Infocon Magazine

'Information is the currency of victory on the battlefield.' GEN Gordon Sullivan, CSA (1993)

Infocon Magazine Issue One, October 2003, ISSN 1742-1926

1) Call for Papers for Infocon Magazine Issue Two

2) Information Operations Interview with Dr. Dan Kuehl from the National Defense University

3) Psychological Operations Interview with the former Deputy Commander of NATO's Information Campaign in Bosnia

4) Measuring 'Digital Wars': Learning From The Experience of Peace Research and Arms Control

5) Business Continuity Planning - A safety net for businesses

6) Business Continuity Planning Interview with David Spinks, EDS

7) Economic Espionage - a threat to corporate America

8) Economic Espionage Interview with David Cid

9) Corporate Open Source Information Leakage - A self-assessment approach using Internet sources

10) USAF Suicide Bombers Intelligence Brief

1) Call for Papers for Infocon Magazine Issue Two

Over the next few months we are planning to publish useful articles and interviews for the forthcoming issues of the Infocon Magazine. So if you are interested in participating by writing an article, please contact us.

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2) Information Operations Interview with Dr. Dan Kuehl from the National Defense University

'...I see it [IO] not as a replacement for existing military operations. I see it as something which can stand along side of them in its own distinct and unique sense, and changes how all of them are conducted to exploit the relationships and synergies among them. . ..'

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3) Psychological Operations Interview with the the former Deputy Commander of NATO's Information Campaign in Bosnia

'... IO is so complex a phenomena that today’s commander has difficulty understanding it. And unfortunately IO is still a world of specialists today. Until it becomes a general part of the battle system, its effects are going to be limited. You can have different commanders in the same physical locations with the same units who know how to use IO and employ those fundamentals and then you have commanders who won’t do it at all as at the end of the day the issue is results and not how they got there. ...'

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4) Information Operations Feature: Measuring 'Digital Wars': Learning From The Experience of Peace Research and Arms Control

'... Are 'digital wars' (or, Computer Networks Operations in military-speak) ‘real’? Can they really cause economic damage and loss of lives? Can poor countries use them to integrate or even, following Sun Tzu, to replace more expensive weapons systems? If the answers are positive, then it should be possible to measure cyberwars. ...'

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5) Business Continuity Planning - A safety net for businesses

'...Every business faces minor downtimes, and major unknowns; hence it is important to have plans in place which guarantee business contingency. Before the September 2001 attack on America quite a few business people said that they saw BCP as an inefficient use of resources, i.e. an expenditure which does not bring any return on investments. But statistics tell a different story, and events like 9-11 serve as drastic reminders that it is vital for every company to have plans in place to ensure business continuity, and the continuity of our suppliers and logistics - especially as globalization and our interdependence continues to grow. ...'

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6) Business Continuity Planning Interview with David Spinks, EDS

'... There are enough codes of practice in place for senior management to not only support business continuity planning, but actually pushing people to deliver it, because at the end of the day the board of directors is held responsible in times of crisis if there is not adequate planning. In the UK, we have generally recognized practices such as the Turnbull Combined Code of Practice which makes various commitments on both executive and non executive officers of organisations to manage not just financial risk but also operational, environmental and safety risks. And one of the key responses to risk management is business continuity planning. If they are not supporting BCP plans the needle from innocent to guilty will move rapidly from innocent to guilty. And I think there are enough cases in place now, enough proof in place, to suggest to any peer groups of executive officers that they need to take business continuity planning seriously. ...'

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7) Economic Espionage Feature: Economic Espionage - a threat to corporate America

'... Billions of dollars and thousands of jobs are lost due to theft of trade secrets. Corporate America needs to acknowledge the reality of this risk and develop more efficient countermeasures to safeguard survival in a competitive market. ...'

8) Economic Espionage Feature: Economic Espionage Interview with David Cid

'... There are more intelligence officers in the United States from foreign countries collecting information today than there were at the end of the Cold War. At the end of the Cold War the political and philosophical struggle was over and it then became an economic war if you want to characterise as that. With that, these countries decided to direct their intelligence services from strategic and tactical information (although they still do that to a certain degree) to collecting economic information. Many of these countries understand that they can never compete with us (the USA) or the British, or the French, or the Germans or the other industrialised nations. But they can steal information. If you want to get information effectively, an intelligence service is the ideal collection tool since that is what an intelligence service is designed to do. ...'

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9) Corporate Open Source Information Leakage - A self-assessment approach using Internet sources by Raphael Rues

'... This paper attempts to demonstrate the state of transparency as well as the amount of 'open source information' available on selected anonymous European organisations by using a particular empirical 'corporate information leakage inventory' based on ten indicators. ...'

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10) USAF Suicide Bombers Intelligence Brief

'... Living in the US, we have considered ourselves "safe" for many many years. 9/11 proved that war/terrorism can ultimately be brought right to our doorstep.

The attached PowerPoint presentation is aimed at making us all aware of a new threat... suicide bombers. Not only does it aim to make folks aware, but it also has some key points on spotting these people (based on past intel). ...'

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