The rapid growth in the use of the Internet and computer technology over the past decade has given birth to new forms of crimes, the cyber crimes. These crimes have no boundaries and affect individuals, organizations and the society at large. According to Norton Cybercrime Report 2011, almost two-thirds of the adult web users globally have fallen victim to some sort of cybercrimes. Around 83% of web users in China were affected by cybercrimes, followed by India and Brazil at 76% each, and the USA at 73%.

The cybercrime incidents are no longer limited to sending of malicious emails. They may range from stealing vital information such as credit card details to launching of cyber attacks on nations’ infrastructure by terrorists. According to survey reports, banking and financial services, pharmaceuticals and IT/ITES sectors are the most preferred targets of cybercriminals. Cybercrime incidents are constantly evolving over the past several years and have emerged as a very concrete threat.

The increasing dependency on IT systems and the Internet to carry out business and provide services leads to exponential growth of vulnerability base which is exploited by the perpetrators of the crimes. Although organizations understand the need to safeguard their IT infrastructure, they are inadequately equipped to counter cyber attacks. Criminals explore diverse possibilities of existing vulnerabilities in the IT systems of the target organizations to achieve their objectives. Of late, cybercriminals have expanded their activities in the fast growing social networking and mobile platforms where most of the users are less aware of security risks. Cyber attacks that utilize social engineering, website defamation, cyber defamation and distributed denial of service have been increasing in recent times.

In its 2015 report, KPMG has revealed that there is a sharp rise in cybercrimes in India. The motive of the perpetrators has changed from cyber attacks that result in business disruption to cyber attacks that provide them financial gains. Consequently, it is imperative for organizations to focus on robust cyber risk management system. A robust cyber risk management system may include commitment by the top management, periodic risk management, a robust cyber defense strategy and a powerful incident response mechanism. It will not only ensure ample ability to fight against cyber attacks but also provide cyber resilience to the organization.

The first paper, “IP-Spoofing Vulnerability Protection Software for Data Communication Network Operators”, by Fidelis I Onah, presents an intelligent system using multi-agent approach for detecting IP-spoofing vulnerability. The author reports that the system is effective in detecting fraudulent transaction data from Real Estate Management network environments.

The second paper, “Particle Swarm Optimization for Feature Selection: A Study on Microarray Data Classification”, by Ajay Kumar Mishra, Subhendu Kumar Pani and Bikram Kesari Ratha, presents a comparative study wherein particle swarm 6 The IUP Journal of Information Technology, Vol. XII, No. 1, 2016 optimization and genetic algorithm techniques are used for feature selection in microarray datasets. Considering the classification performance of several popular classifiers, it is concluded that particle swarm optimization technique provides better results compared to genetic algorithm.

The third paper, “Innovative Cooling Strategies for Cloud Computing Data Centers”, by Manju Lata and Vikas Kumar, provides a review of the traditional and new techniques for data center cooling in large cloud deployment environments. It is informative and provides great help in the design of energy-efficient data centers.

Finally, the last paper, “Risk Perception and Adoption of Mobile Banking Services: A Review”, by Prerna Bagadia and Alok Bansal, presents a study on various factors along with the risk perception of the customers towards adoption of mobile banking services.

-- A C Ojha
Consulting Editor