Hyderabad, July 6 (IANS): In a key initiative in cyber security, Telangana decided to raise "cyber warriors" to protect data of various government departments.

The C.R. Rao Advanced Institute of Mathematics, Statistics and Computer Science (AIMSCS) will set up a cyber security academy, which will create cyber warriors who can be employed by both the government and private agencies.

A memorandum of understanding (MoU) to this effect was signed on Monday between the state government and the institute.

The institute's director Allam Appa Rao and Information Technology Secretary Jayesh Ranjansigned the MoU in the presence of state's Information Technology Minister K. Tarakarama Rao and institute chairman C. Rangarajan.

The institute will help the government protect its data bases, especially those relating to Aadhaar, civil supplies and household survey.

It will also train in-house personnel within the government departments to protect databases in the future.

Rangarajan congratulated both the institute and the state government for entering into an agreement to make cyber security a reality.

Underlining the need for cyber security to counter increasing threats, the former governor of Reserve Bank of India (RBI) said criminally-minded people earlier used to circulate fake currency to damage credibility of a country's economy but now they can cause great deal of damage to the economy through cyber attacks on banking systems.