Risk mitigation decisions for it security

Enterprises must manage their information risk as part of their larger operational risk management program. Managers must choose how to control for such information risk. This article defines the flow risk reduction problem and presents a formal model using a workflow framework. Three different control placement methods are introduced to solve the problem, and a comparative analysis is presented using a robust test set of 162 simulations. One year of simulated attacks is used to validate the quality of the solutions. We find that the math programming control placement method yields substantial improvements in terms of risk reduction and risk reduction on investment when compared to heuristics that would typically be used by managers to solve the problem. The contribution of this research is to provide managers with methods to substantially reduce information and security risks, while obtaining significantly better returns on their security investments. By using a workflow approach to control placement, which guides the manager to examine the entire infrastructure in a holistic manner, this research is unique in that it enables information risk to be examined strategically. © 2014 ACM

A Case Study Of Four Years Documenting The Changes In The Process Of Self-reporting Academic Program Plans Alongside The Perceptions of Program Coordinators

Major Advisors: Suzanne Martin, Ph.D., Laura Blasi, Ph.D. Universities in the United States of America are faced with numerous challenges concerning quality assurance such as the quest for Continuous Quality Improvement. Implementation of technology has been a priority of many developing institutions of higher education. A large metropolitan institution of higher education has put into practice a technology based, on-line program quality assessment system, for its academic and administrative programs. This dissertation was a study of the changes reported over four years, 2001-2005, within ten initial teacher preparation undergraduate programs at the College of Education at this institution. Using a mixed method approach, this study addressed the following primary questions: 1. Since the system was introduced; a. Has the process of monitoring quality in the academic units changed? b. If changes have occurred in the program plans, how have they been documented and implemented? 2. What are the limitations/benefits of the system, as perceived by its users? This study is a case for its readers to understand the process of quality improvement as practiced in a college of education within a metropolitan university

Modelling Flexibility and Qualification Ability to Assess Electric Propulsion Architectures for Satellite Megaconstellations

The higher satellite production rates expected in new megaconstellation scenarios involve radical changes in the way design trade-offs need to be considered by electric propulsion companies. In relative comparison, flexibility and qualification ability will have a higher impact in megaconstellations compared to traditional businesses. For these reasons, this paper proposes a methodology for assessing flexible propulsion architectures by taking into account variations in market behavior and qualification activities. Through the methodology, flexibility and qualification ability can be traded against traditional engineering attributes (such as functional performances) in a quantitative way. The use of the methodology is illustrated through an industrial case related to the study of xenon vs. krypton architectures for megaconstellation businesses. This paper provides insights on how to apply the methodology in other case studies, in order to enable engineering teams to present and communicate the impact of alternative architectural concepts to program managers and decision-makers

Sensitivity of NEXT-100 detector to neutrinoless double beta decay

Nesta tese estúdiase a sensibilidade do detector NEXT-100 á desintegración dobre beta sen neutrinos. Existe un gran interese na busca desta desintegración xa que podería respostar preguntas fundamentais en física de neutrinos. O detector constitúe a terceira fase do experimento NEXT, colaboración na que se desenrolou esta tese. A continuación inclúese un resumo de cada un dos capítulos nos que se divide a tese. Comézase introducindo o marco teórico e experimental nas seccións Física de neutrinos, A busca da desintegración dobre beta sen neutrinos e O experimento NEXT. Posteriormente descríbense a parte principal do análise da tese en Simulación do detector, Procesamento de datos e Sensibilidade do detector NEXT-100

Formally Verified Implementation of an Idealized Model of Virtualization

VirtualCert is a machine-checked model of virtualization that can be used to reason about isolation between operating systems in presence of cache-based side-channels. In contrast to most prominent projects on operating systems verification, where such guarantees are proved directly on concrete implementations of hypervisors, VirtualCert abstracts away most implementations issues and specifies the effects of hypervisor actions axiomatically, in terms of preconditions and postconditions. Unfortunately, seemingly innocuous implementation issues are often relevant for security. Incorporating the treatment of errors into VirtualCert is therefore an important step towards strengthening the isolation theorems proved in earlier work. In this paper, we extend our earlier model with errors, and prove that isolation theorems still apply. In addition, we provide an executable specification of the hypervisor, and prove that it correctly implements the axiomatic model. The executable specification constitutes a first step towards a more realistic implementation of a hypervisor, and provides a useful tool for validating the axiomatic semantics developed in previous work