The start-up fund - an elegant treaty mechanism for sustaining defence capabilities. Security Policy Brief No. 48, June 2013

When the European Council meets in December, it will face a range of decisions which will lay the foundations for Europe's defence posture and role in the wider world for decades to come, perhaps even beyond the remainder of this century. The Lisbon Treaty has, for the first time, equipped the EU with the range of means to meet that role in practice. The question that remains to be answered is whether Europe's leaders have the political will to implement those means in full.

Mass Surveillance of Personal Data by EU Member States and its Compatibility with EU Law. CEPS Liberty and Security in Europe No. 61, 6 November 2013

In the wake of the disclosures surrounding PRISM and other US surveillance programmes, this paper assesses the large-scale surveillance practices by a selection of EU member states: the UK, Sweden, France, Germany and the Netherlands. Given the large-scale nature of these practices, which represent a reconfiguration of traditional intelligence gathering, the paper contends that an analysis of European surveillance programmes cannot be reduced to a question of the balance between data protection versus national security, but has to be framed in terms of collective freedoms and democracy. It finds that four of the five EU member states selected for in-depth examination are engaging in some form of large-scale interception and surveillance of communication data, and identifies parallels and discrepancies between these programmes and the NSA-run operations. The paper argues that these programmes do not stand outside the realm of EU intervention but can be analysed from an EU law perspective via i) an understanding of national security in a democratic rule of law framework where fundamental human rights and judicial oversight constitute key norms; ii) the risks posed to the internal security of the Union as a whole as well as the privacy of EU citizens as data owners and iii) the potential spillover into the activities and responsibilities of EU agencies. The paper then presents a set of policy recommendations to the European Parliament.

GAO's views on an independent Social Security Administration and the personal earnings and benefit statement /

"June 2, 1989."

Cryptographic techniques for personal communication systems security

The advent of personal communication systems within the last decade has depended upon the utilization of advanced digital schemes for source and channel coding and for modulation. The inherent digital nature of the communications processing has allowed the convenient incorporation of cryptographic techniques to implement security in these communications systems. There are various security requirements, of both the service provider and the mobile subscriber, which may be provided for in a personal communications system. Such security provisions include the privacy of user data, the authentication of communicating parties, the provision for data integrity, and the provision for both location confidentiality and party anonymity. This thesis is concerned with an investigation of the private-key and public-key cryptographic techniques pertinent to the security requirements of personal communication systems and an analysis of the security provisions of Second-Generation personal communication systems is presented. Particular attention has been paid to the properties of the cryptographic protocols which have been employed in current Second-Generation systems. It has been found that certain security-related protocols implemented in the Second-Generation systems have specific weaknesses. A theoretical evaluation of these protocols has been performed using formal analysis techniques and certain assumptions made during the development of the systems are shown to contribute to the security weaknesses. Various attack scenarios which exploit these protocol weaknesses are presented. The Fiat-Sharmir zero-knowledge cryptosystem is presented as an example of how asymmetric algorithm cryptography may be employed as part of an improved security solution. Various modifications to this cryptosystem have been evaluated and their critical parameters are shown to be capable of being optimized to suit a particular applications. The implementation of such a system using current smart card technology has been evaluated.

Exploiting sensitivity of nonorthogonal joint diagonalisation as a security mechanism in steganography

We have recently proposed the framework of independent blind source separation as an advantageous approach to steganography. Amongst the several characteristics noted was a sensitivity to message reconstruction due to small perturbations in the sources. This characteristic is not common in most other approaches to steganography. In this paper we discuss how this sensitivity relates the joint diagonalisation inside the independent component approach, and reliance on exact knowledge of secret information, and how it can be used as an additional and inherent security mechanism against malicious attack to discovery of the hidden messages. The paper therefore provides an enhanced mechanism that can be used for e-document forensic analysis and can be applied to different dimensionality digital data media. In this paper we use a low dimensional example of biomedical time series as might occur in the electronic patient health record, where protection of the private patient information is paramount.

Reinforcing the security of corporate information resources:a critical review of the role of the acceptable use policy

Increasingly users are seen as the weak link in the chain, when it comes to the security of corporate information. Should the users of computer systems act in any inappropriate or insecure manner, then they may put their employers in danger of financial losses, information degradation or litigation, and themselves in danger of dismissal or prosecution. This is a particularly important concern for knowledge-intensive organisations, such as universities, as the effective conduct of their core teaching and research activities is becoming ever more reliant on the availability, integrity and accuracy of computer-based information resources. One increasingly important mechanism for reducing the occurrence of inappropriate behaviours, and in so doing, protecting corporate information, is through the formulation and application of a formal ‘acceptable use policy (AUP). Whilst the AUP has attracted some academic interest, it has tended to be prescriptive and overly focussed on the role of the Internet, and there is relatively little empirical material that explicitly addresses the purpose, positioning or content of real acceptable use policies. The broad aim of the study, reported in this paper, is to fill this gap in the literature by critically examining the structure and composition of a sample of authentic policies – taken from the higher education sector – rather than simply making general prescriptions about what they ought to contain. There are two important conclusions to be drawn from this study: (1) the primary role of the AUP appears to be as a mechanism for dealing with unacceptable behaviour, rather than proactively promoting desirable and effective security behaviours, and (2) the wide variation found in the coverage and positioning of the reviewed policies is unlikely to be fostering a coherent approach to security management, across the higher education sector.

