A literature review of the sustainability, the managerial conduct of management and the internal control systems evident in South African small, medium and micro enterprises

The purpose of this research study is to theoretically investigate the sustainability, the managerial conduct of management and the internal control systems evident in South African small, medium and micro enterprises (SMMEs). To achieve the aforementioned, a literature review was conducted through analyzing relevant secondary data from journal articles, theses, dissertations, books, and reports. According to popular literature, the overall sustainability of any organization is strongly influenced by its internal control systems. Taking into account the weak sustainability of South African SMMEs, it appears that the soundness of the internal control systems of these business entities is adversely influenced by the managerial conduct of its management. This is particularly the case, since the managerial conduct of management in South Africa is often described as flexible; the managerial conduct of management makes up a substantial part of the control environment which, in turn, is deemed as the foundation of any system of internal control. In quintessence, the literature reviewed shows that the sustainability of South African SMMEs is adversely influenced by a flexible managerial conduct of management which directly (and negatively) impacts on the soundness of their internal control systems; their abilities to attain relevant objectives in the foreseeable futur

Resilient Computing Curriculum Draft -- ReSIST NoE Deliverable D16

This Deliverable presents the first version of ReSIST's Curriculum in Resilient Computing, limited to the description of the syllabi for the first year (Semesters 1 and 2) and indicates the line and title for the curriculum in the second year (semesters 3 and 4) and propose it to the general discussion for improvements. The curriculum will be updated and completed in successive versions that will take advantage of a large open discussion inside and outside ReSIS

A Decision Support System for Selecting Between Designs for Dynamic Software Product Lines

When commissioning a system, a myriad of potential designs can successfully fulfill the system\u27s goals. Deciding among the candidate designs requires an understanding of how the design affects the system\u27s quality attributes and how much effort is needed to realize the design. The difficulty of the process compounds if the system to be designed includes dynamic run-time self- adaptivity, the ability for the system to self-modify its architecture at run-time in response to either external or internal stimuli, as the type and location of the dynamic self-adaptivity within the architecture must be co-decided. In this proposal, we introduce a Decision Support System, which contains a new Dynamic Software Product Line-centric cost / effort estimation technique, the Structured Intuitive Model for Dynamic Adaptive System Economics (SIMDASE), that will allow system designers / architects to select the most appropriate design for systems where the candidates can be structured as a Dynamic Software Product Line. We will focus on using the Decision Support System to select designs for a system where at least one component of the system is a low-level embedded system for use within the Internet of Things (IoT), particularly embedded systems whose purpose is to exist as things (either intelligent sensors or actuators). The Decision Support System we introduce is a multi-step process that begins with a high- level system architecture generated from the system requirements and goals. Candidate designs that can fulfill all goals / requirements of the high-level architecture are selected. Each design is then annotated using SIMDASE so that the effort, risk, cost and return on investment that can be expected from the realization of the design(s) can be compared in order to select the best design for a given organization

Validação de software altamente configurável

Dissertação de mestrado em Engenharia de InformáticaA evolução nas áreas de aplicação (quer em número quer em ambição dos problemas a resolver) conduziu a uma crescente complexidade e dimensão dos sistemas de software. Inerentemente, na procura de uma boa solução que ajude a dar resposta às constantes alterações de comportamento requerida para satisfazer os diversos utilizadores destes sistemas, emergem sistemas mais flexíveis, que se acomodam facilmente a diferentes necessidades - sistemas configuráveis. Os sistemas configuráveis tornam as aplicações mais adaptáveis às necessidades de cada um, porém tornam possível a introdução de configurações erradas que podem levar a comportamentos incorrectos e indesejáveis. Assumindo que o programa principal está devidamente testado e aceite como correcto, constata-se que as configurações importadas para a aplicação necessitam de validação de modo a ser garantida a ausência de erros. Conferindo aos sistemas aplicacionais dos dias de hoje uma maior fiabilidade, garante-se a entrega de produtos de qualidade. Tradicionalmente as abordagens à validação e verificação de software caem sobre os métodos formais ou testes sobre o sistema. No entanto, ambas as abordagens dedicam-se essencialmente ao código das aplicações como forma de certificar e garantir a qualidade dos projectos de software. Esta dissertação apresenta uma proposta para colmatar a falha introduzida por abstracção das aplicações, no que diz respeito à certificação de software altamente configurável, com particular ênfase sobre os objectivos de negócio passíveis de serem configurados em tempo de execução, de modo a garantir que as configurações empregues estão correctas e de acordo com os requisitos. A abordagem seguida neste trabalho deu resultados a três níveis distintos; um contributo teórico em que se estudou e analisou o problema em busca de uma abordagem metodológica eficaz para validação deste tipo de sistemas; um contributo prático, pelo desenvolvimento de um sistema que implementa a metodologia definida; e finalmente um contributo pragmático mostrado pela aplicação do sistema desenvolvido a um caso de estudo.Evolution in application areas led to an increasing complexity and scale of software systems. In this context, recent con gurable systems emerged to provide an e cient solution to cope with the frequent changes in systems requirements. Con gurable systems make applications more exible and adaptable to each speci c needs, but con gurable systems are also error prone. Easily wrong con gurations can be loaded and this may lead to undesirable and erroneous behavior. Assuming that the main program is fully tested and accepted as correct, those imported con gurations need validation to guarantee the absence of errors in the nal application. Making application systems more reliable, it is possible to deliver quality products. Formal method thechniques on testing are the classic approach to software validation and veri cation. These approaches are specially tuned for classic programs, and fail when applied to con gurable systems. This was the motivation for this MSc. Degree project. This master work gave rise to three distinct outcomes; a theoretical contribution, concerned with the problem study and the proposal of an e ective methodological approach for such systems validation; a practical contribution consisting in a tool that implements that methodology; and nally a pragmatic contribution, with the application of that tool to a concrete case study

Using Formal Methods for Building more Reliable and Secure e-voting Systems

Deploying a system in a safe and secure manner requires ensuring the tech- nical and procedural levels of assurance also with respect to social and regu- latory frameworks. This is because threats and attacks may not only derive from pitfalls in complex security critical system, but also from ill-designed procedures. However, existing methodologies are not mature enough to em- brace procedural implications and the need for multidisciplinary approach on the safe and secure operation of system. This is particularly common in electronic voting (e-voting) systems. This dissertation focuses along two lines. First, we propose an approach to guarantee a reasonable security to the overall systems by performing for- mal procedural security analysis. We apply existing techniques and define novel methodologies and approaches for the analysis and verification of procedural rich systems. This includes not only the definition of adequate modeling convention, but also the definition of general techniques for the injection of attacks, and for the transformation of process models into rep- resentations that can be given as input to model checkers. With this it is possible to understand and highlight how the switch to the new tech- nological solution changes security, with the ultimate goal of defining the procedures regulating system and system processes that ensure a sufficient level of security for the system as well as for its procedures. We then investigate the usage of formal methods to study and analyze the strength and weaknesses of currently deployed (e-voting) system in order to build the next generation (e-voting) systems. More specifically, we show how formal verification techniques can be used to model and reason about the security of an existing e-voting system. To do that, we reuse the methodology propose for procedural security analysis. The practical applicability of the approaches is demonstrated in several case studies from the domain of public administrations in general and in e-voting system in particular. With this it can be possible to build more secure, reliable, and trustworthy e-voting system