ACUTA Journal of Telecommunications in Higher Education

In This Issue 5G\u27s Promise: 1,000 x Capacity, 1,000 x Challenges Higher-Speed WLANs About to Emerge State of the Residential Network 2013 LTE: The Next Wave of Wireless Evolution The 10 Most Costly Pitfalls of DAS Deployment and How to Avoid Them DAS on Campus: Solutions for Wireless Service Decision Criteria for Selecting a Wireless lntrusion Prevention System lnstitutional Excellence Award President\u27s Message From the CE

Quality of Information in Mobile Crowdsensing: Survey and Research Challenges

Smartphones have become the most pervasive devices in people's lives, and are clearly transforming the way we live and perceive technology. Today's smartphones benefit from almost ubiquitous Internet connectivity and come equipped with a plethora of inexpensive yet powerful embedded sensors, such as accelerometer, gyroscope, microphone, and camera. This unique combination has enabled revolutionary applications based on the mobile crowdsensing paradigm, such as real-time road traffic monitoring, air and noise pollution, crime control, and wildlife monitoring, just to name a few. Differently from prior sensing paradigms, humans are now the primary actors of the sensing process, since they become fundamental in retrieving reliable and up-to-date information about the event being monitored. As humans may behave unreliably or maliciously, assessing and guaranteeing Quality of Information (QoI) becomes more important than ever. In this paper, we provide a new framework for defining and enforcing the QoI in mobile crowdsensing, and analyze in depth the current state-of-the-art on the topic. We also outline novel research challenges, along with possible directions of future work.Comment: To appear in ACM Transactions on Sensor Networks (TOSN

Bring Your Own Device (BYOD): Risks to Adopters and Users

Bring your own device (BYOD) policy refers to a set of regulation broadly adopted by organizations that allows employee-owned mobile devices – like as laptops, smartphones, personal digital assistant and tablets – to the office for use and connection to the organizations IT infrastructure. BYOD offers numerous benefits ranging from plummeting organizational logistic cost, access to information at any time and boosting employee’s productivity. On the contrary, this concept presents various safety issues and challenges because of its characteristic security requirements. This study explored diverse literature databases to identify and classify BYOD policy adoption issues, possible control measures and guidelines that could hypothetically inform organizations and users that adopt and implement BYOD policy. The literature domain search yielded 110 articles, 26 of them were deemed to have met the inclusion standards. In this paper, a list of possible threats/vulnerabilities of BYOD adoption were identified. This investigation also identified and classified the impact of the threats/vulnerabilities on BYOD layered components according to security standards of “FIPS Publication 199” for classification. Finally, a checklist of measures that could be applied by organizations & users to mitigate BYOD vulnerabilities using a set layered approach of data, device, applications, and people were recommended

Cyber-Security Policy Decisions in Small Businesses

Cyber-attacks against small businesses are on the rise yet small business owners often lack effective strategies to avoid these attacks. The purpose of this qualitative multiple case study was to explore the strategies small business owners use to make cyber-security decisions. Bertalanffy\u27s general systems theory provided the conceptual framework for this study. A purposive sample of 10 small business owners participated in the interview process and shared their decision-making methodologies and influencers. The small business owners were vetted to ensure their strategies were effective through a series of qualification questions. The intent of the research question and corresponding interview questions was to identify strategies that successful small business owners use to make cyber-security decisions. Data analysis consisted of coding keywords, phrases, and sentences from semi structured interviews as well as document analysis. The following themes emerged: government requirements, peer influence, budgetary constraints, commercial standards, and lack of employee involvement. According to the participants, budgetary constraints and peer influence were the most influential factors when making decisions regarding cyber-security strategies. Through exposing small business owners to proven strategies, the implications for social change include a reduction of their small business operating costs and assistance with compliance activities

Importance of Fifth Generation Wireless Systems

Fifth generation wireless communications are denoted by 5G technology. 5G schemes are coming from first generation analog communication, 2G of Global System for Mobile communication (GSM), then 3G of Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA), after that fourth generation of long-term evaluation (LTE), and now fifth generation World Wide Wireless Web (WWWW). This research investigation presents issues, challenges, and the importance of 5G Wifi communication. In the 5G digital cellular network, the coverage area of the service providers is separated into small area called cells. All the audio, video, and image files are digitized and converted by an ADC (Analog to Digital Converter) and transmitted through stream of bits. 5G wireless devices are communicated using radio waves in a geographically reusable common pool of frequency band. Using wireless backhaul connection, the local antennas are connected with the internet/telephone network. Spectrum speed is substantially higher in millimeter wave. Hence, this was considered in this work

