A Survey of Challenges for Runtime Verification from Advanced Application Domains (Beyond Software)

Runtime verification is an area of formal methods that studies the dynamic analysis of execution traces against formal specifications. Typically, the two main activities in runtime verification efforts are the process of creating monitors from specifications, and the algorithms for the evaluation of traces against the generated monitors. Other activities involve the instrumentation of the system to generate the trace and the communication between the system under analysis and the monitor. Most of the applications in runtime verification have been focused on the dynamic analysis of software, even though there are many more potential applications to other computational devices and target systems. In this paper we present a collection of challenges for runtime verification extracted from concrete application domains, focusing on the difficulties that must be overcome to tackle these specific challenges. The computational models that characterize these domains require to devise new techniques beyond the current state of the art in runtime verification

Silver surfers adopting and using Facebook? A quantitative study of Hertfordshire, UK applied to organizational and social change

This document is the Accepted Manuscript version of the following article: Jyoti Choudrie, ‘Silver surfers adopting and using Facebook? A quantitative study of Hertfordshire, UK applied organizational and social change’, Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Vol. 89, pp. 293-305, November 2014. This manuscript version is made available under the CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 license http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ The final, published version is available online at DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.techfore.2014.08.007 © 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.With an ageing population that is on the increase, there are many older adults still in employment well past their retirement age. Currently, technological developments in the form of Online Social Networks (OSN1) are also impacting society and organizations alike, with organizations searching for ways to cope with these changes. The aim of this research study is to investigate the factors affecting the likelihood of adoption and use of OSN within an older population. Using an online questionnaire, empirical data was drawn from Hertfordshire, a vicinity in the United Kingdom, and analysed using the Partial Least Squares method. The findings revealed that — in a household situation — older individuals adopt internet technologies if they have ‘anytime access’ to internet capable devices, a fast reliable internet connection, the support of their family and friends, as well as an apparent provision of privacy. For organizations, these findings indicate that the provision of a technical/trusted support department is essential, as is the provision for broadband and reliable internet connections. For academia, this research identifies factors that have been developed using theoretical concepts that will impact older adults' adoption and use of new technologies, but requires further research into whether these factors will impact a cross generation of workers in the organizationPeer reviewe

Data-Driven Models, Techniques, and Design Principles for Combatting Healthcare Fraud

In the U.S., approximately $700 billion of the$2.7 trillion spent on healthcare is linked to fraud, waste, and abuse. This presents a significant challenge for healthcare payers as they navigate fraudulent activities from dishonest practitioners, sophisticated criminal networks, and even well-intentioned providers who inadvertently submit incorrect billing for legitimate services. This thesis adopts Hevner’s research methodology to guide the creation, assessment, and refinement of a healthcare fraud detection framework and recommended design principles for fraud detection. The thesis provides the following significant contributions to the field:1. A formal literature review of the field of fraud detection in Medicaid. Chapters 3 and 4 provide formal reviews of the available literature on healthcare fraud. Chapter 3 focuses on defining the types of fraud found in healthcare. Chapter 4 reviews fraud detection techniques in literature across healthcare and other industries. Chapter 5 focuses on literature covering fraud detection methodologies utilized explicitly in healthcare.2. A multidimensional data model and analysis techniques for fraud detection in healthcare. Chapter 5 applies Hevner et al. to help develop a framework for fraud detection in Medicaid that provides specific data models and techniques to identify the most prevalent fraud schemes. A multidimensional schema based on Medicaid data and a set of multidimensional models and techniques to detect fraud are presented. These artifacts are evaluated through functional testing against known fraud schemes. This chapter contributes a set of multidimensional data models and analysis techniques that can be used to detect the most prevalent known fraud types.3. A framework for deploying outlier-based fraud detection methods in healthcare. Chapter 6 proposes and evaluates methods for applying outlier detection to healthcare fraud based on literature review, comparative research, direct application on healthcare claims data, and known fraudulent cases. A method for outlier-based fraud detection is presented and evaluated using Medicaid dental claims, providers, and patients.4. Design principles for fraud detection in complex systems. Based on literature and applied research in Medicaid healthcare fraud detection, Chapter 7 offers generalized design principles for fraud detection in similar complex, multi-stakeholder systems.<br/

