International Conference on Homeland Security

Starting from the switch from institutionalized state to the concept of homeland and related security measures and initiatives the paper will focus on soft concerns like illegal immigration, uprisings, terrorism, pandemic diseases, natural disasters, misuse of cyber space, economic speculations etc. Soft concerns potential impact and possible counter measures or mitigation actions. Both citizens perception of homeland and potential security risks evolved in recent times, globalization and on-line communication had a deep influence on citizens’ perceptions and lifestyle. As a side effect of globalisation and massive cyber services the number of crimes both perpetrated at local and global level is growing up. Governments and Law Enforcement Agencies are aware of this and look for potential countermeasures not only following traditional solutions. A kind of butterfly effect that propagates in real-time from continent to continent. So, if one of the key enablers of soft concerns is cyber technology this is even one of the most relevant countermeasures. This paper provides a synthetic description of the discontinuity between the evolution of warfare as it was in a pre-cyber era and the switch to the different levels of cyber “warfare”. There is a clear need to adopt a renovated set of countermeasures to face and possibly cancel or mitigate new threats.