Australian commercial-critical infrastructure management protection

Secure management of Australia\u27s commercial critical infrastructure presents ongoing challenges to owners and the government. Although managed via a high-level information sharing collaboration of government and business, critical infrastructure protection is further complicated by the lack of a lower-level scalable model exhibiting its various levels, sectors and sub-sectors. This research builds on the work of Marasea (2003) to establish a descriptive critical infrastructure model and also considers the influence and proposed modelling of critical infrastructure dependency inter-relationships.<br /

A model and framework for online security benchmarking

The variety of threats and vulnerabilities within the online business environment are dynamic and thus constantly changing in how they impinge upon online functionality, compromise organizational or customer information, contravene security implementations and thereby undermine online customer confidence. To nullify such threats, online security management must become proactive, by reviewing and continuously improving online security to strengthen the enterpriseis online security measures and policies, as modelled. The benchmarking process utilises a proposed benchmarking framework to guide both the development and application of security benchmarks created in the first instance, from recognized information technology (IT) and information security standards (ISS) and then their application to the online security measures and policies utilized within online business. Furthermore, the benchmarking framework incorporates a continuous improvement review process to address the relevance of benchmark development over time and the changes in threat focus.<br /

Commercial critical systems and critical infrastructure protection : a future research agenda

Secure management of Australia&rsquo;s commercial critical infrastructure presents ongoing challenges to owners and the government. Although it is currently managed through high-level information sharing via collaboration, but does this suit the commercial sector. One of the issues facing Australia is that the majority of critical infrastructure resides under the control of the business sector and certain aspects such of the critical infrastructure such as Supply Chain Management (SCM) systems are distributed entities and not a single entity. The paper focuses upon the security issues associated with SCM systems and critical infrastructure protection.<br /

Attack vectors against social networking systems : the Facebook example

Social networking systems (SNS&rsquo;s) such as Facebook are an ever evolving and developing means of social interaction, which is not only being used to disseminate information to family, friends and colleagues but as a way of meeting and interacting with &quot;strangers&quot; through the advent of a large number of social applications. The attractiveness of such software has meant a dramatic increase in the number of frequent users of SNS&rsquo;s and the threats which were once common to the Internet have now been magnified, intensified and altered as the potential for criminal behaviour on SNS&rsquo;s increases. Social networking sites including Facebook contain a vast amount of personal information, that if obtained could be used for other purposes or to carry out other crimes such as identity theft. This paper will focus on the security threats posed to social networking sites and gain an understanding of these risks by using a security approach known as &ldquo;attack trees&rdquo;. This will allow for a greater understanding of the complexity associated with protecting Social Networking systems with a particular focus on Facebook.<br /

Impacts of land use, restoration, and climate change on tropical peat carbon stocks in the 21st century: Implications for climate mitigation

The climate mitigation potential of tropical peatlands has gained increased attention as Southeast Asian peatlands are being deforested, drained and burned at very high rates, causing globally significant carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions to the atmosphere. We used a process-based dynamic tropical peatland model to explore peat carbon (C) dynamics of several management scenarios within the context of simulated twenty-first century climate change. Simulations of all scenarios with land use, including restoration, indicated net C losses over the twenty-first century ranging from 10 to 100 % of pre-disturbance values. Fire can be the dominant C-loss pathway, particularly in the drier climate scenario we tested. Simulated 100 years of oil palm (Elaeis guineensis) cultivation with an initial prescribed burn resulted in 2400–3000 Mg CO2 ha−1 total emissions. Simulated restoration following one 25-year oil palm rotation reduced total emissions to 440–1200 Mg CO2 ha−1, depending on climate. These results suggest that even under a very optimistic scenario of hydrological and forest restoration and the wettest climate regime, only about one third of the peat C lost to the atmosphere from 25 years of oil palm cultivation can be recovered in the following 75 years if the site is restored. Emissions from a simulated land degradation scenario were most sensitive to climate, with total emissions ranging from 230 to 10,600 Mg CO2 ha−1 over 100 years for the wettest and driest dry season scenarios, respectively. The large difference was driven by increased fire probability. Therefore, peat fire suppression is an effective management tool to maintain tropical peatland C stocks in the near term and should be a high priority for climate mitigation efforts. In total, we estimate emissions from current cleared peatlands and peatlands converted to oil palm in Southeast Asia to be 8.7 Gt CO2 over 100 years with a moderate twenty-first century climate. These emissions could be minimized by effective fire suppression and hydrological restoration

