Security Issues (security + issues)

Distribution by Scientific Domains


Selected Abstracts


Stock Returns and Operating Performance of Securities Issuers

THE JOURNAL OF FINANCIAL RESEARCH, Issue 3 2002
Gil S. Bae
Abstract We examine long-run stock returns and operating performance around firms' offerings of common stock, convertible debt, and straight debt from 1985 to 1990. We find that pre-issue abnormal returns are positive and significant for stock issuers, but not for convertible and straight debt issuers. The post-issue mean returns show that common stock and convertible debt issuers experience underperformance during the post-issue periods, but straight debt issuers do not. Consistent with these results, common stock issuers experience the best pre-issue operating performance among all three types of issuers, and operating performance declines during the post-issue periods for common stock and convertible debt issuers. Using a new approach in linear model estimations to correct heteroskedasticity and to adjust for finite sample, we find a positive relation between post-issue operating performance and issue-period stock price reactions. The results suggest that future operating performance is anticipated at the issue and that securities issues provide information on issuers' future performance. [source]


Who Cares about Auditor Reputation?,

CONTEMPORARY ACCOUNTING RESEARCH, Issue 3 2005
JAN BARTON
Abstract I provide evidence on the demand for auditor reputation by examining the defections of Arthur Andersen LLP's clients following the accounting scandals and criminal conviction marring the auditor's reputation in 2002. About 95 percent of clients in my sample did not switch auditors until after Andersen was indicted for criminal misconduct regarding its failed audit of Enron Corp. I test whether the timing of client defections and the choice of a new auditor are consistent with managers' incentives to mitigate potentially costly information and agency problems. I find that clients defected sooner, mostly to another Big 5 auditor, if they were more visible in the capital markets; such clients attracted more analysts and press coverage, had larger institutional ownership and share turnover, and raised more cash in recent security issues. However, my proxies for agency conflicts , managerial ownership and financial leverage , are not associated with the timing of defections or the choice of new auditor. Overall, my study suggests that firms more visible in the capital markets tend to be more concerned about engaging highly reputable auditors, consistent with such firms trying to build and preserve their own reputations for credible financial reporting. [source]


A further investigation of open source software: community, co-ordination, code quality and security issues

INFORMATION SYSTEMS JOURNAL, Issue 1 2002
Article first published online: 8 FEB 200
First page of article [source]


Cosmopolitan peacekeeping and peacebuilding in Sierra Leone: what can Africa contribute?

INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS, Issue 6 2007
DAVID CURRAN
The article is organized into two main parts. First, it presents the termination of the conflict in Sierra Leone as a case-study to examine the degree to which cosmopolitan values connecting peacekeeping and peacebuilding are (or are not) evident. The case-study looks at the United Nations Mission in Sierra Leone (UNAMSIL) as a model of successful peacekeeping in the sense that everyday security was provided for the people of Sierra Leone through the deployment of a robust peacekeeping mission. This assessment needs to be qualified in relation to serious deficits still to be addressed in post-conflict peacebuilding, yet the success of this mission does provide encouragement for those who see the construction of a cosmopolitan security architecture for Africa as both desirable and achievable. Second, it explores the degree to which an appropriate model of cosmopolitan peacekeeping might emerge at regional and continental levels in Africa through the development of the African Standby Force (ASF). What the case-study presented here and the survey of the African Union (AU)/ASF in the second part of the article have in common is that taken together, they provide some evidence to suggest that, however fragile, the AU is beginning to define an agenda that represents a continent wide and, in that sense at least, a cosmopolitan response to African security issues. [source]


Security and delay issues in SIP systems

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF COMMUNICATION SYSTEMS, Issue 8 2009
Christian Callegari
Abstract The deployment of multimedia over IP (MoIP), and in particular voice over IP services, requires to solve new security issues they introduce, before completely exploiting the great opportunities they offer to telecommunication market. Furthermore, the implementation of various security measures can cause a marked deterioration in quality of service, which is fundamental to the operation of an MoIP network that meets users' quality expectations. In particular, because of the time-critical nature of MoIP and its low tolerance for disruption and packet loss, many security measures implemented in traditional data networks are simply not applicable in their current form. This paper presents an analysis of the security options of Session Initiation Protocol- (SIP)-based MoIP architecture aimed at evaluating their impact on delay. In particular, each security option is analyzed in terms of clock cycles needed to perform the related operations. This parameter could be used to estimate the delay introduced by the security mechanisms. Moreover the paper proposes a rigorous definition of five security profiles, which provide different levels of security to a MoIP system. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source]


