3rd CCS 1996 Message from the General Chairs Namaskar! Hello and welcome to the Third ACM Conference on Computer and Communications security! 1996 marks yet another milestone for our conference - successfully moving to an international venue. Our conference started in 1993 in Fairfax, Virginia, USA, and after a highly successful inaugural year and an equally successful follow-on in 1994 at the same venue, we felt ready to internationalize the venue, thus opening up the conference to different audiences. We decided to focus on Asia in 1996 and the choice of New DeN, India came very naturally to both of us who (many moons ago) lived in this part of the world. The current thinking is that our conference should be frequently held outside the USA, and hopefully will return to a different part of Asia in the next few years. With a few significant exceptions, security research is today largely happening in USA and Europe. Yet the growth of computers and communications is probably occurring most explosively in Asia, and some countries like India, are major exporters of software. This means it is critical that security research and awareness gain a strong base in Asia, and we hope that by holding a major international conference in Asia we can help bring focus to, and catalyze security research in Asia. Our conference is now firmly established as one of the highest quality security conferences, and thanks to the efforts of our Program Chairs Li Gong and Jacques Stern, ably assisted by the members of the technical program committee, this year is no different. We thank them for their efforts, and thank all the authors who subniifted papers to our conference. Maintaining these high standards is our top priority and we hope that in future years we can maintain this quality, and ftirther improve the quantity of papers focused on security practice. Even in this age of marvelous communications and an international Internet, the world is still not small enough to organize a conference across a distance of ten thousand miles! For taking over the actual arrangements of putting on this conference we are deeply indebted to our Local Arrangements Chairs, Dr. N. Seshagiri and Mr. H. C. Venna, who were ably assisted by Dr. Y. K Sharma, Mr. A. Venna and Col. Bhatia and others at the National Informatics Centre and AIMEL Private Ltd.. A special thank-you to Mr. N. Ganesan for critical support at crucial junctures! The success of the conference will largely be in thanks to these individuals. Thanks are also due to our able Proceedings Chair Clifford Neuman, Publicity Chair Rich Graveman and Awards Chair Raymond Pyle. Finally, we would like to thank our employers Bell Atlantic and George Mason University respectively for their support and encouragement, Over four years ago the two of us along with the other founding members saw the need for this security conference and can now look back with satisfaction at having established a very high quality, highly regarded, security conference. While continuing to play a guiding role on the Steering Comniittee, it is time for us to step aside and hand over the reins of the conference to a fresh set of volunteers. We are confident that with the fourth conference and beyond, our successors will build on the current momentum to create an even better conference. We are grateful and thank all the conference organizers, committee members, authors and conference attendees over the years for the success of the ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security. Onward ..... Ravi Ganesan Vice President - Information Technology Bell Atlantic Ravi Sandhu Professor - ISSE Department George Mason University