The number of people queuing up before the employment exchanges are disproportionately more than those who are being placed in jobs.

The latest figures from the ministry of labour and employment state that twenty-three thousand persons were placed in jobs during December 2005 who had registered themselves in employment exchanges in the country. This is minuscule, compared to the 5.16 lakh candidates, who had registered themselves in employment exchanges during the month.

The total number of persons awaiting employment, as per live register, in the employment exchanges was over 3.93 crores in December 2005. A communication from the ministry of labour and employment informs that 99 handicapped persons were also placed in jobs during the month. But here too, the number of physically handicapped who were seeking jobs far outnumber those who got one. It points out that 595 persons had registered themselves in the Special Employment Exchanges for the physically handicapped during December 2005.

The number of such applicants who were on the live register of these exchanges at the end of December 2005 was 1,11,927.

According to a recent IBM survey, 78 per cent of Indian businesses (compared to 66 per cent globally) perceive that threats to corporate security are now coming from inside the organisation. Close to 91 per cent of IT executives in India believe that organised criminal groups possessing technical sophistication are replacing lone hackers in the world of cyber-crime. The threat from unprotected systems in developing countries is also an emerging threat, said 65 per cent of Indian businesses. However, most Indian businesses believe that Indian lawmakers are doing enough to help businesses and consumers fight cyber-crime. The survey conducted in the healthcare, financial, retail and manufacturing sectors, indicated that IT business executives rank upgrading their firewall and implementing a vulnerability/patch management system on the networks as immediate priorities to be undertaken over the year. Indian businesses believe that loss of revenue ranks as the highest key cost associated with cyber-crime while loss of market capitalisation coming second.

Symantec Corp., the global security solutions provider, on Monday, opened its new R&D centre spread over five acres of land in Pune. The first phase of the facility has the capacity for approximately 650 technical staff and engineers from the company’s R&D, IT, and technical support teams in India. The second phase, due to be completed by year end, is expected to accommodate more than 1,500 employees, with additional plans to expand further into the future.

Mr John Thompson, chairman and chief executive officer of Symantec, said, "We have grown our presence here in India from four engineers 14 years ago to more than 1,700 today. As Symantec continues to grow, we expect our footprint in India to more than double over the next several years. We are opening the first phase of our new India Centre of Innovation, that will house highly skilled engineers, focused on building solutions to help individuals and enterprises assure the complete protection of their information, infrastructure, and interactions." Symantec is currently recruiting for over 100 new positions across a range of areas including software engineering, development, quality assurance and IT.