Quality of service for satellite IP networks: a survey

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF SATELLITE COMMUNICATIONS AND NETWORKING, Issue 4-5 2003
Sastri Kota
Abstract The future media rich applications such as media streaming, content delivery distribution and broadband access require a network infrastructure that offers greater bandwidth and service level guarantees. As the demand for new applications increases, ,best effort' service is inadequate and results in lack of user satisfaction. End-to-end quality of service (QoS) requires the functional co-operation of all network layers. To meet future application requirements, satellite is an excellent candidate due to features such as global coverage, bandwidth flexibility, broadcast, multicast and reliability. At each layer, the user performance requirements should be achieved by implementation of efficient bandwidth allocation algorithms and satellite link impairment mitigation techniques. In this paper, a QoS framework for satellite IP networks including requirements, objectives and mechanisms are described. To fully understand end-to-end QoS at each layer, QoS parameters and the current research are surveyed. For example at physical layer (modulation, adaptive coding), link layer (bandwidth allocation), network layer (IntServ/DiffServ, MPLS traffic engineering), transport layer (TCP enhancements, and alternative transport protocols) and security issues are discussed. Some planned system examples, QoS simulations and experimental results are provided. The paper also includes the current status of the standardization of satellite IP by ETSI, ITU and IETF organizations. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source]


Dealing with urban terror: heritages of control, varieties of intervention, strategies of research

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF URBAN AND REGIONAL RESEARCH, Issue 3 2003
Harvey Molotch
The events of September 11th bring urgency to problems of urban security, both in terms of finding ways to protect cities from attacks by terrorists and also protecting urban life from repressive measures that form in reaction to those attacks. We outline a rationale for urbanists to participate in analysis and policy-formulation on security issues and examine the utility of past urban research strategies, including criminology, in terms of their relevance to the current challenge. We suggest principles to guide future urban policy in light of past experiences. Les événements du 11 septembre rendent urgents les problèmes de sécurité urbaine, à la fois pour trouver des façons de protéger les villes contre des attaques terroristes et pour préserver la vie urbaine de mesures répressives en réponse à ces attaques. L'article argumente en faveur de la participation d'urbanistes à l'analyse et à la formulation d'une politique publique sur les questions de sécurité. Il examine le parti à tirer des stratégies de recherches urbaines antérieures (y compris en criminologie) en fonction de leur pertinence par rapport au défi actuel. De plus, il suggère des principes permettant d'orienter la politique urbaine future à la lumière des expériences passées. [source]


Analyzing Spatial Drivers in Quantitative Conflict Studies: The Potential and Challenges of Geographic Information Systems

INTERNATIONAL STUDIES REVIEW, Issue 3 2009
Nathalie Stephenne
The objective of this literature review is to understand where Graphical Information Systems (GIS) can be useful to address security issues and how it has been used until now. While the geographic drivers of territorial conflicts have been extensively described by a number of political studies, the quantitative analysis of these drivers is quite new. This study traces an evolution from conceptual research to quantitative development. It then discusses the advantages and challenges of applying new geographic techniques to analyze spatial drivers of conflict. We identify the main spatial components in conflict and security, the existing types of information/data and the quantitative methods used. We describe the spatial component of security by looking at: (i) the main sociopolitical concepts linked to territory, (ii) the kind of geographic concepts linked to territory, (iii) measures used to describe such geographic concepts; and (iv) the issues raised in any attempt to integrate geographic concepts into a GIS. We conclude that GIS tools can be useful in the analysis of civil disputes, particularly where subnational level data exists. This paper shows that spatial processing tools in GIS allow us to represent some spatial components and to address new issues such as the fuzzy complexity of border permeability. [source]


