The Fact-Finding Security Examination in NFC-enabled Mobile Payment System

Contactless payments devised for NFC technology are gaining popularity. Howbeit, with NFC technology permeating concerns about arising security threats and risks to lessen mobile payments is vital. The security analysis of NFC-enabled mobile payment system is precariously imperative due to its widespread ratification. In mobile payments security is a prevalent concern by virtue of the financial value at stave. This paper assays the security of NFC based mobile payment system. It discusses the security requirements, threats and attacks that could occur in mobile payment system and the countermeasures to be taken to secure pursuance suitability

An examination of blockchain technology and Venezuela’s sovereign-based cryptocurrency including the effects of implementing a sovereign-based cryptocurrency in developing countries.

Masters Degree. University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban.After the 2008 financial crisis and the failure of the banking system there was a need to develop alternate payment systems where there was no intermediary involved. In 2008, Bitcoin was developed by Satoshi Nakamoto, and it did not require an intermediary. The invention of Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies in general, has numerous advantages that can be beneficial to society. Venezuela, a developing country, created their own sovereign cryptocurrency as an attempt to ease the economic strain that burdens the country. The main focus of this research is to examine cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology by looking at Venezuela’s Petro as the model to assess whether such a development would be beneficial to a developing country such as South Africa. In addition, any risks that are attached to this invention will be examined. his research was based on the qualitative approach. Various journal articles, online articles and legislation was consulted to assist with the research of this paper. This research was aimed at assisting the relevant stakeholders of developing countries such as South Africa since such countries are facing economic crises. The Petro which was introduced by Venezuela has been critiqued to have numerous flaws due to the lack of research and investigation by the Venezuelan government. Furthermore, such a development defeats the purpose of a cryptocurrency. The South African Reserve Bank experimented with distributed ledger technology which is based on the blockchain, where interbank transactions were simulated. Although the experiment was successful, the South African Reserve Bank stated that such a system would not be implemented currently as more research needs to be conducted. Considering the various implications, it was concluded that introducing a sovereign cryptocurrency would not be viable and feasible in a country like South Africa. This research paper recommends that the developing countries consider implementing blockchain technology in various institutions as this technology has many uses and advantages such as assisting with the voting process, as well as minting citizen’s information. A further recommendation is for the South African Reserve Bank to research the area of blockchain technology in the banking system as this would decrease interbank transactional costs thereby allowing more transactions to be completed in a shorter amount of time

From Social Data Mining to Forecasting Socio-Economic Crisis

Socio-economic data mining has a great potential in terms of gaining a better understanding of problems that our economy and society are facing, such as financial instability, shortages of resources, or conflicts. Without large-scale data mining, progress in these areas seems hard or impossible. Therefore, a suitable, distributed data mining infrastructure and research centers should be built in Europe. It also appears appropriate to build a network of Crisis Observatories. They can be imagined as laboratories devoted to the gathering and processing of enormous volumes of data on both natural systems such as the Earth and its ecosystem, as well as on human techno-socio-economic systems, so as to gain early warnings of impending events. Reality mining provides the chance to adapt more quickly and more accurately to changing situations. Further opportunities arise by individually customized services, which however should be provided in a privacy-respecting way. This requires the development of novel ICT (such as a self- organizing Web), but most likely new legal regulations and suitable institutions as well. As long as such regulations are lacking on a world-wide scale, it is in the public interest that scientists explore what can be done with the huge data available. Big data do have the potential to change or even threaten democratic societies. The same applies to sudden and large-scale failures of ICT systems. Therefore, dealing with data must be done with a large degree of responsibility and care. Self-interests of individuals, companies or institutions have limits, where the public interest is affected, and public interest is not a sufficient justification to violate human rights of individuals. Privacy is a high good, as confidentiality is, and damaging it would have serious side effects for society.Comment: 65 pages, 1 figure, Visioneer White Paper, see http://www.visioneer.ethz.c

Web based customer support in banking and financial services

As customers become more sophisticated and competition increases in the marketplace, companies need to provide better service to gain a competitive advantage. The World Wide Web (WWW) offers companies the opportunity to provide service to their customers 24 hours a day and 7 days a week. Companies are taking advantage of this opportunity by making the WWW the customer service tool of the future. This project was conducted to develop a model for evaluating the level of customer service and support provided by corporate Web sites. The model was developed by adapting Lovelock’s Flower of Service Model (1994) to Web based operations. Lovelock’s model is based on the observation that most companies provide a core product or service but differentiate themselves on the supplementary services they offer. These supplementary services assist the customer in the pretransaction, transaction and posttransaction of the product or service. The model was applied to corporate Web sites of Australian banking and financial institutions. The results of the evaluation provided information on the level of customer support provided by each Web site. The customer support level scores derived from the evaluation provide companies with a tool for comparison of their own web sites with those of competitors and of the industry in general

