Kochi, May 6 (IANS): The Kerala Police will organise internships for engineering college students at cyber cells in police stations to sensitise and train them to fight cyber crimes.

The first line of defence against such threats is increasing perception and awareness, according to P.P. Jayakumar, senior police officer of Alappuzha Cyber Cell.

"Kerala Police has undertaken a massive awareness campaign to counter cyber attacks by involving youngsters, especially students from IT and computer science. It has started accepting students as interns at cyber cells for training," he said here on Wednesday.

Jayakumar was addressing a conference on "Information Security and Cyber Crime Awareness".

"Once the proposed Cyberdome project announced by the home department becomes operational, it will enable the department to create a pool of youngsters who will be equipped to deal with cyber crimes," he added.

Cyberdome is a state-of-the-art centre to combat cyber crime and carry out advance research on such activities.

It is being set up on a 2,000 square feet area at Technopark in Thiruvananthapuram, a joint venture between the government and private players.

Nearly 80 per cent of the cyber crimes reported in Kerala related to defacement of websites, and hacking of emails and personal pages in social networking sites.

"It is the new generation of youngsters who resort to such cyber crimes and through the sensitisation programme, the department aims to bring down the number of such cases," Jayakumar said.