Information security issues in higher education and institutional research

NEW DIRECTIONS FOR INSTITUTIONAL RESEARCH, Issue 146 2010
William L. CusterArticle first published online: 20 JUL 2010
Increasing security threats, new and old, to the data assets of higher education require mitigation through an institutional security program based on risk assessment and grounded in clear governance. [source]


The US National Intelligence Council on Growing Global Migration

POPULATION AND DEVELOPMENT REVIEW, Issue 4 2001
Article first published online: 27 JAN 200
The National Intelligence Council, a body reporting to the Director of Central Intelligence, brings together expertise from inside and outside the US government to engage in strategic thinking on national security issues. Some of its reports, known as National Intelligence Estimates, are now issued in unclassified versions. One of these published in December2000, was entitled Global Trends 2015: A Dialogue about the Future with Nongovernment Experts. It discussed what it termed the key drivers of global change and presented a generally bleak set of scenarios of the medium-term future. (See the short review in PDR 27, no. 2, pp. 385,386.) Demographic factors,in particular, mass migration,were seen as one of the drivers. This topic is investigated further in a subsequent NIC report, Growing Global Migration and Its Implications for the United States, issued this year. The initial section of the report, headed Key Judgments, is reprinted below. The report emphasizes the economic advantages of liberal immigration policies to the advanced economies, "despite some initially higher welfare costs and some downward pressure on wages." Resistance to liberalization in European countries and Japan is seen as putting them at a competitive disadvantage to the United States. Their levels of illegal immigration, however, will inevitably increase in scale. Expectations for the US are for rises in both legal and illegal immigration. Mentioned as one of the "difficult issues" that are minor offsets to the broad gains offered by immigration is its use as a vehicle for "transnational terrorist, narcotrafficking, and organized crime groups." The full report is available online at http://www.cia.gov/nic/pubs/index.htm. [source]


Reducing value chain vulnerability to terrorist attacks,

PROCESS SAFETY PROGRESS, Issue 1 2005
A.M. (Tony) Downes
Like most U.S. chemical companies, you probably know where your security-sensitive inventories are located within your sites and have assured yourself that you have taken reasonable precautions to reduce the risk of their being used in a terrorist attack. What about when you ship them? How secure are the various parts of your value chain,offsite storage and transportation of your products, raw materials, intermediates, and wastes, and processing of ordering and invoicing transactions? Value chain security focuses on tampering and misuse of materials handled outside the plant boundaries. At FMC, we took a three-stage approach to identifying and dealing with potential security issues posed by materials in transit. Stage 1 was a quick review to determine which of our products, intermediates, or raw materials might be potentially useful to terrorists. In Stage 2 we looked for specific security-emergency scenarios that might involve those chemicals, estimated the risk of those scenarios, and made recommendations to reduce the vulnerability to terrorist attack. In Stage 3 we are implementing the plans we developed. FMC's approach has successfully focused our efforts and used familiar techniques to break down complex Value Chains into manageable sections and then to identify the possible scenarios and (relative) risks at each section. We were able to do this with minimal travel costs. This paper describes the general organization of FMC's value chain security efforts and our analysis technique, and discusses lessons (including a few surprises) that we have learned from the analyses. © 2005 American Institute of Chemical Engineers Process Saf Prog, 2005 [source]


Hatred of "Others" Among Jewish, Arab, and Palestinian Students in Israel

ANALYSES OF SOCIAL ISSUES & PUBLIC POLICY, Issue 1 2002
Dahlia Moore
This study analyzes hatred against diverse sociopolitical groups and compares the social and political attitudes of three distinct and highly differentiated groups: Jewish, Arab, and Palestinian high school students in Israel and the Palestinian Authority. It examines their perceptions of the political context and aims to find the factors that influence the extremity of their hatred. Analysis of the data shows that the proposed model is more applicable to Jewish students than it is to Arabs and Palestinians, and shows that hatred toward outgroups is influenced by religiosity, the salience of national and civic identity, national security issues, and political ideology. [source]


