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SMEs are considered to be an engine for growth in both developed and developing countries, by generating employment opportunities, strengthening industrial linkages, securing home markets and earning valuable export revenue. Government-backed loan schemes play a major role in many countries, by enabling small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to access credit facilities. The Credit Guarantee Corporation in Malaysia has been charged with this key role in assisting SMEs, and its main financing instrument is the New Principal Guarantee Scheme (NPGS). The overall aim of this thesis is to examine the extent to which the NPGS is appropriate to the financing needs of Malaysian SMEs. The primary objective is to identify the factors that determine the utilisation of the NPGS; utilisation depends upon a number of demand and supply factors, as well as the characteristics of firms and owner-managers (OMs). An important secondary objective is to investigate the effectiveness of the NPGS, by exploring the generation of finance and economic additionality, as well as the net cost of the Scheme to the Treasury. After a literature review, and the development of theoretical frameworks, a number of hypotheses are put forward. The methodological approach combines a questionnaire survey with case studies based on interviews with borrowers and financiers, and interviews with key informants. The questionnaire is principally concerned with the factors that affect the utilisation of the NPGS, whereas the case studies and interviews focus on the three elements of effectiveness. The questionnaire data are derived from a sample of firms from the CGC's database. The sample includes firms involved in a variety of activities, from the manufacture of high-technology goods to the processing of resource-based products. Firms were randomly selected to adequately represent racial composition, legal structure and loan size within the CGC's portfolio. The questionnaire data were supplemented by 15 in-depth case studies. Two major findings emerge from this study. First, a number of independent variables did have a significant relationship on the utilisation of the NPGS: the amount of security or collateral; limited company status; manufacturing sector; size of firm; use of external advisers for fund raising; and the existence of written business plans. However, the majority of the hypotheses relating to the characteristics of OMs were rejected; the researcher offers some explanations for this apparent anomaly. Second, the case studies demonstrate that NPGS has achieved finance additionality comparable with achieved in guarantee schemes elsewhere, as well as a significant degree of economic additionality. The net cost of the Scheme was difficult to determine with any degree of precision. On the basis of the research findings, the researcher is able to put forward a series of recommendations to improve the operations of the CGC.

The last decade has witnessed a dramatic resurgence in the United States capabilities of deploying her military forces around the world, particularly, in the Persian Gulf region. The region's security and stability, due to its extensive oil reserves, is crucial for the well being of the global economy. This thesis is a study of the interaction between the United States' policies and Persian Gulf regional developments in the new system of power relations in the region. No bilateral interaction can be understood properly without a reference to the multilateral context in which it occurs. Therefore, in this study the Persian Gulf region is used as the unit of analysis and the interaction is studied in the context of regional security and stability as methods of assessing the effects of the two interacting factors. The study traces both regional developments and US policies towards the region in a period of approximately three decades since the British withdrawal in the early 70s and it attempts to construct an analytical framework for the study of the effect of regional developments upon US policies in the region. The most salient features of the present work and its original contribution to the literature of the Persian Gulf studies are as follows: 1. Using a systemic approach, it defines the Persian Gulf as a geopolitical region and rejects the concept that it has sub-systemic relations to the Middle East. 2. It shows instead that the region is a subsystem of the international system. The interaction between US policies and regional developments is directly assessed without reference to intermediate levels. 3. Three systems of power relation have been proposed as the main framework for the study of the United States' role in the region from the time of the British withdrawal from the region. 4. A distinction has been made between "security of the Persian Gulf region" and "security of the foreign power interests in this region" in order to assess the interaction between US policies and the regional developments. 5. It presents for the first time the idea of "dual functional effects of regional developments" and shows that the role of the United States in this region is a function of two complementary variables of "threats" and "opportunities". This study applies different methods in dealing with its different procedures of analysis namely: "analysing historical background"; "conceptual clarifications"; "explaining the problematic"; "hypothetical illustrations"; "reasoning" and "theory building and prescription. " However, it mostly uses a normative analysis of rational (not actual) choices.

Vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs) have attracted much attention over the last few years. VANETs own several significant characteristics, such as the high-rate changing topology led by velocity of vehicles, time-and-location critical safety applications, and Global Positioning System (GPS) devices. In VANETs, as vehicle movement is usually restricted in just bidirectional movements along the roads and streets, geographical location information becomes very useful. In addition, many studies show that position-based routing protocol is a more promising routing strategy for VANETs; therefore security and verification of location information are necessary to be researched. In this thesis, a location verification approach, namely the Cooperative Location Verification (CLV) protocol, is proposed, aiming to prevent position-spoofing attacks on VANETs. The CLV basically uses two vehicles, a Verifier and a Cooperator, to verify the claimed position of a vehicle (Prover), according to two challenge-response procedures. Additionally, the security analysis of the CLV is presented. In order to enhance the CLV by reduce the network overhead, a reputation management system is designed. It utilizes the verification results of the CLV application and maintain every vehicle's reliability in the network. In addition, the solution to sparse networks is briefly discussed. In the simulation, the results show that the proposed CLV performs better than another location verification algorithm, namely the Secure Location Verification (SLV). And the effectiveness of the reputation management system is also demonstrated.

