When you first hear the term Information Assurance you tend to conjure up an image of a balanced set of reasonable measures that have been taken to protect the information after an assessment has been made of risks that are posed to it. In truth this is the Holy Grail that all organisations that value their information should strive to achieve, but which few even understand. Information Assurance is a term that has recently come into common use. When talking with old timers in IT (or at least those that are over 35 years old), you will hear them talking about information security, a term that has survived since the birth of the computer. In the more recent past, the term Information Warfare was coined to describe the measures that need to be taken to defend and attack information. This term, however, has military connotations - after all, warfare is normally their domain. Shortly after the term came into regular use, it was applied to a variety of situations encapsulated by Winn Schwartau as the three classes of Information Warfare: Class 1- Personal Information Warfare. Class 2 - Corporate Information Warfare. Class 3 - Global Information Warfare. Political sensitivities lead to "warfare" being replaced by "operations", a much more "politically correct" word. Unfortunately, "operations" also has an offensive connotation and is still the terminology of the military and governments.

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I. An Introduction to Information Assurance: 1. What is Information Assurance?. 2. The World of Information. 3. The Theory of Risks. 4. The Information World of Crime . 5. IA Trust and Supply Chains. 6. Basic IA Concepts and Models.- II. IA in the World of Corporations: 7. The Corporate Security Officer. 8. Corporate Security Fuctions. 9. IA in the Interest of National Security. 10. The Corporate IA Officer. 11. IA Organisational Functions.- III. Technical Aspects of IA: 12. IA and Software. 13. Applying Cryptography to IA. 14. Information Technology Security.- IV. The Future: 15. The Future and Final Thoughts. Appendix: References and Recommended Readings.- Appendix 2: UK Computer Misuse Act of 1990.- Appendix 3: 'Computer Misuse Act 1990 - Loopholes and Anomalies'.- Appendix 4: US Computer Security Act of 1987.- Appendix 5: BS7799.- Appendix 6: MIS Training Institute 'Swiss Army Knife'Bibliography.- Index.