Agile Security for Information Warfare: A Call for Research

The context of information security is changing dramatically. Networking technologies have driven the global expansion of electronic commerce. Electronic commerce is increasingly engaging sophisticated advances like digital agents and web services. As a result of such advances, the information systems architectures that must be secured are becoming dynamic: shifting landscapes of changing vulnerabilities. At the same time, the threats in these landscapes are also becoming more sophisticated and dynamic. Information warfare is raising the stakes in information security by leveling intensive and highly novel threats against civilian systems. Information security researchers need to develop organizational approaches and methodologies that respond to this new context. The conflation of information warfare and short cycle development theories promises new information security practices. These approaches and methodologies would effectively lead to agile information security development. Agile information security development anticipates threats and rapidly deploys necessary safeguards in the context of shifting systems landscapes amid pervasive systems threats

The Challenges of Small Shop Development: A Case Study

Small companies dominate the landscape of systems and software development companies. With a few exceptions, very few studies have investigated the development and managerial processes and practices of these companies, their customer relationship, and their overall position and role in the software supplier and procurer relationships.A recent in-depth study reveals a number of challenges facing a small shop software development company -- e.g. owner and employees having insufficient formal training in software engineering and information systems development, lack of consistent and systematic practices, little time to reflect upon practices and learn new technologies and techniques, barriers for access to the (end)users, a need for short cycle development in order to mantain a steady income, and a sometimes fragile or problematic relationship with customers and clients who are often much bigger and stronger than the small development shop.Several of these problems have been shown to be persistent in Software Engineering and Information Systems Development across time as well as types of companies and settings. We do, however, believe that there is a need to investigate how these problems play out in the context of small shop development. The study will build on the action research of which focused on introducing a learning and reflection model into a small development shop. In the present study, we will analyze that case further

EVALUATING ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACTS OF RURAL DEVELOPMENT PROJECTS

Discussions of "sustainable development" call attention to various dimensions of human well-being to be considered concomitantly with traditional financial and economic measures. The challenge of environmental impact analysis (EIA) is to encourage re-design of projects so that net benefits are maximized over some weighting of economic, environmental, and other criteria. To date, development organizations have been under attack by environmentalists for ignoring or conveniently overlooking environmental damages of development projects. Explanations for this include inadequate institutional commitment to link resource conservation with economic development, short time horizons, narrow evaluation criteria, problems of monetary valuation, and problems with implementation of EIAs. The future of EIAs will see a number of changes to correct for these deficiencies. Evaluation of project impacts in isolation may yield to a more comprehensive environmental assessment for entire regions. Projects will not be funded without the assurance of specific policy conditions for environmental management. The technology of EIA will advance with the assistance of geographic information systems and related tools for data management. Cost-benefit analysis of development projects will continue to integrate the work of project economists with engineers, agronomists, and other specialists with knowledge of environmental issues. Methods of multiple criteria evaluation represent an advance over the partial approaches of EIA and cost-benefit analysis. There is considerable support for moving towards longer project cycles and extended planning periods within the total cycle, meaning that EIA can be more extensive and continuous than in the past. Within the development organizations, reconsideration of personnel accountability and reward systems is one of the strategies to raise the prominence of environmental issues. Each year presents more case studies, videos, and other didactic materials for training in EIA. Finally, the question of improving EIA is a matter of demanding stronger institutions for proactive planning, technical analysis, and policy reforms favorable to environmental protection.Environmental Economics and Policy,

"The Shift from Belt Conveyor Line to Work-cell Based Assembly Systems to Cope with Increasing Demand Variation and Fluctuation in The Japanese Electronics Industries"

As consumption patterns become increasingly sophisticated and manufacturers strive to improve their competitiveness, not only offering higher quality at competitive costs, but also by providing broader mix of products, and keeping it attractive by launching successively new products, the turbulence in the markets has intensified. This has impelled leading manufacturers to search the development of alternative production systems supposed to enable them operate more responsively. This paper discusses the trend of abandoning the strategy of relying on factory automation technologies and conveyor-based assembly lines, and shifting towards more human-centered production systems based on autonomous work-cells, observed in some industries in Japan (e.g. consumer electronics, computers, printers) since mid-1990s. The purpose of this study is to investigate this trend which is seemingly uneconomic to manufacturers established in a country where labor costs are among the highest in the world, so as to contribute in the elucidation of its background and rationality. This work starts with a theoretical review linking the need to cope with nowadays' market turbulence with the issue of nurturing more agile organizations. Then, a general view of the diffusion trend of work-cell based assembly systems in Japanese electronics industries is presented, and some empirical facts gathered in field studies conducted in Japan are discussed. It is worthy mentioning that the abandonment of short cycle-time tasks performed along conveyor lines and the organization of workforce around work-cells do not imply a rejection of the lean production paradigm and its distinctive process improvement approach. High man-hour productivity is realized as a key goal to justify the implementation of work-cells usually devised to run in longer cycle-time, and the moves towards this direction has been strikingly influenced by the kaizen philosophy and techniques that underline typical initiatives of lean production system implementation. Finally, it speculates that even though the subject trend is finding wide diffusion in the considered industries, it should not be regarded as a panacea. In industries such as manufacturing of autoparts, despite the notable product diversification observed in the automobile market, its circumstances have still allowed the firms to rely on capital-intensive process, and this has sustained the development of advanced manufacturing technologies that enable the agile implementation and re-configuration of highly automated assembly lines.