This thesis explores security planning policy in Canada. It provides a historical overview of the securing of cities from the threat of mass violence and demonstrates how violence affects urban populations and the form and function of cities as a result. A purposefully stampeded case study approach is used to determine the state of security planning in Canada and compare selected cities to a benchmark case of Washington D.C. This thesis contributes to the understanding of security planning within Canada in the post September 11, 2001 world and offers insight into strategies used in defense of urban areas The review of literature and discussion sections also provide a critical assessment of security planning which has occurred in the time following WWII, the IRA crisis in Britain the FLQ crisis in Quebec and the terrorist attacks in London and New York in the past decade. Research questions are answered through a case study and literature analysis approach. Results demonstrate that American responses to the threat of terrorism have motivated various governmental agencies to create policy and physical responses to respond to the threat of terrorism. This thesis concludes that Canada, in comparison to the United States and other areas has done little to secure itself against terrorist attack and more specifically that urban planning and municipalities in Canada have done little to integrate anti-terrorism security planning into their planning policy. It is argued that a lack of federal mandates, a lack of motivation and education in planning spheres as well as funding issues are contributing factors.

The maritime industry is an economic activity that enables global trade and travel. However, the transportation network is threatened by security risks that seek to exploit vulnerabilities and cause damage to ships, interrupt the global supply chain network, and endanger the lives of crewmembers and passengers. While policies exist to aid in the prevention of attacks, these policies, alone, are insufficient to sustain global maritime domain security and awareness. Policies must be effectively enforced and complemented with highly trained crewmembers who have the knowledge and skills to efficiently prevent, detect, and respond to threats. This study analyzed maritime security policies and model courses to benchmark training requirements and create a topic development matrix for a centralized training academy for maritime security personnel. A course overview, syllabus, and learning objectives were created to reflect required and recommended security training components, with a focus on the cruise industry. This study concluded that a centralized training academy has significant benefits not only directly to the company where it is applied, but also to the maritime industry as a whole. Additional research would conduct evaluations of the academy and customize this curriculum for other companies engaged in ocean trade to enhance global maritime security and awareness.

Since the events of 9/11, there has been tremendous amount of renewed interests in the study of trade security. There has been an influx of security regulations and the private sector has been trying to keep pace in complying with them. However, due to the public externalities of security improvements and the lack of quantified and proven benefits, the private sector is struggling to establish business cases for their security initiatives. There is very little quantitative research in this area. Using exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and structural equation modeling (SEM), this study serves to fill this gap by introducing a statistical way of analysing and understanding the complex relationships amongst security effort, its motivators and performance and traditional supply chain performance (SCP). This study also proposes an evaluation framework for security efforts. EFA results show that security is a dimension of SCP. This means that organizations have all along been measuring an aspect of their operations that relates to security. As such, organizations should not perceive the current heightened interests in security as throwing them off-balance. In evaluating security efforts, organizations should select key performance indicators (KPIs) that represent each of the four areas of information, cargo, people and cost. SEM results show that organizations undertake security efforts as a result of both perceived security benefits and perceived collateral benefits, with perceived security benefits carrying a greater weight in the decision-making process. Results also show that organizations are implementing security initiatives out-of-compliance i.e. implementing initiatives that they perceive as not having significant impacts on security and SCP. In view of the positive relationships among perceived security impact, security effort and security performance, there is further imperative for an objective method for evaluating security efforts to prevent effort justification behaviour in determining the effectiveness of the same. Results also show that organizations perceive an improved performance in security leads to an overall improvement in SCP. However, as with other supply chain strategies, there are tradeoffs and not all aspects of SCP are impacted in the same way. Time, responsiveness and efficiency for instance are negatively impacted while reliability is positively impacted.

Australian Universities increasingly rely on Information Technology (IT) systems for essential business operations, including administration, teaching, learning and research. Applying information security to university IT systems is strategically important to maintaining overall business continuity in universities. However, the process of effectively implementing information security management in the university sector is challenging for security practitioners. University environments consist of a cultural mix of academic freedoms, student needs and compliance mandates. Consequently, unique and divergent demands are placed on securing and accessing university IT systems. This research undertook a qualitative based exploratory analysis of information security management in Australian universities. The aims and objectives of the research (represented as the research questions) were to determine: 1) What is the current status of information security management practices in the Australian university sector? 2) What are the key issues and influencing factors surrounding the effectiveness of information security management practices? 3) How could improvements in information security management be achieved? The findings from the research led to a comprehensive and insightful examination of the current status, issues and challenges facing information security practitioners in Australian universities. The research findings culminated in the development of a Security Practitioner's Management Model. An essential aim of the model is to assist security practitioners to successfully implement and progress information security in the Australian university environment. The research improves current understanding of information security issues and reinforces the pertinence of information security management as a strategically important business function for Australian universities.

In March 2000, 1 million litres of raw sewage was released into the water system of Maroochy Shire on Queensland’s sunshine coast. This environmental disaster was caused by a disgruntled ex-contractor using a radio transmitter to illicitly access the electronically controlled pumps in the control system. In 2007 CNN screened video footage of an experimental attack against a electrical generator. The attack caused the generator to shake and smoke, visually showing the damage caused by cyber attack. These attacks highlight the importance of securing the control systems which our critical infrastructures depend on. This thesis addresses securing control systems, focusing on securing the communications for supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) systems. We review the architectures of SCADA systems and produce a list of the system constraints that relate to securing these systems. With these constraints in mind, we survey both the existing work in information and SCADA security, observing the need to investigate further the problem of secure communications for SCADA systems. We then present risk modelling techniques, and model the risk in a simple SCADA system, using the ISM, a software tool for modelling information security risk. In modelling the risk, we verify the hypothesis that securing the communications channel is an essential part of an effective security strategy for SCADA systems. After looking at risk modelling, and establishing the value of securing communications, we move on to key management for SCADA systems. Appropriate key management techniques are a crucial part of secure communications, and form an important part of the contributions made in this work. We present a key management protocol that has been designed to run under the constraints specific to SCADA systems. A reductionist security proof is developed for a simplified version of the protocol, showing it is secure in the Bellare Rogaway model.