FAQs - Background & Organization

● Q: What is the Jericho Forum?

A: The Jericho Forum is an international group of organisations working together to define and promote the solutions surrounding the issue of de-perimeterisation.
They recognize that over the next few years, as technology and business continue to align closer to an open, Internet-driven world, the current security mechanisms that protect business information will not match the increasing demands for protection of business transactions and data in the future.

● Q: How long has the Jericho Forum existed?

A: The Jericho Forum was officially founded at the offices of The Open Group in Reading, UK, on Friday 16th January 2004. It had existed as a loose affiliation of interested corporate CISOs discussing the topic since summer 2003

● Q: Why was the Jericho Forum founded?

A: Because no one else was discussing the problem! The industry was still trying to shore up an ever crumbling corporate perimeter, while the more enlightened companies were trying to devise solutions whereby business could move faster and more securely without those borders. We felt that this dichotomy was best addressed with those interested parties properly defining the problem once and consistently.

● Q: How is the Jericho Forum managed?

A: The day to day affairs are managed by The Open Group, but all decisions are made by the elected Board of Management. Only user members are allowed to stand for election. See Board of Management for the current board members.

● Q: How global is the Jericho Forum?

A: While the Jericho Forum had its foundations in the UK, nearly all the initial members worked for corporates and had global responsibilities.

Today there is user organisation involvement from Europe, North America and Asia Pacific. There is vendor involvement from Europe & North America and academic involvement from Europe & Asia Pacific.

● Q: What is the relationship with The Open Group?

A: The Open Group [http://www.opengroup.org] is a global vendor and technolology neutral organisation that manages the day-to-day affairs of the Jericho Forum, manages its finances and provides facilitation and legal advice. It is also the legal entity under which are held the trade mark and domain names as well as the entity that owns the copyright of any Jericho Forum output.

While the Jericho Forum is technically another forum within The Open Group structure it has an independent board of management and a separate set of rules, captured in a Memorandum of Understanding.

● Q: Why is there a charge?

A: We ran the Jericho Forum free for the first year at which point it was growing too large to remain an informal gathering, and the management structure and relationship with The Open Group needed to be formalised. While all the Jericho Forum members get no financial remuneration whatsoever, we need to pay for The Open Group to manage the Forum, provide facilitation and other services like legal advice.

● Q: What does it cost to join?

A: This depends on whether you are a user organisation, a vendor organisation and your size. Full details can be found here: http://www.opengroup.org/projects/jericho/uploads/40/6347/jericho-pricing1.pdf
In addition, the Jericho Forum board has some latitude when it comes to academic organisation and individuals.

● Q: Are there other ways I can participate?

A: Yes; we are keen to involve as many people and organisations as possible in the debate. We will invite people with relevant ideas to contribute to working groups and we have run the "Jericho Forum Challenge" to encourage everyone to submit papers on the subject.

● Q: Is the term "Jericho Forum" protected?

A: Yes, the term Jericho Forum is a trade mark. The Jericho Forum / Open Group also own the domains jerichoforum.org and jerichoforum.com