4.2% during Q1 2007, when compared to the same period in 2006.