Security Threats (security + threat)

Distribution by Scientific Domains


Selected Abstracts


Security threats, linguistic homogeneity, and the necessary conditions for political unification

NATIONS AND NATIONALISM, Issue 1 2010
RYAN D. GRIFFITHS
ABSTRACT. The proposition that security threats can drive states to pool their sovereignty has been around for some time. The existence of these threats, according to William Riker, is a necessary condition for political unification. A less common argument centers on linguistic homogeneity; it asserts that states must be sufficiently similar and speak the same language before they can successfully imagine a common state. This paper tests both hypotheses in a large- N analysis that identifies all instances of voluntary political unification between 1816 and 2001. It takes the form of a falsification probe and examines whether any unification happened in the absence of either an external security threat or a common language. It finds that political unification has occurred in relatively tranquil settings, but that all unifying dyads have shared a common language. Security threats are not a necessary condition, but a common language may well be. [source]


A public-key based authentication and key establishment protocol coupled with a client puzzle

JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN SOCIETY FOR INFORMATION SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY, Issue 9 2003
M.C. Lee
Network Denial-of-Service (DoS) attacks, which exhaust server resources and network bandwidth, can cause the target servers to be unable to provide proper services to the legitimate users and in some cases render the target systems inoperable and/or the target networks inaccessible. DoS attacks have now become a serious and common security threat to the Internet community. Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) has long been incorporated in various authentication protocols to facilitate verifying the identities of the communicating parties. The use of PKI has, however, an inherent problem as it involves expensive computational operations such as modular exponentiation. An improper deployment of the public-key operations in a protocol could create an opportunity for DoS attackers to exhaust the server's resources. This paper presents a public-key based authentication and key establishment protocol coupled with a sophisticated client puzzle, which together provide a versatile solution for possible DoS attacks and various other common attacks during an authentication process. Besides authentication, the protocol also supports a joint establishment of a session key by both the client and the server, which protects the session communications after the mutual authentication. The proposed protocol has been validated using a formal logic theory and has been shown, through security analysis, to be able to resist, besides DoS attacks, various other common attacks. [source]


Security threats, linguistic homogeneity, and the necessary conditions for political unification

NATIONS AND NATIONALISM, Issue 1 2010
RYAN D. GRIFFITHS
ABSTRACT. The proposition that security threats can drive states to pool their sovereignty has been around for some time. The existence of these threats, according to William Riker, is a necessary condition for political unification. A less common argument centers on linguistic homogeneity; it asserts that states must be sufficiently similar and speak the same language before they can successfully imagine a common state. This paper tests both hypotheses in a large- N analysis that identifies all instances of voluntary political unification between 1816 and 2001. It takes the form of a falsification probe and examines whether any unification happened in the absence of either an external security threat or a common language. It finds that political unification has occurred in relatively tranquil settings, but that all unifying dyads have shared a common language. Security threats are not a necessary condition, but a common language may well be. [source]


International rivers and national security: The Euphrates, Ganges,Brahmaputra, Indus, Tigris, and Yarmouk rivers1

NATURAL RESOURCES FORUM, Issue 4 2008
Neda A. Zawahri
Abstract To understand a state's incentives to invest in conflict or cooperation over their international rivers, this paper argues that it is necessary to appreciate the relationships a river can create and the national security threat riparians may confront. Rivers impose interdependent and vulnerable relationships, which can compromise a state's ability to respond effectively to floods and droughts, meet its domestic food and energy needs, dredge the river, maintain its drainage systems, and allocate its domestic water budget. The inability to accomplish these tasks can contribute to social, economic, and political losses that may threaten a state's territorial integrity. Regardless of whether a state is upstream or downstream, from these relationships it acquires leverage to manipulate the interdependence and vulnerability to inflict losses on its riparian neighbour. This argument challenges several assumptions within the existing literature, including the belief that a shortage of freshwater is the initial force producing a national security threat and that an upstream,downstream river bequeaths all advantages on the upstream state and leaves the downstream state purely dependent. As the paper shows, riparians confront a more complex relationship than captured by the existing literature. [source]


The Securitization of Transnational Labor Migration: The Case of Malaysia and Indonesia

ASIAN POLITICS AND POLICY, Issue 4 2009
Alexander R. Arifianto
Existing studies on transnational migration in Southeast Asia tend to view it primarily from labor, human rights, or gender perspectives. Few of these studies have viewed labor migration as a security problem between the countries involved. This article attempts to close this gap in the literature by looking at the case study of labor migration from Indonesia and Malaysia from a security perspective and how it affects the relationship between migrants, citizens, and governments of these two countries. The article utilizes securitization theory introduced by the Copenhagen School to explain why, within the last two decades, Malaysian politicians have shifted their treatment of Indonesian migrants from a policy of toleration to one that considers them a security threat against Malaysian society. [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]


