Sweden has traditionally been portrayed as a tolerant and generous country in terms of its migration policy. In conjunction with the increased flow of refugees in 2015 this image of Sweden has slowly but surely come to be questioned. Swedish political parties have raised concerns over the increased number of asylum seekers, and stressed the social, political and economic implications it may have for the Swedish society. This essay examines how Swedish political parties frame the refugee issue, and how these frames can be understood from a security lens. The following questions have been examined; How do Swedish parlamentary parties frame the refugee issue? To what extent is the refugee issue securitized in the Swedish context? What consequences can securitization of the refugee issue have for Swedish citizens’ attitudes to the welcoming of refugees? Two complementary methods are used to analyze the material. In the first step, Faircloughs critical discourse analysis uncover Swedish parliamentary parties frames of the refugee issue. In the second step, the securitization theory is applied in order to relate these refugee portrayals to security. Four central refugee discourses are identified in the material, following are; solidarity, responsibility, identity and expenditures. The essay argues that the refugee issue tends to be framed as a security threat of parties on the right wing of the political spectrum. Parties such as the Moderate Party and the Sweden Democrats have securitized the refugee issue. These parties frame the issue in terms of expenditures and identity, which follow a security rhetoric. The remaining parties show a great concern on the issue, but put emphasis on solidarity and responsibility. Successful securitization has thus not taken place among these parties.

This thesis is a comparative study of the national security strategies of Sweden, Russia and the Czech Republic. The analysis investigates the contextual analysis made by each country and the identified security threats. To compare and find out the similarities and differences two theoretical approaches are used: realism and liberalism. To compare and identify the threats a five factor model is used, originating of general military threat assessment. / <p>Erasmus</p>

The thesis seeks to examine the development of the US-Japan, US-South Korea, and US- Australia alliances, during the implementation of the rebalance to Asia policy under the Obama administration. It discusses the application of three major international relations theories, realism, liberalism, and constructivism, in studying the causes and effects that resulted in different outcomes across the three dyads, from security, economic, and cultural perspectives. To establish a causal relationship, the thesis employs a qualitative case study method, controlled comparison, to test the theories and identify the factors that play a decisive role in determining the differences. It then concludes that between the three alliances, it was the rational choice of policymakers, focused on state survival and economic interests, that influenced state behaviour in cross-border relationships. The US alliances in Asia-Pacific have been operating mainly on pragmatic foundations and principles, to serve strategic purposes, and have little to do with normative, ideational factors. Keywords Asia-Pacific, alliance, economic interdependence, foreign policy, hegemony, national identity, rebalance, security threat

The thesis deals with the issue of currently most frequent cyber attacks apperaring in the financial sector, that do not aim to fraud financial institutions, but particularly target their clients, average Internet users. The highest attention is deserved to fraud emails -- as known as phishing. The other types of internet frauds and scams, such as Nigerian email scams or the Zeus virus, are not omitted. In the document is presented textual and pictorial guide, which contents a list of warning signs, that helps common Internet user identify and reveal email fraud. The multicriterial analysis evaluates the level of education and awareness, that selected financial institutions provide to their clients using the official web sites. In the last chapter are suggested recommendations and advices leading to increase availability, clearness and quality of information regarding internet frauds and financial threats.

The aim of this study is to analyse the security implications of refugee flows to South Africa. The country is reputed to host the largest number of refugees and asylum seekers in the world and is also the foremost refugee destination of choice on the African continent. It therefore becomes pertinent that a consideration of the security implications is necessary in this age of global migration. The dissertation is based on three main assumptions to be investigated and tested, namely: > The main causes of refugee flows to South Africa reside in a number of push-factors in the sending countries, but also in a number of pull-factors in South Africa. > The security implications of refugee flows to South Africa are exacerbated by a number of political, socio-economic and administrative issues in South Africa. > Although concern over some of the security issues relating to refugee flows to South Africa have been officially expressed, policy responses have been ambiguous. The study is undertaken against the background of the concept of national security, specifically in developing countries. It is within these parameters that the security implications of refugees in South Arica are analysed, especially from the perspective of political, economic, social and environmental dimensions. The study mainly focuses on the period 1994 to 2010, as it is within this period that major developments regarding refugee issues in South Africa occurred. / Dissertation (MSecurity Studies)--University of Pretoria, 2013. / gm2014 / Political Sciences / Unrestricted

Climate change not only corresponds to scientifically proven future implications, but also poses a politically relevant study of climate security analysis, affecting the study and practice of (international) politics in different ways. In the same vein, the EU as an international organization have been getting more involved in discussions of climate-related security risks, in which the European Commission (which represents the Union’s common interests) have been publishing a set of consecutive policy documents addressing the climate change since the early 2000’s. Accordingly, this thesis studies five big policy documents produced by the Commission addressing the climate change between 2007 and 2021 by conducting a Qualitative Content Analysis upon the discourses and conceptualizations used to inform how the issue is to be understood, while basing on the theoretical model developed by von Lucke  et al.’s (2014) that distinguishes levels of referent objects and risk-security approaches. In doing so, it finds that the Commission often draws indirect connections between the climate change and its social, political and economic implications to the EU at the territorial (and individual) level, while heavily employing risk-based approaches and promoting rather business-as-usual solutions.

