Constraining Ground Force Exercises of NATO and the Warsaw Pact

Confidence and security building measures (CSBMs) have long been the neglected stepchild of serious arms control analysis. Some view CSBMs as arms control junk food, frivolous, unworkable, or even detrimental. Others are so enamored of the concept that they expect proposals to be accepted as prima facie desirable. After all, the very term confidence and security connotes stability and peace. The problem with both positions is often the dearth of hard analysis in support of the ideas put forward and the abstract nature of the discussions of security building. As witnessed in the contrast between the quiet success of the 1972 Incidents at Sea Agreement and the disastrous Trojan Horse episode of ancient Greece, CSBMs can have good or bad results. It is necessary to sort out analytically which CSBMs make sense to enhance security in Europe. This study aims to do that in the case of one important type of CSBM: constraints on the military ground exercises of NATO and the Warsaw Treaty Organization (WTO or Warsaw Pact)

The Post-9/11 US-Led State-Building in Afghanistan

Following the fall of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan in 2001, the US shed much blood and spent enormous funds in the country as part of its “War on Terror” as well as for reconstruction and institution-building there. As the US intervention in Afghanistan mainly focused on dismantling Al-Qaeda and toppling the Taliban regime, it also aimed at establishing a functioning state. Along the way, US policy makers also made a number of mistakes which undermined the US-led international coalition’s own stated mission and goals. Thus, after spending around two decades in Afghanistan, the US failed to fully achieve its desired objectives. Based on a literature review, this paper discusses the reasons why the US-led state-building efforts in Afghanistan achieved limited success. It aims to reveal the US’ miscalculations and mistakes in Afghanistan from the perspective of three major components of state-building, i.e. Security and Peace; Democratization; and Reconstruction & Economic Development

Factors that Affect the Success of Security Education, Training, and Awareness Programs: A Literature Review

Preventing IT security incidents poses a great challenge for organizations. Today, senior managers allocate more resources to IT security programs (especially those programs that focus on educating and training employees) in order to reduce human misbehavior—a significant cause of IT security incidents. Building on the results of a literature review, we identify factors that affect the success of security education, training, and awareness (SETA) programs and organize them in a conceptual classification. The classification contains human influencing factors derived from different behavioral, decision making, and criminology theories that lead to IT security compliance and noncompliance. The classification comprehensively summarizes these factors and shows the correlations between them. The classification can help one to design and develop SETA programs and to establish suitable conditions for integrating them into organizations

Business-to-Consumer Electronic Commerce Success Factors in Thailand: The Website Merchant Perspectives

Electronic Commerce (E-Commerce) is considered a new channel of distribution that consumers can reach websites at anytime and from anywhere. In reality, however, consumers are not yet confident in on-line transactions. Several Thai website owners who operate business to consumer (B2C) e-commerce stated nine major success factors: government support, security and privacy, customer service, administrative support, online promotion, product uniqueness, logistics, product variety, and image creation. It is necessary that website merchants study various success factors, having impact on achieving business value of e-commerce investment and building customer trust which would then bring long-term profits to the organization

BUILDING TRUST AMONG THE CLIENTS OF CLOUD COMPUTING INDUSTRY. CASE STUDY OF TRELLO, INC.

Purpose: The main objective of this paper is to identify proper practices for building clients’ trust by Trello, Inc., aimed to convince potential clients of their cloud-based services. Approach: In this paper, the case study of Trello, Inc. is used to analyze the case data, aimed to examine the causal links between actions taken to gain clients’ trust and their observed effects. Implications: This paper provides insight into building trust in Business to Business (B2B). Using cloud technologies to offer services enables a company to create innovative value proposition, or in other cases, add new features and attributes to it that cater to the clients’ needs. It involves different approach of the company in building clients’ trust than if it offered services in traditional way. To handle this issue effective trust management implementation is required. Findings: This paper provides suggestions of trust management actions which can be taken and are not limited to data security guarantee. Value of the paper: This paper underlines proper practices – based on the success of Trello, Inc. – for building clients’ trust by business where aim is to convince potential clients of enterprise’s cloud-based service.

The Economic Impact of Privacy Violations and Security Breaches

Privacy and security incidents represent a serious threat for a company’s business success. While previous research in this area mainly investigated second-order effects (e.g., capital market reactions to privacy or security incidents), this study focuses on first-order effects, that is, the direct consumer reaction. In a laboratory experiment, the authors distinguish between the impact of privacy violations and security breaches on the subjects’ trust and behavior. They provide evidence for the so-called “privacy paradox” which describes that people’s intentions, with regard to privacy, differ from their actual behavior. While privacy is of prime importance for building trust, the actual behavior is affected less and customers value security higher when it comes to actual decision making. According to the results, consumers’ privacy related intention-behavior gap persists after the privacy breach occurred

Dual Incentives and Dual Asset Building: The Hutubi Rural Social Security Loan Program in China

The Hutubi Rural Social Security Loan program is a policy innovation in a rural area of China by loaning savings in social security accounts back to peasants for them to purchase assets for agricultural and other development. In contrast to the nationwide recession in rural social security, this program has shown its success in proliferating rural social security funds and retaining social security participants. With a focus on the administrative data of the loan program, this study aims to provide an in-depth understanding of the loan program and examine how asset building is possible for the poor when institutional incentives are offered. The findings show that when proper policy incentives are provided, poor peasants can build assets. The Hutubi program may be a good model for other rural areas in China and other developing countries

Safety and Security at Special Events: The Case of the Salt Lake City Olympic Games

Special events offer the potential for considerable threats to public safety. Perhaps no other special event rivals the Olympic Games in scope, duration, and potential for threat to communities, participants, and dignitaries. This paper reports on the results of a study of safety and security at the Salt Lake Olympic Games by a team of researchers with wide-ranging access to operations, personnel and documents from the security effort at the 2002 Winter Games. This paper focuses on three specific areas: changing definitions of safety and security during the Games; the development and maintenance of organizational structures and interaction; and lessons learned for other large-scale events. The goal of this paper is to document some of the challenges of establishing a temporary security organization. The paper concludes that building such organizations require for their success a major focus on creating a set of shared assumptions and working relationships

The New Security Perimeter with the United States

After 9/11, several decades of success in building a more open US-Canadian border came to an end due to rising security concerns. To ameliorate this trend, both countries are now attempting to make their border more permeable. This paper attempts to predict how a new security perimeter agreement will be negotiated and what subjects will be covered by any new agreement or series of agreements. Sensitive issues such as privacy, civil rights and harmonization of national regulations, trade and security practices are examined. The paper also deals with the twin problems of the current lack of trust in politicians and governments and the difficulty of getting an agreement before the American presidential and Congressional elections get under way in earnest. The paper concludes with an examination of what the consequences will be if no agreement is reached between Canada and the US on a new security and trade perimeter