From Dataveillance to Data Economy: Firm View on Data Protection

The increasing availability of electronic records and the expanded reliance on online communications and services have made available a huge amount of data about people’s behaviours, characteristics, and preferences. Advancements in data processing technology, known as big data, offer opportunities to increase organisational efficiency and competitiveness. Analytically sophisticated companies excel in their ability to extract value from the analysis of digital data. However, in order to exploit the potential economic benefits produced by big data and analytics, issues of data privacy and information security need to be addressed. In Europe, organisations processing personal data are being required to implement basic data protection principles, which are considered difficult to implement in big data environments. Little is known in the privacy studies literature about how companies manage the trade-off between data usage and data protection. This study contributes to explore the corporate data privacy environment, by focusing on the interrelationship between the data protection legal regime, the application of big data analytics to achieve corporate objectives, and the creation of an organisational privacy culture. It also draws insights from surveillance studies, particularly the idea of dataveillance, to identify potential limitations of the current legal privacy regime. The findings from the analysis of survey data show that big data and data protection support each other, but also that some frictions can emerge around data collection and data fusion. The demand for the integration of different data sources poses challenges to the implementation of data protection principles. However, this study finds no evidence that data protection laws prevent data gathering. Implications relevant for the debate on the reform of European data protection law are also drawn from these findings

Intention to adopt blockchain technology for collaborative business processes by academic libraries in South Africa

Globalisation has compelled academic institutions to leverage digital innovations that present new capabilities and novel opportunities because of the stiff competition and movement restrictions during pandemic such as COVID-19, in their operating environments. In this digital era, academic libraries, like any other institution are compelled to re-think of their ways of providing information services to remain relevant to their communities as there are various other sources of information which attract users' attention. Growing demand of information services, declining budgets, rapidly changing world around academic libraries and increase in prices are common challenges experienced by the university libraries globally, which are mostly too complex and large for the institutions to handle on their own. These challenges led to the consortia formation both in developing and developed countries for collective acquisition and sharing of resources. Collaborative technologies should, therefore, be adopted to integrate internal systems for seamless information exchange between different institutions and eliminate duplication of efforts. However, it becomes a challenge to integrate these systems across independent institutions because of lack of trust between the involved parties, in terms of who will control the collaborative business processes. For collaborative processes which are in place, academic libraries still depend on a third party to facilitate their collaborative activities, and consequently incur costs for coordination of such processes. Blockchain represents one of the disruptive technologies with potential to streamline the collaborative activities across academic libraries with high level of trust without the third party intermediation. Although, blockchain technology has caught the attention of different industries, it is still at an infancy stage and yet to find its traction in various business processes. The aim of this study was to investigate the intention to adopt blockchain technology for collaborative business processes by academic libraries in South Africa. The study was anchored in the Technology Adoption in Supply Chain (TASC) model which has been adapted to answer the research questions formulated. Quantitative research approach was adopted, using survey questionnaire. From the questionnaires sent to 23 South African academic libraries which are members of the regional consortia, only 95 usable responses have been collected and analysed using SPSS version 26. Potential applications of blockchain technology were found to be in distributed metadata sharing, a credentialing system, and a library network connection to form Inter-Planetary File System (IPFS). However, participants are uncertain of the intention to adoption blockchain by their academic libraries. Looking at the results of the descriptive analysis, it is evident that academic library workers are positive about relative advantage, compatibility, IT readiness, and interorganisational trust of blockchain technology in their profession. They are not aware and/or have mixed perceptions of the technology complexity, cost, management support, industry support, customer pressure, and security/privacy concern of blockchain technology. This warrants the need to impart knowledge about the technology and its potential value to their profession. Among the adoption factors included in the model, only customer pressure (CP) was found to be significant in influencing the intention to adopt blockchain, while relative advantage (RA), compatibility (CT), complexity (CX), perceived cost (PC), organisational size (OS), management support (MS), IT readiness (IR), industry support (IS), security concern (SC) and inter-organisation trust (TR) were insignificant. This research contributes to the limited empirical research literature in the blockchain technology adoption intention in academic libraries, while also provides the insights for practitioners in the technology adoption decision making, and technology vendors, in the context of developing countries

Security Enhanced Applications for Information Systems

Every day, more users access services and electronically transmit information which is usually disseminated over insecure networks and processed by websites and databases, which lack proper security protection mechanisms and tools. This may have an impact on both the users’ trust as well as the reputation of the system’s stakeholders. Designing and implementing security enhanced systems is of vital importance. Therefore, this book aims to present a number of innovative security enhanced applications. It is titled “Security Enhanced Applications for Information Systems” and includes 11 chapters. This book is a quality guide for teaching purposes as well as for young researchers since it presents leading innovative contributions on security enhanced applications on various Information Systems. It involves cases based on the standalone, network and Cloud environments