Volume 5, Issue 2

Volume 5, Issue 2 Editorial

August 2006

Welcome to the fourteenth issue of JIW. It starts with Ryan’s paper on the use of information sharing as a weapon, and then leads to three technical papers. Clarke and Furnell discuss authentications for mobile devices, whilst Kamel et al examine the use of profiling in psychological operations; lastly Lim et al consider the tracking of criminal and terrorist activity using visualisation tools. Finally, Williams and Mahncke examine the important topic of security in medical records systems.

Published In

Volume 5, Issue 2

Written By

Keywords

Editorial

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Shared Electronic Health Records: A Changing Landscape for Security in Medical Practice

ABSTRACT

The advances in networking and communications have created a landscape of change for information security in medical practice with the use of electronic health records. Whilst the benefits of improved quality are accepted, the ethical, logistical and security demands have increased. To resolve the problems faced, mapping how medical practice has to adapt to the shifting nature of security in this environment is necessary. The solutions are far from uncomplicated and include education, information governance and policy. Despite the benefits, the success of nationally shared electronic health records requires demonstration of security assurance and recognition medical practice will need assistance to adapt.

Tracking and Monitoring E-mail Traffic Activities of Criminal and Terrorist Organisations Using Visualisation Tools

ABSTRACT

In defensive information operations, knowing about the actions or behaviour of the adversary is important for countering any attacks posed by the adversary. Obtaining information about the activities and behaviour of criminal or terrorist groups from electronic communication sources, such as e-mail, will be useful given that criminal or terrorists may utilise different electronic communication mediums to contact each of their agents or members. In this paper, the development of an e-mail traffic analyser system for analysing the interactions between different e-mail clients in the e-mail system is described. The different visualisation tools used and how the information provided by such tools would be useful to an intelligence analyst are discussed. The use of decision trees for locating ‘unusual’ e-mail traffic interactions and the type of information revealed via the technique is also described.

Published In

Volume 5, Issue 2

Written By

Mark Lim

Michael Negnevitsky

Jacqueline Hartnett

Keywords

Defensive Information Operations

Communication Behaviour

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Automated Categorization of Profiles for Psychological Operations: An Analysis of Data and Text Mining Approaches

ABSTRACT

Influencing one’s adversary has always been an objective in warfare. To date the majority of psychological influence operations have been geared toward the masses. A tailored approach of individual targeting is preferred but requires unattainable resources. This paper investigates whether state-of-the-art data and text mining tools can be used to automate the categorization/segmentation of individual profiles for psychological operations. Five data and text mining software applications were tested and their results compared with those of a social psychologist. Using statistical analysis, it was concluded that current data and text mining tools are not mature enough to produce results comparable with those produced by psychologists.

Published In

Volume 5, Issue 2

Written By

Magdi Kamel

Mark Eramo

Christopher Sutter

Keywords

Information Operations (IO)

Psychological Operations

Data Mining

Text Mining

Text Categorization

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A Composite User Authentication Architecture for Mobile Devices

ABSTRACT

As the functionality and services provided by mobile devices increases, the need to provide effective user authentication against misuse and abuse becomes ever more imperative. With traditional secret knowledge based techniques having been proven weak, a requirement exists for authentication techniques to provide stronger protection. This paper proposes the use of a portfolio of authentication techniques to provide a robust, accurate and transparent authentication mechanism for mobile devices, extending security beyond point-of-entry into a continuous and user convenient approach. An Intelligent Authentication Management System (IAMS) is described that provides a continuous confidence level in the identity of the user, removing access to sensitivity services and information with low confidence levels and providing automatic access with higher confidence levels. The theoretical level of system performance is examined on a range of mobile devices, suggesting that it should be possible to achieve acceptably low levels of false acceptance and false rejection error in practical application.

Published In

Volume 5, Issue 2

Written By

Nathan Clarke

Steven Furnell

Keywords

User Authentication

Biometrics

Security

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Use of Information Sharing Between Government and Industry as a Weapon

ABSTRACT

Information sharing has been viewed by governments as a way to tap into the knowledge of the non-governmental enterprises which own and operate large segments of critical infrastructures in order to develop concrete intelligence about security challenges. The effects of globalization and the inherent conflicts of interest create a potential for allowing the process to be used as a weapon of information warfare through abuse of the information sharing structure.