The 7th International Conference on Information Technology (CIT 2004) was held in Hyderabad, India, during December 20-23, 2004. The CIT 2004 was a forum where researchers from various areas of information technology and its applications could stimulate and exchange ideas on technological advancements. CIT, organizedby the Orissa InformationTechnologySociety (OITS), has emerged as one of the major international conferences in India and is fast becoming the premier forum for the presentation of the latest research and development in the critical area of information technology. The last six conferences attracted reputed researchers from around the world, and CIT 2004 took this trend forward. This conference focused on the latest research ?ndings on all topics in the area of information technology. Although the natural focus was on computer science issues, research results contributed from management, business and other disciplines formed an integral part. We received more than 200 papers from over 27 countries in the areas of com- tational intelligence, neural networks, mobile and adhoc networks, security, databases, softwareengineering, signal andimageprocessing, andInternetandWWW-basedc- puting. The programme committee, consisting of eminent researchers, academicians and practitioners, ?nally selected 43 full papers on the basis of reviewer grades. This proceedings contains the research papers selected for presentation at the c- ference and this is the ?rst time that the proceedingshave been published in the Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS) series. The poster papers are being printed as a separate conference proceedings.