Journal of Security and Sustainability Issues

Security and competitiveness are two very important aspects of the economic and political development of every country. In the 21st century, one of the key drivers of most economies in countries throughout the world is energy. Different countries adopt different measures so as to ensure their security and competitiveness through the effective energy policies that make traditional and renewable resources adequately available hence eliminating the possibilities of shortages. Our paper takes up the case study of Germany as one of the wealthiest and most developed economies in the European Union which also occupies the first positions in the charts of energy uptake and consumption. German policy-makers realize its vulnerability when it comes to energy security and attempt to diversify its energy competitiveness using the renewable sources of energy (for instance via the adoption of the Erneuerbare-Energien-Gesetz or the “Renewable Energy Act” (EEG)). We analyze the issues of energy security and competitiveness of a country using an example of Germany. Moreover, we describe what challenges the renewable energy sources (RES) might bring into the conventional game and how this might influence the competitiveness and security.

The safety and security research is generally presented as a problem of two levels. The first level is focused on individuals and social groups while the second level deals with the safety and security issues on a country level. Research on both levels, however, is very often concentrated on the life or health threat in direct connection with war conflicts, terrorism, organised crime, political or social persecution and natural disasters. Nevertheless, such understanding and evaluation of safety and security does not comply with the present reality. There exist a wide range of scientific studies proving that the present understanding of human safety and security consists of several dimensions which might not be directly linked to actual war activities. The human safety and security of people in a broad sense could be jeopardized also by unfair practices or abuse of political power by governmental bodies, corruption in national economies, discrimination of minorities, drugs and black markets. The threat to the safety and security of individuals and countries is a multidimensional problem and its scope, intensity and dynamics should be measured by adequate tools and should be understood as a standard dimension of the quality of life. A specific tool should be adopted for measuring the safety and security in people´s life and for measuring safety and security on a country level. Current statistical and other exact methods enable researchers to perform qualitative and quantitative measurements and evaluate the safety and security in a broad scope and with needed depth and qualification. The aim of this paper is to review present trends in the measurement of the safety and security levels in context with actual impacts of external threats from international war conflicts, terrorist attacks and corruption practices and to underline the activities of countries and the international community to stop, or to reduce such threats. To measure these dimensions of safety and security, some selected indexes and indicators of international standards will be used. Our aim is to demonstrate their application in mapping and evaluating the safety and security situation within the European Union countries and particular attention to the performance of Slovakia.

Given the global nature of cyber threats, assurance of a cyber security policy is very important not only at the local organisation level, but also at national and international level. Currently, cyber security as such is not suitably regulated internationally; therefore, the role of national cyber security strategies has become particularly significant. Lithuania is among the leaders in the EU and globally in the development of the optical fibre network. FTTP coverage has already reached 95%, the highest in the EU. Regardless of that, the cyber security programme effective in Lithuania does not provide conditions to ensure an appropriate level of cyber security and may not be regarded as a high-level contemporary strategic document in the area of cyber security. This article presents a study the main outcome of which are guidelines for a contemporary model of the Lithuanian national cyber security strategy. Based on comparative and historical studies as well as expert interviews conducted by authors and on the best practice of other countries, the article presents the elements of a model of the Lithuanian national cyber security strategy as well as guidelines on the content of these elements of the model. The article also reveals which elements of the model of the national cyber security strategy should most of all reflect the national situation and which elements may be unified and possibly also adapted in the cyber security strategies of other countries.

Ensuring the defence of freedom, independence, sovereignty, territorial integrity, and population belongs to the main tasks of each state. Therefore, countries, in response to the current political, security and economic situation, must earmark, within the framework of their national budgets, a proportion of the available resources to ensure their defence. The aim of the article, based on current trends in the defence budgets of the European Union member states, is point out that not only the global economic and financial crisis and the credit and debt crisis in the euro area have a significant negative impact on the amount of resources, which individual European Union member states earmark to ensure their defence.

For establishing the best monetary policy it is essential to know if in practice monetary variables determine gross domestic product (GDP) in constant prices. Price stability contributes to the formation of stable environment for the development of commercially sustainable activities and expresses the responsibility of central banks for sustainable industrial development. It contributes to maximizing the GDP, employment, stable interest rates and sustainable economic development which have consequences for households’ welfare as well as enterprises’ value maximization. For a set of more monetary variables, we identified that in Romania money aggregates M2 and M3 as well as internal credit were strongly correlated with GDP over the time period 1995:Q1-2015:Q4, while in Slovakia only M2 and M3 were strongly correlated with GDP in the same time period. Contrary to expectations, according to a Bayesian linear regression, the internal credit changes had a negative impact on economic growth on the overall period. This conclusion is consistent with other empirical studies. This paper’s analysis discovered that the aforementioned negative correlation is due to the crisis period, because the regime-switching Bayesian model indicated that only in times of economic contraction changes in internal credit negatively affected economic growth.