Review of California Wildfire Evacuations from 2017 to 2019

Between 2017 and 2019, California experienced a series of devastating wildfires that together led over one million people to be ordered to evacuate. Due to the speed of many of these wildfires, residents across California found themselves in challenging evacuation situations, often at night and with little time to escape. These evacuations placed considerable stress on public resources and infrastructure for both transportation and sheltering. In the face of these clear challenges, transportation and emergency management agencies across California have widely varying levels of preparedness for major disasters, and nearly all agencies do not have the public resources to adequately and swiftly evacuate all populations in danger. To holistically address these challenges and bolster current disaster and evacuation planning, preparedness, and response in California, we summarize the evacuations of eleven major wildfires in California between 2017 and 2019 and offer a cross-comparison to highlight key similarities and differences. We present results of new empirical data we collected via an online survey of individuals impacted by: 1) the 2017 October Northern California Wildfires (n=79), 2) the 2017 December Southern California Wildfires (n=226), and 3) the 2018 Carr Wildfire (n=284). These data reveal the decision-making of individuals in these wildfires including choices related to evacuating or staying, departure timing, route, sheltering, destination, transportation mode, and reentry timing. We also present results related to communication and messaging, non-evacuee behavior, and opinion of government response. Using the summarized case studies and empirical evidence, we present a series of recommendations for agencies to prepare for, respond to, and recover from wildfires

Mitigating the Risk of Knowledge Leakage in Knowledge Intensive Organizations: a Mobile Device Perspective

In the current knowledge economy, knowledge represents the most strategically significant resource of organizations. Knowledge-intensive activities advance innovation and create and sustain economic rent and competitive advantage. In order to sustain competitive advantage, organizations must protect knowledge from leakage to third parties, particularly competitors. However, the number and scale of leakage incidents reported in news media as well as industry whitepapers suggests that modern organizations struggle with the protection of sensitive data and organizational knowledge. The increasing use of mobile devices and technologies by knowledge workers across the organizational perimeter has dramatically increased the attack surface of organizations, and the corresponding level of risk exposure. While much of the literature has focused on technology risks that lead to information leakage, human risks that lead to knowledge leakage are relatively understudied. Further, not much is known about strategies to mitigate the risk of knowledge leakage using mobile devices, especially considering the human aspect. Specifically, this research study identified three gaps in the current literature (1) lack of in-depth studies that provide specific strategies for knowledge-intensive organizations based on their varied risk levels. Most of the analysed studies provide high-level strategies that are presented in a generalised manner and fail to identify specific strategies for different organizations and risk levels. (2) lack of research into management of knowledge in the context of mobile devices. And (3) lack of research into the tacit dimension of knowledge as the majority of the literature focuses on formal and informal strategies to protect explicit (codified) knowledge.Comment: The University of Melbourne PhD Thesi

Information security concerns around enterprise bring your own device adoption in South African higher education institutions

The research carried out in this thesis is an investigation into the information security concerns around the use of personally-owned mobile devices within South African universities. This concept, which is more commonly known as Bring Your Own Device or BYOD has raised many data loss concerns for organizational IT Departments across various industries worldwide. Universities as institutions are designed to facilitate research and learning and as such, have a strong culture toward the sharing of information which complicates management of these data loss concerns even further. As such, the objectives of the research were to determine the acceptance levels of BYOD within South African universities in relation to the perceived security risks. Thereafter, an investigation into which security practices, if any, that South African universities are using to minimize the information security concerns was carried out by means of a targeted online questionnaire. An extensive literature review was first carried out to evaluate the motivation for the research and to assess advantages of using Smartphone and Tablet PC’s for work related purposes. Thereafter, to determine security concerns, other surveys and related work was consulted to determine the relevant questions needed by the online questionnaire. The quantity of comprehensive academic studies concerning the security aspects of BYOD within organizations was very limited and because of this reason, the research took on a highly exploratory design. Finally, the research deliberated on the results of the online questionnaire and concluded with a strategy for the implementation of a mobile device security strategy for using personally-owned devices in a work-related environment