Deductions from a Sub-Saharan African bank’s tweets: A sentiment analysis approach

The upsurge in social media websites has in no doubt triggered a huge source of data for mining interesting expressions on a variety of subjects. These expressions on social media websites empower firms and individuals to discover varied interpretations regarding the opinions expressed. In Sub-Saharan Africa, financial institutions are making the needed technological investments required to remain competitive in today’s challenging global business environment. Twitter as one of the digital communication tools has in recent times been integrated into the marketing communication tools of banks to augment the free flow of information. In this light, the purpose of the present study is to perform a sentiment analysis on a large dataset of tweets associated with the Ecobank Group, a prominent pan-African bank in sub-Saharan Africa using four different sentiment lexicons to determine the best lexicon based on its performance. Our results show that Valence Aware Dictionary and sEntiment Reasoner (VADER) outperforms all the other three lexicons based on accuracy and computational efficiency. Additionally, we generated a word cloud to visually examine the terms in the positive and negative sentiment categories based on VADER. Our approach demonstrates that in today’s world of empowered customers, firms need to focus on customer engagement to enhance customer experience via social media channels (e.g., Twitter) since the meaning of competitive advantage has shifted from purely competing over price and product to building loyalty and trust. In theory, the study contributes to broadening the scope of online banking given the interplay of consumer sentiments via the social media channel. Limitations and future research directions are discussed at the end of the paper. © 2020, © 2020 The Author(s). This open access article is distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) 4.0 license.Tomas Bata University in Zlin [IGA/CebiaTech/2020/001

Antecedents of business intelligence system use

This thesis was submitted for the award of Doctor of Philosophy and was awarded by Brunel University London.Organisational reliance on information has become vital for organisational competitiveness. With increasing data volumes, Business Intelligence (BI) becomes a cornerstone of the decision-support system. However, employee resistance to use Business Intelligence Systems (BIS) is evident. This creates a problem to organisations in realising the benefits of BIS. It is thus important to study the enablers of sustained use of BIS amongst employees. This thesis identifies existing theories that can be used to study BI system use. It integrates and extends technology use theories through a framework focusing on Business Intelligence System Use (BISU). Empirical research is then conducted in Kuwait’s telecom and banking industries through a close-ended, self-administered questionnaire using a five-point Likert scale. Responses were received from 211 BI users. The data was analysed using SmartPLS to study the convergent and discriminant validity and reliability. Partial least squares structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) was used to study the direct and indirect relationships between constructs and answer the hypotheses. In addition to SmartPLS, SPSS was used for descriptive analysis. The results indicated that UTAUT factors consisting of performance expectancy, effort expectancy and social influence positively impact BI system use. Voluntariness of use was found to positively moderate the relationship between social influence and BI system use. Furthermore, BI system quality positively impacts both performance expectancy and effort expectancy. The BI user’s self-efficacy also positively impacts effort expectancy. In addition, social influence was found to be positively influenced by organisational factors, namely top management support and information culture. The findings of this research contribute to literature by determining and quantifying the factors that influence BISU through the lens of employee perspectives. This thesis also explains how employees’ object-based beliefs about BI affect their behavioural beliefs, which in turn impact BISU. Limitations of this research include the omission of UTAUT’s facilitating conditions and the limited variance of respondent demographics

Security challenges and solutions for e-business

The advantages of economic growth and increasing ease of operation afforded by e-business and e-commerce developments are unfortunately matched by growth in cyber attacks. This paper outlines the common attacks faced by e-business and describes the defenses that can be used against them. It also reviews the development of newer security defense methods. These are: (1) biometrics for authentication; parallel processing to increase power and speed of defenses; (2) data mining and machine learning to identify attacks; (3) peer-to-peer security using blockchains; 4) enterprise security modelling and security as a service; and (5) user education and engagement. The review finds overall that one of the most prevalent dangers is social engineering in the form of phishing attacks. Recommended counteractions include education and training, and the development of new machine learning and data sharing approaches so that attacks can be quickly discovered and mitigated