Understanding and Specifying Information Security Needs to Support the Delivery of High Quality Security Services

In this paper we present an approach for specifying and prioritizing information security requirements in organizations. It is important to prioritize security requirements since hundred per cent security is\ud not achievable and the limited resources available should be directed to satisfy the most important ones. We propose to explicitly link security requirements with the organization’s business vision, i.e. to provide business\ud rationale for security requirements. The rationale is then used as a basis for comparing the importance of different security requirements.\ud Furthermore we discuss how to integrate the aforementioned solution concepts into a service level management process for security services, which is an important step in IT Governance. We validate our approach by way of a focus group session

CHORUS Deliverable 3.3: Vision Document - Intermediate version

The goal of the CHORUS vision document is to create a high level vision on audio-visual search engines in order to give guidance to the future R&D work in this area (in line with the mandate of CHORUS as a Coordination Action). This current intermediate draft of the CHORUS vision document (D3.3) is based on the previous CHORUS vision documents D3.1 to D3.2 and on the results of the six CHORUS Think-Tank meetings held in March, September and November 2007 as well as in April, July and October 2008, and on the feedback from other CHORUS events. The outcome of the six Think-Thank meetings will not just be to the benefit of the participants which are stakeholders and experts from academia and industry – CHORUS, as a coordination action of the EC, will feed back the findings (see Summary) to the projects under its purview and, via its website, to the whole community working in the domain of AV content search. A few subjections of this deliverable are to be completed after the eights (and presumably last) Think-Tank meeting in spring 2009

Interfacing ICT with Entrepreneurship Culture in a Developing Country in Contest with Cyber-Crimes: Gains and Pains

This paper is a cross-sectional analysis, critique and exposé of the impacts and the implications of the interfacing of ICT with entrepreneurship ventures in contest with cyber-crimes in a developing economy such as Nigeria. An entrepreneur is simply an individual who is willing to risk investing time and money in a business activity that has the potential to make a profit or incur loss. More specifically, the enterprising individual is someone who organizes production, bringing together the factors of production viz; land, labor, and capital to make goods and services. He makes business decisions, figuring out what goods to produce and how to produce them even in the face of the emerging cyber-crimes, knowing that there is no guarantee that business decisions will not be sabotaged. Again he innovates, introducing new products & technologies by the applications of information and communication technology (ICT) and related methods as new ways of organizing business. Entrepreneurs come from all types of background. The types of business they create come in all shapes and sizes. They range from, craft shops, wielding, foundries, rubber processing and vulcanizing, food eg “okpapreneur”, ogiri-preneur, akpupreneur, palm-wine-preneur, compu-preneur etc. They are active in all classification of business activity, and are the foundation of the small business sector of our country’s economy. Entrepreneurs are the proprietors of the apprenticeship system that provides primary vehicle for training the labor for small business. The apprenticeship system is one in which an individual serves a proprietor or master for a given period of time in order to learn a trade or craft. It generates a large multiplier effect in employment creation. Generally, there is also a reflection of gross under development of entrepreneurial culture in our academic curricula. Sorrowfully enough, the bane of our educational system curricula, inter alia, is that it is designed towards DEPENDABILITY instead of CREATIVITY to our students (FRCN Oral, 2015). Thus, the present curricula in use in our tertiary institutions should be reorganized and improved upon to serve as an engine of innovation, imagination and vision. The new curricula envisaged should expose students to courses which create opportunities for skill acquisition and entrepreneurship promotion, and broaden access to information and communication technology which encompass all computer-based systems such as tele-conferencing, video-conferencing and the Internet with its world wide web (www).The present picture of our educational system shows defects in national priorities due to lack of proper planning. Data from the National Universities commission show that, the Polytechnic and Colleges of Education enrolled relatively less number of students than the Universities. As a result, graduate output of Universities out-numbers that of other tertiary institutions designed to produce the middle level manpower. This clearly demonstrates that more managerial and executive personnel are produced than what is produced at the middle level, which otherwise should be more. Furthermore, Olaiya (1998) evaluated this problem of imbalance and posited that it has been reflecting in the poor performance of the economy. According to Ihekoronye (2000), the synthesis of this view and the lesson to be learnt from it is that a well planned manpower programme for the country ought to produce more at the middle level, bearing in mind that in an economy, where there are more managers and administrators than those producing and maintaining, there are resultant economic crisis, under-production, under-employment of high-level manpower, scarcity of necessary commodities and lack of appropriate technology development. Keywords: Cyber-crimes, entrepreneurs, compupreneur, firewalls, computer forensics, ICT, “okpapreneur”, palm-wine-preneur

"Re-engineering Cyprus" : information technologies and transformation processes in the Republic of Cyprus

By most Western Europeans Cyprus is probably perceived as a tourist resort rather than a technologically highly developed country. Interested German visitors are informed by the travel brochure published by the Republic of Cyprus' tourist office that "in the villages old customs and traditions still exist" (Zypern. 9000 Jahre Geschichte und Kultur 1997, 11). Pictures of places of antiquity, churches, monasteries, fortresses, archaic villages and of people engaged in agricultural work and crafts convey the image of a traditional Mediterranean society. However, the Republic of Cyprus is a rapidly modernising country. It has developed recently "from a poor agrarian into a high-income service economy" (Christodoulou 1995, 11) and "radical transformation processes" are observed (cf. ibid., 18). The forthcoming accession to the European Union additionally accelerates the pace of these transformation processes. Due to its position on the extreme rim of Europe in the Eastern Mediterranean region at the crossroads of three continents, the island is perceived both as marginal (cf. Pace 1999) and as a link between Europe and the Asian and African continents (cf. Kasoulides 1999). Cyprus is conceptualised for the future as a centre and intersection: as regional hub of the modern capital market, as communications and trade centre in the Eastern Mediterranean, as "telecommunications hub for the Eastern Mediterranean and Middle East region", as "international services centre". The Republic of Cyprus has a highly developed telecommunications infrastructure, which is the basic prerequisite for the conversion into such a centre and is one of the most important factors for the economic competitiveness of Cyprus. The global nature of communication platforms today, especially the Internet, is regarded as the key to the integration of Cyprus into the world economy. By implementing information technologies and promoting necessary expertise, economic progress and modernisation of the country as well as its global competitiveness is assumed to be guaranteed. Investments in the information technology infrastructure are regarded as essential for the development of Cyprus, fostering the implementation of the information society. This aim and the necessary implementation measures feature increasingly on the agendas of scientific and economic conferences and symposia in Cyprus