China's Energy in Transition: Regional and Global Implications

ASIAN ECONOMIC POLICY REVIEW, Issue 1 2006
Tianshu CHU
China is the largest energy user in Asia and the second largest in the world after the US. This paper documents substantial changes of the structure of China's energy use over the past decades. It explores the puzzling phenomena of China's low gross domestic product elasticity of energy consumption. Econometric analysis applying the AutoRegressive Integrated Moving Average model finds that factors such as institutional reforms and structural change can account for a substantial fraction of the downward impacts on the elasticity level. The paper also studies the future energy growth and energy security issues in China, and examines the regional and global impacts of China's rapidly growing energy consumption. [source]


Optimal availability and security for IMS-based VoIP networks

BELL LABS TECHNICAL JOURNAL, Issue 3 2006
Himanshu Pant
Consumers are continuously looking for ways of improving their productivity, simplifying their tasks, and streamlining communications both domestically and globally. This has resulted in the need to support different applications and thus the ongoing process of migrating many network services from traditional circuit-switched networks to Internet Protocol (IP) to converged networks. The circuit-switched public switched telephone network (PSTN) was a closed network where cyber-security threats were not amajor issue. With the advent of converged networks and IP-based services, service providers, government, and enterprises are concerned about the growing security threat. The new networks and equipment will be subject to many types of threats and their vulnerabilities may expose mission critical applications and infrastructure to risk. Realization of these threats can lead to service outage. Today's communications service provider must decide how to treat the effects of security breaches so as to minimize service downtime. This paper highlights amethodology, with examples to identify the effect of security-related failures and the critical design factors to be considered when modeling service reliability. The ITU-T X.805 standard (now also ISO standard 18028-2), based on the Bell Labs security model, is used to evaluate potential high impact threats and vulnerabilities. The analysis uses the Bell Labs domain technique known as security domain evaluation. One of the critical outputs provides a prioritized understanding of the threats the network is exposed to and the vulnerabilities in the security architecture. The next step in themethodology includes incorporating the threats (vulnerabilities) identified in a reliability model and quantifying the corresponding service degradation. In this paper, these concepts are applied to IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS)-based VoIP (Voice over IP) networks. Using reliability metrics, our analysis shows that reliability models are optimistic if we do not consider security. We demonstrate how reliability models can be enhanced to take security issues into account and that the X.805 standard can be used to identify the security threats. Finally, the model shows themitigation in downtime by including intrusion-tolerance features in the product and network design. Consideration of security-caused downtimewill lead to increased focus on preventing security vulnerabilities that can lead to service outages and also allow service providers to save on maintenance costs. © 2006 Lucent Technologies Inc. [source]


The New Public Diplomacy: Britain and Canada Compared1

BRITISH JOURNAL OF POLITICS & INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS, Issue 2 2004
Rhiannon Vickers
This article examines the ways in which diplomacy is adapting in the information age, to the increased pressures and opportunities that changes in information and communication technologies and capabilities provide. The interaction of technological, economic, political and social changes, such as globalisation, the development and rapid expansion of information and communication technologies, the increasing ability of citizens and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) to access and use these technologies, and the rise of transnational and co-operative security issues, are affecting the ways in which governments conduct their diplomacy. These changes are giving rise to what might be termed a ,new public diplomacy'. This can be characterised by a blurring of traditional distinctions between international and domestic information activities, between public and traditional diplomacy and between cultural diplomacy, marketing and news management. The article focuses on a comparison of Britain and Canada. It argues that, in Britain, the new public diplomacy features a repackaging of diplomacy to project a particular image to an overseas audience, which is largely treated as a passive recipient of diplomacy. However, in Canada the new public diplomacy is characterised by a more inclusive approach to diplomacy, enabling citizen groups and NGOs to play a greater role in international affairs. [source]


La collaboration internationale: un element essentiel dans la conception des programmes de formation en sécurité aeroportuaire

