A Reclassification of IS Security Analysis Approaches

The role of security management in the development and operation of information systems has a long tradition of research in computer science, information systems and management science. Integrating the economic, organizational, and technical aspects of information systems security analysis and assessment requires a bridging of these different research streams. We examined major articles published concerning IS security using a new classification scheme for IS security analysis and assessment approaches. We looked at approaches discussed in recent publications as well those examined as in past articles that have attempted to classify various approaches to IS security. This paper therefore organizes a diverse collection of literature into a cohesive whole with the aim of providing IS management with an overview of current security analysis approaches, thereby offering management an effective aide for selecting the methods best suited to their needs. Furthermore, this work structures IS security research into a classification scheme that can also be used in future research and practice

The drugs don't sell: DIY heart health and the over-the-counter statin experience

This paper draws on a study of over-the-counter statins to provide a critical account of the figure of the ‘pharmaceutical consumer’ as a key actor in the pharmaceuticalisation literature. A low dose statin, promising to reduce cardiovascular risk, was reclassified to allow sale in pharmacies in the UK in 2004. We analysed professional and policy debates about the new product, promotional and sales information, and interviews with consumers and potential consumers conducted between 2008 and 2011, to consider the different consumer identities invoked by these diverse actors. While policymakers constructed an image of ‘the citizen-consumer’ who would take responsibility for heart health through exercising the choice to purchase a drug that was effectively rationed on the NHS and medical professionals raised concerns about ‘a flawed consumer’ who was likely to misuse the product, both these groups assumed that there would be a market for the drug. By contrast, those who bought the product or potentially fell within its target market might appear as ‘health consumers’, seeking out and paying for different food and lifestyle products and services, including those targeting high cholesterol. However, they were reluctant ‘pharmaceutical consumers’ who either preferred to take medication on the advice of a doctor, or sought to minimize medicine use. In comparison to previous studies, our analysis builds understanding of individual consumers in a market, rather than collective action for access to drugs (or, less commonly, compensation for adverse effects). Where some theories of pharmaceuticalisation have presented consumers as creating pressure for expanding markets, our data suggests that sociologists should be cautious about assuming there will be demand for new pharmaceutical products, especially those aimed at prevention or asymptomatic conditions, even in burgeoning health markets

When “conservation” leads to land degradation: lessons from Ban Lak Sip, Laos

Land degradation / Soil erosion / Farming systems / Environmental policy / Political ecology / Households / Population growth / Laos / Ban Lak Sip

Regimes and Reform of Welfare State: the Classification of ten European Countries in 1990 and 2006

This article seeks to contribute to the discussion on the current state of knowledge with regard to the clustering of European welfare states, especially the Mediterranean countries. We want to demonstrate that the reforms be carried out well, to varying degrees, over the period 1990-2006 may have contributed to a reclassification of some countries. To this end, we analyze the positioning of ten Western European countries in 1990 and 2006 based on the two bidimensional classifications of Bonoli (1997) and Kautto (2002). Our results show some interesting changes in the positioning of some countries that seem to confirm a trend of convergence. Key words: welfare regimes, social policy, welfare reforms, longitudinal analysis

Fair Value Reclassifications of Financial Assets during the Financial Crisis

At the peak of the financial crisis in October 2008, the IASB amended IAS 39 to grant companies the option of abandoning fair value recognition for selected financial assets. Using a comprehensive global sample of publicly listed IFRS banks, we find that banks use the reclassification option to forgo the recognition of fair value losses and ultimately the regulatory costs of supervisory intervention. Analyses of stock market reactions suggest that a small subset of the most troubled banks benefit from such reclassifications. However, analyses of related footnote disclosures reveal that two-thirds of reclassifying banks do not fully comply with the accompanying IFRS 7 requirements. These banks experience a significant increase in bid-ask spreads in the long run.Bank Regulation, Fair Value Accounting, Financial Crisis, IAS 39, IFRS 7

Correctness Criteria for Function-Based Reclassifiers: A Language Based Approach

An emerging problem in systems security is controlling how a program uses the data it has access to. Information Flow Control (ifc) propagates restrictions on data by following the flow of information, for example if a secret value flows to a public value, that value should be considered secret as well. A common problem in ifc is reclassification of data, for instance to explicitly make data less restricted. An ifc mechanism often has strict flow rules in its normal operation, but reclassification by definition need to bypass these restrictions. This thesis proposes correctness criteria that aim to provide stronger semantic guarantees for the behavior of reclassification functions. We first conduct a survey on prior work in IFC, which concludes that little emphasis has been put on crystallizing such criteria. We then define a set of criteria for reclassification and implement a parser to enforce these criteria. If a piece of code is successfully analyzed by the parser, then that code can be safely used to reclassify data. Rust is emerging as one of the more prominent languages for systems programming due to its memory safety, and we conjecture this can be analogously continued to target ifc as well

The Odds are Odd: A Statistical Test for Detecting Adversarial Examples

We investigate conditions under which test statistics exist that can reliably detect examples, which have been adversarially manipulated in a white-box attack. These statistics can be easily computed and calibrated by randomly corrupting inputs. They exploit certain anomalies that adversarial attacks introduce, in particular if they follow the paradigm of choosing perturbations optimally under p-norm constraints. Access to the log-odds is the only requirement to defend models. We justify our approach empirically, but also provide conditions under which detectability via the suggested test statistics is guaranteed to be effective. In our experiments, we show that it is even possible to correct test time predictions for adversarial attacks with high accuracy

Study on behavioral impedance for route planning techniques from the pedestrian's perspective: some findings and considerations

The multi-disciplinary characteristics of transportation force a new design of geographic information systems, within which these characteristics are considered. In this context, geographic information systems for transportation are the result of the integration of transportation information systems and conventional geographic information systems. An interesting research area in geographic information systems for transportation is constraint management in route planning algorithms from the pedestrian s perspective. Constraint management becomes more complex when route planning takes into account an integrated public transportation network (i.e. a multimodal network). A study on the theoretical contextualization and taxonomy of a pedestrian s behavioral impedance has been developed in order to improve the constraint management from the pedestrian s perspective. This study entails strategies of travel reduction by private transport (e.g. travel by car) through switching to or substitution by alternative public transport (e.g. travel by walk, bus or rail). The grounded theory method has been used to develop the proposed taxonomy. Using the partial results of a questionnaire applied to a reduced group of people from Barcelona as a starting point, important data are being collected to define the mathematical model of the behavioral impedance domain. The goal of this paper is to provide some considerations about theoretical contextualization on identification and management of constraints regarding the behavioral impedance domain from the pedestrian s perspective within the urban public transportation context. The research project where this work is included is composed of six major phases. The first phase represents a continuous bibliographic review. The second phase was a study on sidewalks in the university zone of Barcelona. In this phase, an experimental application has been proposed and the management, map and route modules have been implemented on the ArcInfo GIS package and C++. This paper reports the partial work of the third phase, which is composed of two parts. The first part was a theoretical study on behavioral impedance for route planning techniques, in which taxonomy was proposed. The results of the second part are partially presented in this paper. The fourth (i.e. design and implementation), fifth (i.e. calibration and validation) and sixth (i.e. generalization of the results) phases are characterized by the application of the prototype regarding the multimodal network model for urban public transportation from the pedestrian s perspective. The main contribution of this article is the behavioral impedance taxonomy review from the pedestrian s perspective, which will allow designing a mathematical model and be used to implement a constraint management algorithm. Within this context, the proposed taxonomy could be used to model cost functions more precisely.Postprint (published version