A Bayesian partial identification approach to inferring the prevalence of accounting misconduct

This paper describes the use of flexible Bayesian regression models for estimating a partially identified probability function. Our approach permits efficient sensitivity analysis concerning the posterior impact of priors on the partially identified component of the regression model. The new methodology is illustrated on an important problem where only partially observed data is available - inferring the prevalence of accounting misconduct among publicly traded U.S. businesses

Safety control of monotone systems with bounded uncertainties

Monotone systems are prevalent in models of engineering applications such as transportation and biological networks. In this paper, we investigate the problem of finding a control strategy for a discrete time positive monotone system with bounded uncertainties such that the evolution of the system is guaranteed to be confined to a safe set in the state space for all times. By exploiting monotonicity, we propose an approach to this problem which is based on constraint programming. We find control strategies that are based on repetitions of finite sequences of control actions. We show that, under assumptions made in the paper, safety control of monotone systems does not require state measurement. We demonstrate the results on a signalized urban traffic network, where the safety objective is to keep the traffic flow free of congestion.This work was partially supported by the NSF under grants CPS-1446151 and CMMI-1400167. (CPS-1446151 - NSF; CMMI-1400167 - NSF

Directed Security Policies: A Stateful Network Implementation

Large systems are commonly internetworked. A security policy describes the communication relationship between the networked entities. The security policy defines rules, for example that A can connect to B, which results in a directed graph. However, this policy is often implemented in the network, for example by firewalls, such that A can establish a connection to B and all packets belonging to established connections are allowed. This stateful implementation is usually required for the network's functionality, but it introduces the backflow from B to A, which might contradict the security policy. We derive compliance criteria for a policy and its stateful implementation. In particular, we provide a criterion to verify the lack of side effects in linear time. Algorithms to automatically construct a stateful implementation of security policy rules are presented, which narrows the gap between formalization and real-world implementation. The solution scales to large networks, which is confirmed by a large real-world case study. Its correctness is guaranteed by the Isabelle/HOL theorem prover.Comment: In Proceedings ESSS 2014, arXiv:1405.055

Reconstruction of complete interval tournaments

Let $a, b$ and $n$ be nonnegative integers $(b \geq a, \ b > 0, \ n \geq 1)$, $\mathcal{G}_n(a,b)$ be a multigraph on $n$ vertices in which any pair of vertices is connected with at least $a$ and at most $b$ edges and \textbf{v =} $(v_1, v_2, ..., v_n)$ be a vector containing $n$ nonnegative integers. We give a necessary and sufficient condition for the existence of such orientation of the edges of $\mathcal{G}_n(a,b)$, that the resulted out-degree vector equals to \textbf{v}. We describe a reconstruction algorithm. In worst case checking of \textbf{v} requires $\Theta(n)$ time and the reconstruction algorithm works in $O(bn^3)$ time. Theorems of H. G. Landau (1953) and J. W. Moon (1963) on the score sequences of tournaments are special cases $b = a = 1$ resp. $b = a \geq 1$ of our result