Situational crime prevention and cyber-crime investigation: the online pedo-pornography case study

In a society where information represents one of the most valuable assets of business and government, an holistic approach to the management of information systems security is mandatory in order to prevent and detect possible abuse and misuse of information. Facing computer crimes requires to look at aspects related to the technical, formal and informal part of an information system, using theories, methods and techniques lying on different disciplines. Although, the majority of methods and techniques to prevent, detect and investigate computer crimes are best practices based on the experience of IT professionals and practitioners and there is a general lack of theories both used and advocated by academics. We expect to contribute to the literature on computer crime detection, prevention and investigation by introducing a new framework, a formalism and techniques strongly founded on social, psychological and organizational theories. Our assumption is that by focusing on human behavior instead of IT, is possible to better understand computer crimes and to offer substantial insight into the area of IS security. © 2005 IEEE.