Scope

ISGIG 2008 is a unique conference that addresses the Information and Communications Technology (ICT) security challenges that arise in the cross-border scenarios. While the increasingly advanced ICT solutions support the continuation of business and society globalization at an increased pace, we are seriously lagging behind in addressing the emerging security and privacy challenges related to the disconnect between government, legislation, business and technology sectors. Today’s growingly complex ICT environments require us to manage security within organizations and processes that span multiple administrative, legislative, political, organization, jurisdictional and conceptual boundaries. This applies equally to the business and to the general public safety contexts, both in which the cyber-crime dimension, including theft, terrorism and espionage, is widening fueled by the ICT advances.

For the emerging security issues to be successfully addressed in such a complex environment, providing for the economic competitiveness and ensuring wider safety and stability, the synergy among the key stakeholders must be achieved. ISGIG 2008 wishes to engage stakeholders in government, business and the technology sectors in this important debate. In itself, this challenge represents another, more subtle, prerequisite set of boundaries to be bridged. Whereas business and technology approaches must become inherently intertwined, requiring deep understanding between the business and technology community, the governmental sector plays a key role in the provision of regulatory and legislative incentives. Not only do the governmental institutions have a considerable stake in ensuring the competitiveness of their economies but they are also a key player when it comes to overcoming the challenges of criminal and terrorist activities in cross-border cyber-space.

The structure and history of EU make it a perfect example of the cross-border security issues at various levels of abstraction and in their many flavors. The addressing of these challenges is widely recognized to be critical at this point in its development, both from the economic and from the national security and safety sides. However, not only does the EU suffer from these set of challenges, they are present at all continents and within all spheres of industry and activities spanning any sort of borders.

ISGIG will be a catalyst in the process of creating the cross-over between the government, business and technology spheres by bringing together the key respective actors in an environment that will foster the creation of their synergy. This will be accomplished in the thematic context of the cross-border security and privacy challenges emerging from the business and societal globalization processes as enabled by the advances in the ICT.