London School of Economics/ Information Systems Integrity Group

The London School of Economics and Political Science is one of the world’s leading social science institutions. Many influential developments in thinking about society, economics and politics have originated in work done here.

The IS Integrity Group is a multi-disciplinary research group which examines aspects of information systems security from a social science perspective, rather than the more traditional technological approach. It was formerly the Computer Security Research Centre (CSRC) but has its present name from 15th April 2004. The IS Integrity Group is committed to collaborative research which bridges the gap between academics and practitioners. Alongside FIDIS, the ISIG is involved in the following projects:

• FIDUCIA

The Fiducia project approaches the problem of inter-domain interoperation from the risk perspective. The project collected and coded key concepts in certificate policy and practice. The ensuing dataset schematised contractual roles and obligations enabling a risk model that elucidates the nature of commercial risk, possible semantic ambiguities, and legal uncertainty within PKI services. The result is a specification language that is protocol independent, but deployable in electronic commerce software.

• FORESIGHT Cyber Trust and Crime Prevention Project

Foresight is a UK Government-backed programme with the aim of increasing UK exploitation of science. The Cyber Trust and Crime Prevention project considers next generation information technologies in areas such as identity and authenticity, surveillance, system robustness, security and information assurance and the basis for effective interaction and trust between people and machines.

• SPOTLIGHT

The IS Integrity Group has worked with Enterprise LSE to created the Spotlight programme to develop new approaches to fighting money laundering. It is a collaborative research programme and discussion forum.

• ARION

ARION is aiming to provide a new generation of Digital Library services for the searching and retrieval of digital scientific collections that reside within research and consultancy organisations.

• TERRA 2000

This project is led by RAND Europe, and the CSRC participates through ELSE.The primary objective is to produce a rich library of scenarios that combine informed and consistent assumptions about the New Economy; a coherent set of key issues relevant to European policy; assumptions about key actors; closely integrated state-of-the-art projections; and an assessment of the implications.