As the trend towards e-business continues, you will continue to open up your networks to your suppliers and customers through extranets and through the web.

Clearly, the Internet has just opened multiple new frontiers that criminals can use to commit their acts. Just as corporate workers and home-users embrace the ever-advancing technologies and the far-reaching capabilities, the outlaws follow suit. As a result, today, we are faced with a plethora of new, malicious viruses that constantly threaten systems the world over. A classic case in point is the recent damage caused by the Love bug virus. The speed with which new variants were formed is a gloomy pointer to the problems we are faced with today. In the absence of genuine solutions to the threat posed by viruses and malicious hackers, it would be fair to say that no operating system or Network can be termed as completely safe or secure from these threats.

Also, the speed with which the World Wide Web operates helps accommodate the criminal's capabilities to induce substantial damage within an extremely short period of time. Hackers are finding that they can access much richer environments through the e-business and virtual world than they can in the physical while evading many of the risks associated with physically executing with the same unlawful acts.

The objective associated with organizing the upcoming Hackers! 2000 conference, at the Hotel Leela, Mumbai between June 12-13, 2000, is to provide a deeper insight to the myriad problems associated with securing information systems worldwide as well as educate the audience about the latest developments and technologies that would help reduce the threat of security breaches within the organization.