This December holiday season, don’t forget to join me in commemorating a recently created, yet very important holiday: Computer Security Day. Celebrated every year on November 30^th, this holiday was created in 1988 to help raise awareness about protecting information systems from theft or damage to their hardware, software and information, as well as from the disruption or misdirection of the services they provide.

As our reliance on computer systems continues to grow, so does our reliance on computer security. To help raise awareness in this area, SpringerOpen would like to take this opportunity to promote Computer Security Day. Visit our dedicated page here to view the selection of open access articles we’ve selected and let’s help reduce the number of computer security issues!

We are happy to invite Dr. Lee Gillam, the founding and current Editor-in-Chief of Journal of Cloud Computing: Advances, Systems and Applications (JoCCASA) to talk about the relation between the journal and cyber-security in the modern era.

Could you please tell us something about JoCCASA?

JoCCASA was the first fully open access journal on Cloud Computing, and published its first articles in April 2012. Being fully open access means that all publications are made freely available to both academia and industry as soon as they are released. JoCCASA publishes articles on topics that are essential to Cloud Computing, focusing on Cloud applications, Cloud systems, and the advances that will lead to the Clouds of the future. The articles largely demonstrate the results of scientific and technical research, as well as the current status of and significant advances in Cloud. You can find a non-exhaustive list of our topics of interest on the journal website here. JoCCASA has become an important core journal for Cloud Computing specifically, and is growing in importance in Computer Science in general.

What makes JoCCASA important in connection with Computer Security Day?

Cloud Security is certainly a popular concern. First and foremost because the use of the Public Cloud requires trusting in another, potentially vast, organization whose real practices are often hidden—wholly or partly—but also because any vulnerabilities there will be relevant at a significant scale until they are addressed. And there will be many more reasons also. Although security should be at the forefront of thinking regardless of how IT systems are delivered, thinking in terms of Cloud probably accentuates this; this is not necessarily a bad thing.

JoCCASA offers an outlet for in-depth research on Cloud Security, with broader relevance to Computer Security. Cloud Security can be seen as including both privacy and trust, but also relates to privacy-preserving approaches to data. JoCCASA has publications addressing all of these aspects. Currently the most viewed article in JoCCASA, with over 45,000 accesses since its publication on 12 July 2012, is “A quantitative analysis of current security concerns and solutions for cloud computing,” amply demonstrating both the relevance of the topic and especially its popularity. The 4^th and 5^th most viewed articles, at this time, concern a “business aware incident detection system,” and “trust mechanisms,” with around 20,000 accesses each. Many other publications in the journal also address such topics.

How do you see open access developing in terms of Computer Security?

Computer Security is definitely a major focus at the moment. Major events involve several hundreds of vendors, addressing network security, hardware security, software security, and myriad topics concerning protection, detection, recovery, regulation, compliance, risk, and more. Perhaps one day, Computer Security will be a concern of the past. Until then, open access is likely to expand towards specific journals addressing topics in Computer Security with an increased focus on specific topics.

What are your ambitions for JoCCASA’s future?

That JoCCASA continues to offer an outlet for in-depth research on Cloud Security, and also continues to push the envelope of what Cloud is, or is not, and to demonstrate how the researchers that publish with us are doing precisely that.