Introduction
ISSA 2004 is the 4th annual conference on Information Security for South Africa. The purpose is the same as for previous years and is to provide information security professionals and researchers, nationally as well as internationally, the opportunity to share their knowledge, experience, and research results with their peers.
Information security has grown in importance over the last few years and is no longer the reserved domain of technical experts. More and more organisations and individuals are starting to realise and understand the need for good information security on all levels. Even the public in general is starting to become aware of the need for information security.
As the discipline of information security widens, more diverse views are formed which leads to new and exiting paradigms. The fundamentals of information security have not changed much, yet the way these get applied, have done so. Slowly organisations are starting to realise the benefits.
It is amazing to experience the tremendous growth of this conference over the last four years. Local interest has grown at a steady pace. This year has seen a quantum leap in interest from international professionals and researchers. This is clearly a sign that this conference is being recognised abroad as making a significant contribution to the discipline.
Papers for ISSA 2004 were submitted from many countries, amongst others – France, Italy, Sweden UK, Switzerland, Greece, Korea, Pakistan and South Africa.
After a rigorous double-blind refereeing process, supported by an international panel of referees, 36 full papers were accepted, and a further 22 were accepted for presentation in the “research in progress” streams.
A ‘Call for Papers’ was issued towards the end of 2003, inviting anyone interested in making a contribution towards the conference by submit a short abstract by the end of March 2004. Abstracts were received and subsequently divided into broad topics by the Organising Committee. The abstracts, within a broad field, were forwarded to a review panel in the field to judge on the possible acceptability of the abstract based upon the scope and depth of the subject matter to the conference as a whole. The authors were then requested to submit full papers by the end of April 2004. These draft papers were “anonomised”, and then forwarded to two independent reviewers, with the request that the full paper should be reviewed and judged according to a number of criteria, including:
- Originality
- Significance
- Technical Quality
- Relevance
The Organising Committee received the reviews from the Reviewers and combined the scores from the reviewers for each paper to determine whether they would be accepted or not. The reviewers’ comments were forwarded to the author with the request to submit a final revised version of the paper by June 2004. Only those papers which were of an acceptable quality as recommended by both Reviewers are included in the Conference Proceedings as Reviewed Papers. The Research Papers did not fully meet the set criteria but is still included in a separate section as part of a capacity building initiative.
The review panel followed a double-blind review process, with each reviewer receiving three or more papers. The reviewers volunteered their time in the interests of ensuring that the content at the conference meets a high standard. Their participation is sincerely appreciated.
The full proceedings of the conference are only available in CD-ROM format. An Abstract Proceedings has been published and contains only the abstracts of papers.
The ISSA conference organisers would like to thank the following organisation for their support. Without sponsorship, this conference would not be possible.
- KPMG
Finally, there are many people to be thanked for their contributions to making a success of ISSA 2004. In particular, referee panel, organising committee, programme committee, CE@UP and secretarial support staff.
ISSA 2004 Conference Organisers:
Jan Eloff
Les Labuschagne
Mariki Eloff
Hein Venter
July 2004
