OPERATIONAL SECURITY OF UBIQUITOUS INFORMATION - Cyberwar-Netwar: Security in the Information Age - page 94

Amaral : That is a difficult question but I have some data. There are really too many
factors; use within enterprises and computer and Internet use by families. But you need
this data. If families use the Internet at work, they start to use it at home. You need the
connection at home, but you have the choice of following a number of Internet
connections and the price of the connections begins to drop. This is politics of course.
And the second point is if enterprises use Internet with browsers, people will start using
the technology. Following on from these two points, you come to education which is
more of a long-term matter in that we have to look at which schools are using it, how
many computers are there per student, how many Internet accesses per student and you
can see that it is an investment, although a long-term one, for the country. You need to
follow these indicators for a long-term analysis.
Valente : The economic factor was referred to. I think that the major factor in
Internet adoption in Portugal, starting in 1998, was the fact that the telecommunications
market was liberalised. Until 1998 we lived in a near State monopoly. In 1998
competition started to be extremely intense, particularly in the Internet area, so Internet
adoption really took off from there.
Amaral : I have to say two things. Firstly, the United States liberalised
communications during the 1980's. They divided their labs into five different companies
and competition always lowers prices. The European Community began in 1988, and in
Portugal it was in 2000. This caused a drop in prices, so regulation had to be adjusted.
The next step or problem would be broadband. Now, the European Community is
investing highly in all these technologies; firstly in technology, and then in use. Europe
2002 started in 2000, and we are now investing in a programme called Europe 2005. You
can easily access this information on the Internet. And Europe 2005 is an investment for
broadband access, but you have to have the market liberalised with a good regulator.
Prices will continue to go down and Internet use will rapidly increase. By the way, Mário
Valente was one of the first to access Internet. He started his Internet company in 1993
and then he went to court because at that time it was forbidden. So he knows the difficult
part - he has suffered.
Guerra : A law in Portugal around 2000/2001 made the use of Internet mandatory in
high schools. So today every high school has Internet and computers, which explains in
part why today's youth are the ones using more Internet.
Erez : Speaking about security, not referring to technology or to too many technical
terms, the problem that I see is mostly education. Security is not something that is
paying back its investment. When we speak about security, we are asked immediately:
what will the return be? And usually you cannot or are not capable of evaluating. The
risk can be seen or it can be unimaginable and that is perhaps the core problem of most
organisations. The security officer can be someone for whom an organisation needs to
find a slot. That is really the picture in many cases. I hope, however, that for
organisations such as Ministries of Defence, NATO, etc., the situation is not like that. I
think that influential and academic individuals cannot only educate but can write articles
and provide training material in an everyday language. They thus have a very important
task in influencing decision-makers in various institutes. It is my experience that many