Every day, people interact with numerous computer systems, networks, and services that require the exchange of sensitive data. However, the Internet is a highly distributed system operated by many different entities and as such should not be trusted by end users. Users, whether consumers or businesses, retain no control over how their information is routed among the many networks that comprise the Internet. Therefore, there is a strong need for cryptographic protocols to authenticate, verify trust, and establish a secure channel for exchanging data. This chapter presents a series of projects and demonstrations for systems and networking professionals who want to increase their comprehension of security concepts and protocols. The material presented here is derived from existing courses taught by the authors in the areas of cryptography, network security, and wireless security.

Emerging Trends in ICT Security, an edited volume, discusses the foundations and theoretical aspects of ICT security; covers trends, analytics, assessments and frameworks necessary for performance analysis and evaluation; and gives you the state-of-the-art knowledge needed for successful deployment of security solutions in many environments. Application scenarios provide you with an insider’s look at security solutions deployed in real-life scenarios, including but limited to smart devices, biometrics, social media, big data security, and crowd sourcing. Provides a multidisciplinary approach to security with coverage of communication systems, information mining, policy making, and management infrastructures Discusses deployment of numerous security solutions, including, cyber defense techniques and defense against malicious code and mobile attacks Addresses application of security solutions in real-life scenarios in several environments, such as social media, big data and crowd sourcing

Educational tools related to firewalls and firewall configurations are central to the development of cybersecurity education, due to the integral role firewalls play in this field. To assess the current state of firewall education, we developed a set of criteria that educational exercises should meet. They should be competitive, interactive, extensible, and approachable. These criteria were then applied to three existing firewall exercises in order to gauge their strengths and weaknesses. With that information in mind, we then looked to emerging trends in firewalls and firewall education. We found that many of the emerging trends align with our criteria, but diverge from them in other important ways.

Advances in Web technologies have brought about a massive increase in online businesses, but security has significantly lagged behind. We and others argue that governments can and should play a major role in providing a reliable and secure environment for online businesses because they have a major stake in growing the economy. Our finding from previous research indicates that security is usually overlooked; it comes as an afterthought or is perceived from a purely technical dimension. This study attempts to describe and analyze the current role of the government of Jordan in facilitating the security of e-business. Our starting premise is that governments should recognize the full range of socio-technical implications that security may have on the adoption of e-business. This can be achieved by understanding the real security needs and concerns of the various stakeholders at the different e-business stages and then aligning them to its policy and plans. Moreover, we argue that in order for the government to be an effective partner in developing a secure e-business environment, legislating laws and regulations is insufficient; instead, governments must increase security education and awareness, ensure compliance with security standards and regulations, and protect the country’s critical ICT infrastructure.

Security assurance is the guarantee provided with regard to access control, security privileges, and enforcement over time as users interact with an application. For a big-data application that shares and exchanges information from multiple sources in different formats, security assurance must reconcile local security capabilities to meet stakeholder needs. This chapter presents a role-based access control (RBAC) approach to modeling a global security policy and generating an enforcement mechanism for a big-data application by integrating the local policies of the sources, which are assumed to communicate via XML, the de facto standard for information sharing/exchange. Towards this goal, the Unified Modeling Language (UML) is extended to define new diagrams to capture XML for RBAC security and for policy modeling. To illustrate, we use a big-data application in law enforcement for motor vehicle crashes, showing how global security can be achieved in a repository that links different crash data repositories from multiple sources.

This chapter introduces natural language information assurance and security (NL IAS), a new front in information security effort enabled by applying the Ontological Semantics approach to natural language processing to the existing and new applications. It reviews the earlier (1999–2004) application implementations, their increasing and expanding computational semantic foundations, and new advances (2010–2013). The thrust of the chapter is that access to comprehensive natural language meaning—incrementally approximating human understanding and based on the dedicated semantic resources, the language independent property rich ontology, and language-specific lexicons—is necessary for the design and implementation of high precision applications in authenticating and protecting natural language files.

This chapter discusses the problematic intersection of risk management, mission assurance, security, and information systems through the illustrative example of the United States (US) Department of Defense (DoD). A concise history of systems security engineering (SSE) is provided with emphasis on recent revitalization efforts. Next, a review of established and emerging SSE methods, processes, and tools (MPT) frequently used to assess and manage critical shortfalls in the development and fielding of complex information-centric systems is provided. From this review, a common theme emerges—the need for a holistic multidisciplinary approach that addresses people, processes, and technologies to manage system complexity, while providing cost-effective security solutions through the use of established systems engineering techniques. Multiple cases and scenarios that promote the discovery and shared understanding of security solutions for complex systems by those trained in the art and science of systems engineering, information security, and risk management are demonstrated.