Digital Design of Intralogistics Systems: Flexible and Agile Solution to Short-Cyclic Fluctuations

In times of fast-paced, fluctuating and individual markets, intralogistics systems, such as warehouses, have to adapt to the resulting volatile performance demands dynamically. Hybrid systems, in which humans and machines work together efficiently and communicate in socio-technical networks, can be the answer to manage these high-frequency markets. Hybrid systems of the future need to adapt frequently and permanent change becomes the “new normal”. A one-time planning of warehousing systems upon first installation becomes obsolete. This results in the question of how to design and implement processes for future logistics systems in an agile way in order to exploit the flexibility potential of hybrid services, which represent an interface between man, machine and organization. As part of the Innovation Lab Hybrid Services in Logistics in Dortmund, Germany, a research project funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research, this research proposes a new concept for digital design of intralogistics systems that is meeting the requirements of a continuous, short-cycle adjustment following the Industry 4.0 development path

Analysis of intrusion prevention methods

Thesis (Master)--Izmir Institute of Technology, Computer Engineering, Izmir, 2004Includes bibliographical references (leaves: 105-108)Text in English; Abstract: Turkish and Englishviii, 108 leavesToday, the pace of the technological development and improvements has compelled the development of new and more complex applications. The obligatory of application development in a short time to rapidly changing requirements causes skipping of some stages, mostly the testing stage, in the software development cycle thus, leads to the production of applications with defects. These defects are, later, discovered by intruders to be used to penetrate into computer systems. Current security technologies, such as firewalls, intrusion detection systems, honeypots, network-based antivirus systems, are insufficient to protect systems against those, continuously increasing and rapid-spreading attacks. Intrusion Prevention System (IPS) is a new technology developed to block today.s application-specific, data-driven attacks that spread in the speed of communication. IPS is the evolved and integrated state of the existing technologies; it is not a new approach to network security. In this thesis, IPS products of various computer security appliance developer companies have been analyzed in details. At the end of these analyses, the requirements of network-based IPSs have been identified and an architecture that fits those requirements has been proposed. Also, a sample network-based IPS has been developed by modifying the open source application Snort

Strategic Planning In Retailing: Cases from Thai Retailing

ABSTRACT Preliminary desk researches suggested that strategic planing and management needs empirical evidence to broaden itsapplication to different industries, The purose of the study is to examine the practical framework for the plannng and development of strategy and strategic plans from the current practice of retail operations in Thailand. Theoretical reviews were carred out at early stage of the research on strategic decision making, planning systems, strategy and retailing to build a framework for research objectives and to form research questions. The main objective of the research is, therefore, to examine forms of strategy development process and the influence of marketing concepts to the planning processes of selected organisations. Fieldwork was planned to investigate at several modern retailers in Thailand, where retail competition has been intensive. Five retailers allowed their co-operation, and several methods of data collections, such as different types of interviews, observations and the analysis of achieval record, were employed to generate five case studies. The main conclusion drawn from the study would indicate that the term "strategic planning process", together with budgeting and long-range planning systems, are embedded in yearly periodical planning systems that react to external environment challenges only in the short term. The yearly periodical planing system together with an administrative system forms an on-going planning cycle. The strategic management process, on the other hand, is future-oriented planning process that has a time-span of more than a year. Strategic decisions generated by the strategic management process together with the outcome of other strategic decision-making are the inputs to both components of the on-going planning cycle. Therefore, short-term and long-term strategy development processes are distinct processes that require different approaches. However, the two processes are linked and both should be embedded within the overall strategic development process. The study also suggests that Thai retailers have to strengthen their strategy development process to be able to encourage learning and understanding of key business environments, business concepts and strategies before generating their own "winning formula". The outcome from the thesis is, therefore, a practical framework for the planning and development of strategy and strategic plans from the current practices of retail operations in Thailand that can be applied as a checklist for monitoring and evaluation in large-to-medium sized retailing organisations in similar trading environments

Adaptive traffic light cycle time controller using microcontrollers and crowdsource data of Google APIs for developing countries

Mishra, S., Bhattacharya, D., Gupta, A., & Singh, V. R. (2018). Adaptive traffic light cycle time controller using microcontrollers and crwodsource data of Google APIs for developing countries. In 3rd International Conference on Smart Data and Smart Cities (4/W7 ed., Vol. 4, pp. 83-90). (ISPRS Annals of the Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences). DOI: 10.5194/isprs-annals-IV-4-W7-83-2018Controlling of traffic signals optimally helps in avoiding traffic jams as vehicle volume density changes on temporally short and spatially small scales. Nowadays, due to embedded system development with the rising standards of computational technology, condense electronics boards as well as software packages, system can be developed for controlling cycle time in real time. At present, the traffic control systems in India lack intelligence and act as an open-loop control system, with no feedback or sensing network, due to the high costs involved. This paper aims to improve the traffic control system by integrating different technologies to provide intelligent feedback to the existing network with congestion status adapting to the changing traffic density patterns. The system presented in this paper aims to sense real-time traffic congestion around the traffic light using Google API crowdsource data and hence avoids infrastructure cost of sensors. Subsequently, it manipulates the signal timing by triggering and conveying information to the timer control system. Generic information processing and communication hardware system designed in this paper has been tested and found to be functional for a pilot run in real time. Both simulation and hardware trials show the transmission of required information with an average time delay of 1.2 seconds that is comparatively very small considering cycle time.publishersversionpublishe