CANADIAN PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION/ADMINISTRATION PUBLIQUE DU CANADA, Issue 3 2007
Pierre Paul Morin
Sommaire: Cet article explique la façon dont les informations provenant de la coopération internationale sur la prévention du terrorisme influencent le design des programmes de formation des agents de contrôle préembarquement à 1'Administration canadienne de la sûireté du transport aerien (acsta). 11 expose comment l'integration de ces informations a conduit au développement d'une méthodologie de formation qui suit les principes de la formation par compétences. Cette réflexion marque Ie cinquiéme anniversaire de la fondation de I'acsta et le sixiéme des attentats du 11 septembre 2001. Les auteurs présentent les grands enjeux de la sécurité aéroportuaire, les contraintes et opportunités du contexte international, ainsi que les méthodologies et stratégies utilisées dans le programme de formation. Abstract: This article describes how information provided by the international community influences the design of training programs for airport security officers at the Canadian Air Transport Security Authority (catsa). It explains how the integration of this information was instrumental in selecting a training program that follows the principles of a competency-based methodology. This review coincides with the fourth anniversary of the creation of catsa and the fifth of the tragedy of September 11th, 2001. The authors identify major airport security issues, opportunities and constraints dictated by the international context, and the main strategic and methodological alternatives. [source]


Bricks, clicks and Calk: Clustering services for citizen-centred delivery

CANADIAN PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION/ADMINISTRATION PUBLIQUE DU CANADA, Issue 4 2001
Kenneth Kernaghan
The challenge for governments is to determine how best to join up services within and between departments, across levels of government, between governmental and non-governmental service providers, and across channels. This article focuses on the delivery of government services by bringing them together in "clusters" and delivering them through more than one service channel. The article explains the concept of service clustering and provides a model of its major components; uses this model as a framework for describing innovative clustering initiatives in several countries; and examines the implications of service clustering for public administration, with particular reference to privacy and security issues. Sommaire: Depuis le milieu des années 1980, I'approche traditionnelle brique et mortier adoptée pour la prestation d'un service unique par le biais de contacts personnels dans les bureaux du gouvernement a connu une amelioration avec la mise en place des guichets uniques qui offrent de nombreux services de nature connexe ou non, de centres d'appels téléphoniques fournissant à la fois des services personnels et une réponse vocale interactive, et grâce au développement rapide de la prestation de services par Internet. Pour les gouvernements, le défi consiste à déterminer comment regrouper les services au sein d'un ministère et entre les ministères, entre les paliers de gouvernement, entre les foumisseurs de services gouvernementaux et non gouvernementaux, et entre les mécanismes de prestation. Le présent article se concentre sur la prestation des services gouvernementaux regroupés et fournis par l'intermédiaire de plusieurs mécanismes de prestation. Il explique le concept de regroupement des services et présente un modèle de ses principales composantes; il se sert de ce modèle comme cadre pour décrire les initiatives innovatrices en matière de regroupernent de services dans plusieurs pays; enfin, il examine les répercussions du regroupernent des services sur l'administration publique, en particulier du point de vue de la confidentialité et de la sécurité. [source]


Technologies, Security, and Privacy in the Post-9/11 European Information Society

JOURNAL OF LAW AND SOCIETY, Issue 2 2004
Michael Levi
Since 11 September 2001, many ,hard' and ,soft' security strategies have been introduced to enable more intensive surveillance and control of the movement of `suspect populations'. Suicide bombings have since generated a step-change in asymmetric threat analysis and public perceptions of risk. This article reviews how post-9/11 ,security' issues intersect with existing and emerging technologies, particularly those relating to identity, location, home, and work that will form the backbone of the European Information Society. The article explores the complexities generated by the way that these technologies work, sites of nationalist resistance, and formal bureaucratic roles. Many of the planned surveillance methods and technologies are convergence technologies aiming to bring together new and existing data sources, but are unable to do so because of poor data quality and the difficulty of using the integrated data to reduce serious crime risks. The delay may enable legal compliance models to be developed in order to protect the principles of privacy that are set out in the ECHR and the EC Data Protection Directive. Though (moral) panics produce changes in law, the article emphasizes the constraining effects of law. [source]