The basis of this paper is the study of legislative acts of such counties as Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Poland, Ukrainie and Russia, related to national security, public order and interests of state prosperity in order to prevent disorders or crimes, to protect health and morality, to safeguard rights and freedoms. The objective of the paper is to assess whether the national legislation meets in this field contemporary requirements, and what are differences in comparison with the legislation of other countries. Our results show that the laws of above mentioned countries are supplemented in due time as much as possible taking into account needs and financial resources of corresponding state. The laws have also similar objectives and tasks. There are some distinctions in application of legal provisions, which, after discussion, would be usefully to introduce into normative regulations of the Republic of Latvia. The norms of law must be clearly defined; the commensurate restrictions must be appropriate for achievement of particular objective, as well as socially necessary. Moreover, the authors of the paper offer concrete proposals taking into account human rights, contemporary situation on the international scene, as well as potential of respective state institution.

The Part I of article presents the current issues and latest trends of one of the public security policy one of priority – ensuring public security in combating crime. In article covers the main quantitative and qualitative indicators of the present-day crime in Lithuania and in the world; the key problems of crime prevention optimization and legal regulation and institutional problems of criminal process control are elucidated. This research focuses in particular on the importance of creating models for control and prevention of new crime acts. Also, the problems of prevention and control of some conditionally distinguished criminal processes – shadow economy, corruption, fight against human trafficking and violence in family environment – are scrutinized. As a result in this research is emphasised the importance of decentralisation in combating crime; the main guidelines of optimization and modernisation in this field are presented. The authors applied general scientific methods of studying objective reality, peculiar to legal sciences: systematic document analysis, metaanalysis, structural-functional analysis, teleological, comparative, critical approach, generalisation and prediction.

The building and real estate industry have a significant influence on the environment, economy and the society. A number of benefits are associated with the development of sustainable or green buildings. Sustainable building or real estate construction enables an ethical, viable and practical response to resource consumption and environmental impact. It creates an economic sense on a life cycle costing basis. The current research paper aims to examine the impact of sustainable real estate development (SRED) on investment in green buildings, in the real estate sector. It is pertinent to examine that how embracing sustainability in real estate building impacts or changes value proposition for an investment i.e. how participants in the market filter and scrutinize relevant sets of information and integrate it into an existing framework of investment. For this purpose, the study adopted a quantitative approach, and applied a questionnaire survey strategy. Primary data was collected by distributing survey questionnaire among the real estate investors, in the region of Austria, Vienna, Lower Austria. The information, collected from survey was analysed by the help of statistical techniques, specifically regression analysis, factor analysis, descriptive statistics, as well as reliability test. It evaluated four benefits associated with SRED, which include higher building value (HBV), productivity gains (PG), cost savings (CS), and environmental gains (EG). Using data of 103 Austrian investors, the study finds a significant positive impact of HBV, PG, and EG on dependent variable of Investment in green buildings (IN) at 10% significance level. However, it is unable to find significant association between CS and IN. The study suggests that there is a need to enhance awareness about, and focus on the benefits of sustainable real estate development (SRED) and green buildings.

The article is dedicated to the research and assessment of trust and partnership impact throughout the main authors of innovation cooperation - universities, business and state. This impact is put on the innovative cooperation’s development of the border region (Latvia-Lithuania-Belarus) and production of innovative products and services in that region. The research region is consisting of the regions of Latvia (Latgale region), Lithuania (Vilnius region, Alytus region, Utena region, Panevezys region, Kaunas region), Belarus (Vitebsk, Grodno region, Minsk region, Mogilev region). Lack of attention to the above issues, related with border region, stresses the importance of the article. Innovations are key factor in long-term economic development of the region. The main condition for development is a purposeful formation and effective functioning of the territorial innovation system, in which one of the factors of its successful development is trust between participants of the system. The information base of the research is survey of 620 entrepreneurs of small and medium-sized enterprises in the border region.

Growth trend of cyber security incidents is being monitored globally; the volume of cyber-attacks is increasing. Cyber statistics data, growing number of certified information management systems show the practical importance of data security at the internationally level. Scientific data security problems solving decisions are represented using technical point of view, protection motivation theory, security standards adopting. This article is created to develop scientific data security approach using productivity as one of the main measurement for the information management systems benefit. Data of measure “Procesas LT” in enterprises of the IT sector shows level of concern and counterfactual impact evaluation creates possibility to verify the expediency of EU funds.