Collaborative Intrusion Detection in Federated Cloud Environments

Moving services to the Cloud is a trend that has steadily gained popularity over recent years, with a constant increase in sophistication and complexity of such services. Today, critical infrastructure operators are considering moving their services and data to the Cloud. Infrastructure vendors will inevitably take advantage of the benefits Cloud Computing has to offer. As Cloud Computing grows in popularity, new models are deployed to exploit even further its full capacity, one of which is the deployment of Cloud federations. A Cloud federation is an association among different Cloud Service Providers (CSPs) with the goal of sharing resources and data. In providing a larger-scale and higher performance infrastructure, federation enables on-demand provisioning of complex services. In this paper we convey our contribution to this area by outlining our proposed methodology that develops a robust collaborative intrusion detection methodology in a federated Cloud environment. For collaborative intrusion detection we use the Dempster-Shafer theory of evidence to fuse the beliefs provided by the monitoring entities, taking the final decision regarding a possible attack. Protecting the federated Cloud against cyber attacks is a vital concern, due to the potential for significant economic consequences

CHORUS Deliverable 2.2: Second report - identification of multi-disciplinary key issues for gap analysis toward EU multimedia search engines roadmap

After addressing the state-of-the-art during the first year of Chorus and establishing the existing landscape in multimedia search engines, we have identified and analyzed gaps within European research effort during our second year. In this period we focused on three directions, notably technological issues, user-centred issues and use-cases and socio- economic and legal aspects. These were assessed by two central studies: firstly, a concerted vision of functional breakdown of generic multimedia search engine, and secondly, a representative use-cases descriptions with the related discussion on requirement for technological challenges. Both studies have been carried out in cooperation and consultation with the community at large through EC concertation meetings (multimedia search engines cluster), several meetings with our Think-Tank, presentations in international conferences, and surveys addressed to EU projects coordinators as well as National initiatives coordinators. Based on the obtained feedback we identified two types of gaps, namely core technological gaps that involve research challenges, and “enablers”, which are not necessarily technical research challenges, but have impact on innovation progress. New socio-economic trends are presented as well as emerging legal challenges

Exploring data sharing obligations in the technology sector

This report addresses the question: What is the role of data in the technology sector and what are the opportunities and risks of mandatory data sharing? The answer provides insights into costs and benefits of variants of data sharing obligations with and between technology companies

Matchmakers or tastemakers? Platformization of cultural intermediation & social media’s engines for ‘making up taste’

There are long-standing practices and processes that have traditionally mediated between the processes of production and consumption of cultural content. The prominent instances of these are: curating content by identifying and selecting cultural content in order to promote to a particular set of audiences; measuring audience behaviours to construct knowledge about their tastes; and guiding audiences through recommendations from cultural experts. These cultural intermediation processes are currently being transformed, and social media platforms play important roles in this transformation. However, their role is often attributed to the work of users and/or recommendation algorithms. Thus, the processes through which data about users’ taste are aggregated and made ready for algorithmic processing are largely neglected. This study takes this problematic as an important gap in our understanding of social media platforms’ role in the transformation of cultural intermediation. To address this gap, the notion of platformization is used as a theoretical lens to examine the role of users and algorithms as part of social media’s distinct data-based sociotechnical configuration, which is built on the so-called ‘platform-logic’. Based on a set of conceptual ideas and the findings derived through a single case study on a music discovery platform, this thesis developed a framework to explain ‘platformization of cultural intermediation’. This framework outlines how curation, guidance, and measurement processes are ‘plat-formed’ in the course of development and optimisation of a social media platform. This is the main contribution of the thesis. The study also contributes to the literature by developing the concept of social media’s engines for ‘making up taste’. This concept illuminates how social media operate as sociotechnical cultural intermediaries and participates in tastemaking in ways that acquire legitimacy from the long-standing trust in the objectivity of classification, quantification, and measurement processes

Segmenting Shoppers on their Behaviour

A retail stores attracts shoppers who vary in their profiles. While some of them are serious shoppers, many of them are "visitors" to the stores. It is not possible for the store to differentiate its offerings to these segments. Classifying these shoppers on demographic and their orientation to shopping has been tried in the developed economies. However, it is felt that in an evolving market like India where shopping orientation are yet to be formed, one of the basis of understanding that shoppers could be their behaviour at the store because behavioural cues are factual data on which a retailer can develop its strategy. Through a study that involved participant observation of 284 shoppers conducted in Ahmedabad segment profiles have been developed. The shoppers were classified into 26 segments based on their behaviour. These segments have also been profiled on the basis of gender, store format and the type of product that they bought. The retail mix ingredients that could be used to deliver better value to each of the segments have been suggested. Based on the study a framework to understand shopper behaviour has been proposed.

#Healthy: smart digital food safety and nutrition communication strategies—a critical commentary

This paper explores how food safety and nutrition organisations can harness the power of search engines, games, apps, social media, and digital analytics tools to craft broad-reaching and engaging digital communications. We start with search engines, showing how organisations can identify popular food safety and nutrition queries, facilitating the creation of timely and in-demand content. To ensure this content is discoverable by search engines, we cover several non-technical aspects of search engine optimisation (SEO). We next explore the potential of games, apps, social media, and going viral for reaching and engaging the public, and how digital data-based tools can be used to optimise communications. Throughout, we draw on examples not only from Europe and North America, but also China. While we are enthusiastic about the benefits of digital communications, we recognise that they are not without their drawbacks and challenges. To help organisations evaluate whether a given digital approach is appropriate for their objectives, we end each section with a discussion of limitations. We conclude with a discussion of General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the practical, philosophical, and policy challenges associated with communicating food safety and nutrition information digitally