Keeping up with research in computer and communications security is becoming a very time-consuming activity. A conscientious researcher in the field would have had to read well over 600 papers last year; and as the amount of research activity grows, the problem can only get worse.

We are currently developing, with Cambridge University Press, an abstracting service designed to solve this problem.

`Computer and Communications Security Abstracts' will summarise research in computer security topics such as access control, database security, formal methods, distributed systems, biometrics, security management, risk management, contingency planning, legal issues, audit, and applications; and in communications security topics including stream and block cipher techniques, public key cryptography and computational number theory, complexity and theoretical cryptography, cryptanalysis, authentication, protocols, and applications.

Our mission is to provide abstracts of as much published research and development work as possible. This includes not just conference and journal papers, but also research reports and theses. We will make a particular effort to report work which is published in languages other than English, or which for other reasons might escape the notice of the research community.

We expect that the first issue will be published in March 1993. It will be quarterly to begin with, and become bi-monthly once a sufficient flow of abstracts has been established. These should be a dummy issue out at the end of 1992, which will be circulated with subscription information.

If you could be able to help us with abstracting work (particularly in foreign languages), then we would be very keen to hear from you.

Material published in the main periodicals (IEE and IEEE journals, Journal of Cryptology, Mathematics of Computation, Journal of Computer Security, Computers and Security, Cryptologia) and the main conference proceedings, will be reviewed automatically. However, if you are publishing material elsewhere - such as in the form of a departmental research report, or in a provincial journal - we would suggest that you sent us an offprint to ensure coverage. This should be mailed to:

Ross J. Anderson (rja14@cl.cam.ac.uk)
University Computer Laboratory
Pembroke Street
Cambridge CB2 3QG
England