Clued computer administrators are the need of the hour, guys who can fix a multitude of issues which lead to serious security flaws are needed more than ever. Guys who have had hands-on exposure on systems facing production are to be coveted than fresh hands. Personnel having multiple operating systems knowledge are in demand, particularly on free/GNU systems.
the hacker is a misnomer in this context. people widely believe "hackers" to be evil. that is far from the truth, hacker is someone who explores the limits of software, and loves to delve in the world of code.
however, cracker is someone with a malicious intention, mostly driven by profit motives and does this work on the sly. althouh a large number of viruses are written out of frustration, or by script kiddies who want to test how far they can reach, in terms of notoriety. probably the third and most insidious of them all are the subversive elements who want to disrpt the social/ moral/ ethical fabric - like the ones we have seen recently. uploading images with the intent of harm.
we don't need a ton of hackers in the sense the author has said. we could very well use our existing IT people to spread the awareness message to their family & friends. everyone uses a smartphone, whenever we meet our folks, make sue they don't alarmed by our scary sounding consequences, but teach them safety measures while using their cellphones.