INFECTIOUS DISEASES, SECURITY AND ETHICS: THE CASE OF HIV/AIDS

BIOETHICS, Issue 9 2008
MICHAEL J. SELGELID
ABSTRACT Securitization of infectious diseases may involve suspension of ordinary human rights and liberties. In the event of an epidemic, therefore, it is important to limit the occasions upon which draconian disease control measures are implemented in the name of security. The term ,security', moreover, should not be used too loosely if it is to retain force and meaning in political discourse. It may be argued that the bar for disease securitization should be set high so that it is limited to contexts involving rapidly spreading pathogens. Such an approach, however, would rule out securitization of more slowly spreading, endemic diseases such as HIV/AIDS. An advantage of characterizing HIV/AIDS as a security threat in developing countries, where the burden of the disease is concentrated, is that this is likely to mobilize resources needed to improve the situation there. That is, if HIV/AIDS is convincingly framed as a security threat, then governments may recognize self-interested reasons to ramp up control measures. Following consideration of arguments for narrow (excluding HIV/AIDS) versus broad (including HIV/AIDS) conceptions of security, we conclude that the legitimacy of ,securitizing' HIV/AIDS ultimately turns on empirical and semantic issues, and we emphasize the importance of distinguishing (1) the nature of the threat posed by HIV/AIDS and (2) the measures required to address that threat. [source]


Security management of mutually trusted domains through cooperation of defensive technologies

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF NETWORK MANAGEMENT, Issue 3 2009
Shang-Juh Kao
A number of defensive technologies have been proposed for the prevention of security threats. However, these defensive technologies are implemented independently without cooperation among various network domains. In this paper, different administrative networks are leagued to form a federative network environment called a trusted domain. From the perspective of a network manager, there is a need to integrate diverse technologies into an effective defensive system among mutually trusted domains. An imperative task for security management is to put in place a shared defensive mechanism, or protective shield, for multiple domains. A cooperative approach to provide such a shared defensive system is presented with integration of both intra-domain and inter-domain defensive mechanisms. The simulation results show that, through sharing the defensive information, the firewall system can successfully detect and filter the repeated intrusions. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source]


Two-Level Security Management and the Prospects for New Democracies: A Simulation Analysis

INTERNATIONAL STUDIES QUARTERLY, Issue 3 2000
Marc V. Simon
Most new democracies face serious internal, ethnic/separatist conflicts; in addition, some face international threats. The literature on the growth of democracy in the global system and its impact on world politics does not fully account for the dual threats all states must address in managing their security. Based on theoretical work by Starr (1994) which describes the "common logic" of conflict processes in war and revolution, we outline a model of how states respond to security threats from both external and internal sources. Using computer simulation, we analyze the model and evaluate the relative importance for state security of factors such as system size, numbers of democracies in the system, extraction/allocation strategy pursued by new democracies, and government legitimacy level. Our results show that new democracies thrive in systems that are predominantly democratic. Also, ally support can provide crucial resources for new democracies facing internal threats. Finally, "endangered" democracies can recover security by attempting to buy off domestic threats rather than deter them, and by improving legitimacy. [source]


Security threats, linguistic homogeneity, and the necessary conditions for political unification

NATIONS AND NATIONALISM, Issue 1 2010
RYAN D. GRIFFITHS
ABSTRACT. The proposition that security threats can drive states to pool their sovereignty has been around for some time. The existence of these threats, according to William Riker, is a necessary condition for political unification. A less common argument centers on linguistic homogeneity; it asserts that states must be sufficiently similar and speak the same language before they can successfully imagine a common state. This paper tests both hypotheses in a large- N analysis that identifies all instances of voluntary political unification between 1816 and 2001. It takes the form of a falsification probe and examines whether any unification happened in the absence of either an external security threat or a common language. It finds that political unification has occurred in relatively tranquil settings, but that all unifying dyads have shared a common language. Security threats are not a necessary condition, but a common language may well be. [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]


CDMA 1x Ev-DO security

BELL LABS TECHNICAL JOURNAL, Issue 4 2007
Semyon Mizikovsky
CDMA 1x evolution,data optimized (1x EV-DO) is defined in the TIA/EIA IS-856 and IS-835 standards. The security of 1x EV-DO offers authentication, integrity, and encryption capabilities. 1x EV-DO supports authentication of the access terminal (AT) to authorize access to the wireless network, as well as authentication of a subscription to authorize access to the Internet Protocol (IP) network. The system also provides session security via re-authenticating the AT during a session to prevent 1x EV-DO session hijacking and to protect integrity of the user packets. This paper will outline security threats to the 1x EV-DO system, security algorithms, authentication and authorization procedures, and ciphering procedures. The 1x EV-DO security will be detailed here for key exchange, authentication, and encryption functions by supporting the following protocols: security protocol, key exchange protocol, authentication protocol, and encryption protocol. Finally, a summary of 1x EV-DO security evolution will be presented © 2007 Alcatel-Lucent. [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]


Into Cerberus' Lair: Bringing the Idea of Security to Light1

BRITISH JOURNAL OF POLITICS & INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS, Issue 4 2005
Graham M. Smith
Using the motif of Cerberus, the three-headed monster watchdog of Hades, this article attempts to bring ,security' to light. Specifically, it addresses two related questions. The primary question is: What does ,security' mean?. Here it is argued that ,security' is related to ,order' and is a reflection not of a positive value in and of itself, but the relative success of any given order to realise its core values in relation to other orders. Therefore, ,security' is found to be like Cerberus insofar as it exists not as an independent value or being, but only in relation between two orders. Having located ,security' within this conceptual framework, the article then addresses its second question: What are the effects of security?. The motif of Cerberus suggests that security ,bites' in three ways: first, that specific measures of security control the members of an order; second, that the identification of security threats reinforce certain persons and structures of the order as being the definers of the order; and finally, that the implementation of certain security measures can change and transform the order itself. In this way the analysis offered here brings ,security' to light not only as an inherently political term connected to political values, but to provide foundations for critiquing the rhetorical use of ,security' in contemporary political discourse and thought. [source]