20,928 research outputs found
The narrative and the algorithm: Genres of credit reporting from the nineteenth century to today
Credit reporting is a contested process whereby parties with distinct interests (borrowers, lenders, and intermediaries) jointly construct the form, method, and style of credit assessment. In contrast to theories that argue information should grow more secure and credit relationships more transparent over time, the conflicted struggle over representation produces different styles or “genres” of credit evaluation that are compromises between the interests of the different parties. Thus, in the United States, trade credit reporting in the nineteenth century evolved an enduring narrative reporting style, incorporating heterogeneous forms of information not easily reducible to a single quantitative score. Lack of institutions for sharing information between creditors, legal precedents, and strong resistance among borrowers to overly intrusive surveillance made the narrative report the best means to handle the diverse business credit market. By contrast, lenders in the consumer credit market established information sharing capabilities, which were enhanced after World War II when banks developed the credit card and card verification systems. Fair credit laws in the 1960s and 70s actually reinforced the move to quantitative scoring based on information shared among creditors, eventually institutionalizing the FICO score as the prime method of consumer credit evaluation.credit score; credit reporting; credit; information economy; surveillance; FICO
TRIDEnT: Building Decentralized Incentives for Collaborative Security
Sophisticated mass attacks, especially when exploiting zero-day
vulnerabilities, have the potential to cause destructive damage to
organizations and critical infrastructure. To timely detect and contain such
attacks, collaboration among the defenders is critical. By correlating
real-time detection information (alerts) from multiple sources (collaborative
intrusion detection), defenders can detect attacks and take the appropriate
defensive measures in time. However, although the technical tools to facilitate
collaboration exist, real-world adoption of such collaborative security
mechanisms is still underwhelming. This is largely due to a lack of trust and
participation incentives for companies and organizations. This paper proposes
TRIDEnT, a novel collaborative platform that aims to enable and incentivize
parties to exchange network alert data, thus increasing their overall detection
capabilities. TRIDEnT allows parties that may be in a competitive relationship,
to selectively advertise, sell and acquire security alerts in the form of
(near) real-time peer-to-peer streams. To validate the basic principles behind
TRIDEnT, we present an intuitive game-theoretic model of alert sharing, that is
of independent interest, and show that collaboration is bound to take place
infinitely often. Furthermore, to demonstrate the feasibility of our approach,
we instantiate our design in a decentralized manner using Ethereum smart
contracts and provide a fully functional prototype.Comment: 28 page
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Distributed software development in a financial services organisation
The outsourcing of IS functionality to offshore development firms has been a growth industry that has blossomed over the last 10 years. This is as a result of organisations, seeking to optimise costs, mitigate risks, and achieve greater return on shareholder value by delegating the delivery of business information systems and applications to third party vendors. At the same time, distributed approaches to software development has arisen, there has been a growing interest in the applicability of lightweight or Agile development methodologies. As such, this paper this paper discusses experiences of a European Financial Services firm in outsourcing, and subsequently offshoring, two of its IT projects to vendor firms in India, where Agile approaches were used. The authors provide a model of the financial firm’s critical success factors presented as a frame of reference for others interested and involved in this topical area
The Data Breach Dilemma: Proactive Solutions for Protecting Consumers’ Personal Information
Data breaches are an increasingly common part of consumers’ lives. No institution is immune to the possibility of an attack. Each breach inevitably risks the release of consumers’ personally identifiable information and the strong possibility of identity theft.
Unfortunately, current solutions for handling these incidents are woefully inadequate. Private litigation like consumer class actions and shareholder lawsuits each face substantive legal and procedural barriers. States have their own data security and breach notification laws, but there is currently no unifying piece of legislation or strong enforcement mechanism.
This Note argues that proactive solutions are required. First, a national data security law—setting minimum data security standards, regulating the use and storage of personal information, and expanding the enforcement role of the Federal Trade Commission—is imperative to protect consumers’ data. Second, a proactive solution requires reconsidering how to minimize the problem by going to its source: the collection of personally identifiable information in the first place. This Note suggests regulating companies’ collection of Social Security numbers, and, eventually, using a system based on distributed ledger technology to replace the ubiquity of Social Security numbers
Prototype of running clinical trials in an untrustworthy environment using blockchain.
Monitoring and ensuring the integrity of data within the clinical trial process is currently not always feasible with the current research system. We propose a blockchain-based system to make data collected in the clinical trial process immutable, traceable, and potentially more trustworthy. We use raw data from a real completed clinical trial, simulate the trial onto a proof of concept web portal service, and test its resilience to data tampering. We also assess its prospects to provide a traceable and useful audit trail of trial data for regulators, and a flexible service for all members within the clinical trials network. We also improve the way adverse events are currently reported. In conclusion, we advocate that this service could offer an improvement in clinical trial data management, and could bolster trust in the clinical research process and the ease at which regulators can oversee trials
Sustainable Development Report: Blockchain, the Web3 & the SDGs
This is an output paper of the applied research that was conducted between July 2018 - October 2019 funded by the Austrian Development Agency (ADA) and conducted by the Research Institute for Cryptoeconomics at the Vienna University of Economics and Business and RCE Vienna (Regional Centre of Expertise on Education for Sustainable Development).Series: Working Paper Series / Institute for Cryptoeconomics / Interdisciplinary Researc
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