GEORGE TOWN, Sept 24 ― A Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM) professor has proposed that cybersecurity be incorporated into the national school syllabus.

Associate Professor M. Selvakumar, a researcher at USM’s National Advanced IPv6 Centre (NAv6), said he is leading a team from USM in developing the subject.

"This programme is to educate and guide internet users, especially those on social media, to prevent them from falling victim to cyber crimes,” he told reporters at the International Security Seminar here.

He claimed there was no other way to combat cybercrimes and online scams.

"This is why we need a specific programme that takes into account common human behaviours to educate people so that they are not easily duped by those they meet online,” he said.

He said his team has been working on the programme for months and expect to complete it by the end of the year.

"We hope to showcase it to the Education Ministry so that it can be incorporated as part of the education syllabus in schools,” he said.

Selvakumar claimed that there is no software or anti-virus programmes in the market that can stop or detect cyber crimes and internet scams.

"The tactics used by these cyber criminals and scammers are far too advanced compared to any safety features that anti-virus software have,” he said.

He said most of these cyber crimes and scams involved human error and emotions so it is more complicated than using a software to try to block the scammers.

"Cyber crime is increasing and it is not easy to detect or eliminate as there are large syndicates that are specially trained to do this,” he said.

He said anyone could be a "cyber criminal” as they only need to invest time to do it and this was why it was hard to completely eradicate cyber criminals.

Selvakumar had earlier presented a work paper at the seminar that was themed cyber crimes.

The two-day seminar was officiated by the Penang Police Chief Datuk T. Narenasagaran and it was attended by about 10 international experts on cyber crimes and about 100 participants from all over the world.