South American Defense Council: What it Means for Regional Security?

The South American Defense Council (CSD), created in March 2009 as a military coordinating body of the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) demonstrates a growing trend among Latin American countries to approach matters of regional security independent of the United States. The CSD also indicates a maturation of democratic civil military relations in a region once dominated by authoritarian military regimes. The CSD aims to facilitate the exchange of information about regional defense policies, promote collaboration for disaster relief, and promote civil-military engagement. In less than a year it is hardly a tested entity, but the presence of 12 South American states coming together around security policy marks an important moment in the evolution of civil-military relations in the region. Brazil has taken on an important leadership role in the CSD, acting as a leader in recent regional peacekeeping efforts. As a geopolitical move, Brazil also sees a benefit in promoting good relationships with all countries of South america, given its common border with nine of them. Although the United States is not a member of the CSD, the organization's agenda of infromation exchange of defense policies, military cooperation, and capacity building, including disaster assistance and preparedness provide opportunities for greater collaboration. The CSD is not part of the Inter-American System created after the Second World War. It is unclear how its work will coincide with the OAS Committee on Hemispheric Security or its Secretariat for Multidimensional Security. The U.S. should view the CSD as a mechanism to promote joint initiatives that encourage democratic governance in the region.

Efficient Security and Privacy Enhancing Solutions in Untrusted Environments

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Washington, 2016-08

Securing the commercial internet: Lessons learned in developing a postgraduate course in information security management

This paper describes the inception, planning and first delivery of a security course as part of a postgraduate ecommerce program. The course is reviewed in terms of existing literature on security courses, the common body of knowledge established for security professionals and the job market into which students will graduate. The course described in this paper is a core subject for the e-commerce program. This program was established in 1999 and the first batch of students graduated in 2001. The program is offered at both postgraduate and undergraduate level. The work described here relates to the postgraduate offering. Students on this program are graduates of diverse disciplines and do not have a common e-commerce or business background.

Improving Remote Voting Security with Code Voting

One of the major problems that prevents the spread of elections with the possibility of remote voting over electronic networks, also called Internet Voting, is the use of unreliable client platforms, such as the voter's computer and the Internet infrastructure connecting it to the election server. A computer connected to the Internet is exposed to viruses, worms, Trojans, spyware, malware and other threats that can compromise the election's integrity. For instance, it is possible to write a virus that changes the voter's vote to a predetermined vote on election's day. Another possible attack is the creation of a fake election web site where the voter uses a malicious vote program on the web site that manipulates the voter's vote (phishing/pharming attack). Such attacks may not disturb the election protocol, therefore can remain undetected in the eyes of the election auditors. We propose the use of Code Voting to overcome insecurity of the client platform. Code Voting consists in creating a secure communication channel to communicate the voter's vote between the voter and a trusted component attached to the voter's computer. Consequently, no one controlling the voter's computer can change the his/her's vote. The trusted component can then process the vote according to a cryptographic voting protocol to enable cryptographic verification at the server's side.

Contexts-management strategy in considering the security in urban computing based on urban design

Urban Computing (UrC) provides users with the situation-proper information by considering context of users, devices, and social and physical environment in urban life. With social network services, UrC makes it possible for people with common interests to organize a virtual-society through exchange of context information among them. In these cases, people and personal devices are vulnerable to fake and misleading context information which is transferred from unauthorized and unauthenticated servers by attackers. So called smart devices which run automatically on some context events are more vulnerable if they are not prepared for attacks. In this paper, we illustrate some UrC service scenarios, and show important context information, possible threats, protection method, and secure context management for people.

Security in multicast communication

Multicast is one method to transfer information in IPv4 based communication. Other methods are unicast and broadcast. Multicast is based on the group concept where data is sent from one point to a group of receivers and this remarkably saves bandwidth. Group members express an interest to receive data by using Internet Group Management Protocol and traffic is received by only those receivers who want it. The most common multicast applications are media streaming applications, surveillance applications and data collection applications. There are many data security methods to protect unicast communication that is the most common transfer method in Internet. Popular data security methods are encryption, authentication, access control and firewalls. The characteristics of multicast such as dynamic membership cause that all these data security mechanisms can not be used to protect multicast traffic. Nowadays the protection of multicast traffic is possible via traffic restrictions where traffic is allowed to propagate only to certain areas. One way to implement this is packet filters. Methods tested in this thesis are MVR, IGMP Filtering and access control lists which worked as supposed. These methods restrict the propagation of multicast but are laborious to configure in a large scale. There are also a few manufacturerspecific products that make possible to encrypt multicast traffic. These separate products are expensive and mainly intended to protect video transmissions via satellite. Investigation of multicast security has taken place for several years and the security methods that will be the results of the investigation are getting ready. An IETF working group called MSEC is standardizing these security methods. The target of this working group is to standardize data security protocols for multicast during 2004.

Complete Analysis of Configuration Rules to Guarantee Reliable Network Security Policies

Peer-reviewed