This research is a case study focused on the resocialization of prison gang members through the lens of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice’s (TDCJ) Gang Renouncement and Disassociation (GRAD) process, a nine-month, three-phase voluntary process whereby confirmed prison gang, or Security Threat Group (STG), members renounce their gang membership and disassociate from the gang while still incarcerated. The TDCJ implemented its gang renunciation process to relinquish its dependence on segregating confirmed prison gang members and to provide them a way to transition out of segregation. The GRAD process has been in place since 2000 with more than 2,600 offenders completing it, but little information, other than anecdotal evidence, is available to support or disprove its success or effectiveness at de-ganging and resocializing prison gang members for the long haul. Interviews were conducted with 16 individuals, including GRAD correctional officers and instructors, and law enforcement officers with known expertise and knowledge of prison gang investigations. A limited amount of extant aggregate-level data was provided by TDCJ to supplement the narratives in the qualitative analysis. Findings suggest that the identified goals of the process differ among GRAD staff and non-GRAD staff: GRAD staff focused on offender rehabilitation, and non-GRAD staff focused on gang renunciation. It was also found that resocialization and normative change can and do occur in the closed GRAD environment; however, no tracking mechanism exists to systematically and pro-actively monitor their behavior once they are released from GRAD to determine if they have internalized these new norms and values. Based on the interviews, it also appears that the length of time spent in segregation prior to renunciation renders the offender more grateful and appreciative, and, therefore, more likely to successfully complete the process. Finally, interviews with law enforcement reveal that, upon release to the broader community, these offenders may have renounced the gang – but not the crime. The dissertation ends with limitations to the study, recommendations for future research, and implications for social work. / text

Over the last four decades organized crime groups, particularly, drug trafficking organizations or drug cartels, have managed to be under the spotlight of the security agendas of American countries such as Colombia and the United States. During the last two decades, however, the global securitization of the drug trafficking issue, has led them to become a major security threat not only for the Americas, but also for Europe and more recently for West African countries. These organizations pose a threat not only to the security of the state, but to the very essence of it, by corrupting and damaging everything they come in contact with at the political, social, economical and even cultural level. This graduate thesis presents an analysis on Latin American drug trafficking organizations or drugs cartels, as they are commonly known, focusing on the cases of Colombian and Mexican drug cartels. By comparing these two case studies, I suggest that today's Mexican drug trafficking organizations have gained their momentum and incommensurable strength by following the footsteps of the big three Colombian drug cartels that existed between the 1980s and 1990s. The first chapter will expose the definitions and concepts surrounding the research of organized crime. In the second and third chapters, both the...

Information technology (IT) security, which is concerned with protecting the confidentiality, integrity and availability of information technology assets, inherently possesses a significant amount of known and unknown risks. The need to manage IT security risk is regarded as an important aspect in the daily operations within organisations. IT security risk management has gained considerable attention over the past decade due to the collapse of some large organisations in the world. Previous investigative research in the field of IT security has indicated that despite the efforts that organisations use to reduce IT security risks, the trend of IT security attacks is still increasing. One of the contributing factors to poor management of IT security risk is attributed to the fact that IT security risk management is often left to the technical security technologists who do not necessarily employ formal risk management tools and reasoning. For this reason, organisations find themselves in a position where they do not have the correct approach to identify, assess and treat IT security risks. The IT security discipline is complex in nature and requires specialised skills. Organisations generally struggle to find a combination of IT security and risk management skills in corporate markets. The scarcity of skills leaves organisations with either IT security technologists who do not apply risk management principles to manage IT security risk or risk management specialists who do not understand IT security in order to manage IT security risk. Furthermore, IT is dynamic in nature and introduces new threats and vulnerabilities as it evolves. Taking a look at the development of personal computers over the past 20 years is indicative of how change has been constant in this field, from big desktop computers to small mobile computing devices found today. The requirement to protect IT against threats associated with desktops was far less than the requirement associated with protecting mobile devices. There is pressure for organisations to ensure that they stay abreast with the current technology and associated risks. Failure to understand and manage IT security risk is often cited as a major cause of concern within most organisations’ IT environments because comprehensive approaches to identify, assess and treat IT security risk are not consistently applied. This is due to the fact that the trend of IT security attacks across the globe is on the increase, resulting in gaps when managing IT security risk. Employing a formal risk based approach in managing IT security risk ensures that risks of importance to an organisation are accounted for and receive the correct level of attention. Defining an approach of how IT security risk is managed should be seen as a fundamental task and is the basis of this research. This study aims to contribute to the field of IT security by developing an approach that assists organisations in treating IT security risk more effectively. This is achieved through the use of a combination of existing best practice IT security frameworks and standards principles, basic risk management principles, as well as existing threat modelling processes. The approach developed in this study serves to encourage formal IT security risk management practices within organisations to ensure that IT security risk is accounted for by senior leadership. Furthermore, the approach is anticipated to be more proactive and iterative in nature to ensure that external factors that influence the increasing trend of IT security threats within the IT environment are acknowledged by organisations as technology evolves. / Computing / M. Sc. (Computing)

The thesis entitled "Genesis of Russian propaganda as a serious security threat of the 21st century from the perspective of NATO and EU" examines the phenomenon of contemporary Russian propaganda. Russia commonly uses propaganda as a tool of promoting its interests. Russian propaganda is very sophisticated, aggressive, and massive. Mainly due to the effective use of the internet and social networks, Russian online actors are able, in a short space of time, to successfully generate an information chaos, which is difficult to navigate in. Contemporary Russian propaganda has several key aspects, namely the anti-American and anti-European orientation, attacks on Western democratic values, and the mixing of truth with fiction. Thus, propaganda becomes an effective weapon in the information war that the Kremlin has initiated. The West is aware of these alarming issues and tries to respond. The thesis analyzes the development of the perception of the Kremlin propaganda by the Western international security organizations NATO and EU. At the same time, it attempts to identify the moment when Russian propaganda began to be perceived as a serious security threat. Whereas the key of the analysis is to interpret the perception of Russian propaganda, the concept of securitization was chosen as the theoretical...