A Comparison of Flexural Fracture of Three Different Nickel-Titanium Rotary File Systems

The purpose of this study was to compare the number of rotations to failure of three different rotary file systems. ProFile, Sequence, and Liberator files in sizes 25 and 40 with 0.04 taper were divided into groups of five and rotated against a grooved metal block mounted to a Universal testing machine at 31 and 34 degrees. Each file was rotated at 300 rpm until fracture occurred. The number of rotations to fracture were calculated. Use of a three-way ANOVA and Tukey\u27s HSD multiple comparison tests revealed significant differences for the angle of deflection, size, and type of file. An increased angle of deflection resulted in a decreased number of rotations to failure for all three file types. An increased size of file also resulted in a decreased number of rotations to failure in all the groups. Liberator and Sequence files required fewer rotations to failure than ProFiles in all groups tested except the size 25 files rotated at the less severe angle. ProFiles appear to be more resistant to flexural fracture than Liberator and Sequence files unless the files are of smaller size with a less severe curvature. Care should be taken to limit the number of uses when using larger size files, especially Liberator and Sequence files, around severe curvatures

Cougar genetic variation and gene flow in a heterogeneous landscape

Management of game species requires an understanding not just of population abundance, but also the structure of and connections between populations. Like other large-bodied carnivores, the cougar (Puma concolor) exhibits density -dependent dispersal and is capable of long-distance movement; in the absence of barriers to movement, these traits should lead to high connectivity between individuals and a lack of genetic differentiation across areas of continuous habitat. Previous research has suggested that cougar movement may be influenced by landscape variables such as forest cover, elevation, human population density, and highways. I assessed the population structure of cougars (Puma concolor) in Washington and southern British Columbia by examining patterns of genetic variation in 17 microsatellite loci, and the contribution of landscape variables to this genetic variation. I evaluated population structure using genetic clustering algorithms and spatial principal components analysis. I quantified the effect of distance on genetic variation by calculating the correlation between the genetic distance and geographic distance between every pair of individuals, as well as the spatial autocorrelation of genetic distances. To compare the observed pattern of genetic differentiation with that which would arise solely from isolation by distance, I simulated allele frequencies across the study area where the cost to movement between individuals was proportional to the distance between them. I also evaluated the support for evidence of male-biased dispersal in allele frequencies. Bayesian clustering analyses identified four populations in the study area, corresponding to the Olympic Peninsula, Cascade Mountains, northeastern Washington and Blue Mountains; these clusters were supported by patterns of genetic differentiation revealed with spatial PCA. Although I found a significant relationship between the geographic and genetic distance between individuals, simulated allele frequencies displayed no meaningful spatial pattern of differentiation, suggesting that male dispersal would be adequate within the scale of the study area to prevent genetic isolation from occurring if the only factor to affect dispersal was geographic distance. While cougars are capable of long-distance dispersal movements, dispersal in heterogeneous landscapes may be mediated by the resistance of the landscape to movement. I derived resistance surfaces for forest canopy cover, elevation, human population density and highways based on GIS data and estimated the landscape resistance between pairs of individuals using circuit theory. I quantified the effect of the resistance to movement due to each landscape factor on genetic distance using multiple regression on distance matrices and boosted regression tree analysis. Both models indicated that only forest canopy cover and the geographic distance between individuals had an effect on genetic distance, with forest cover exhibiting the greatest relative influence. The boundaries between the genetic clusters I found largely corresponded with breaks in forest cover, showing agreement between population structure and landscape variable selection. The greater relative influence of forest cover may also explain why a significant relationship was found between geographic and genetic distance, yet geographic distance alone could not explain the observed pattern of allele frequencies. While cougars inhabit unforested areas in other parts of their range, forested corridors appear to be important for maintaining population connectivity in the northwest

A Participational Managerial Method to Implement and Evaluate Information Security within a Healthcare Organizaton

The use of participational approaches to system design has been debated for a number of years. In some situations it seems that participational approaches are not a suitable or practical method by which to design an Information System or to analyse a problem. Within this paper we describe a framework in which participation plays an active and effective role and describe a method that was used to effectively design information systems and implement computer security countermeasures