An analysis of the effectiveness and cost of project security management

This research analyzes the idea of managing information security risk on projects, as well as the effectiveness and costs associated with this kind of management. Organizations today face a myriad of security risks given their increased use of information technology. New solutions to improve information security within organizations large and small need to be researched and analyzed. Review of relevant literature has determined that although organizations are managing security from the top down, there is a lack of security management at the project level and that most project managers and their teams rely on the organizational security measures to keep information secure. The concept of managing security risks at the project level is not well defined and there exists no concrete and widely accepted framework for it. This research examines if managing security at the project level within a multi-tiered defensive strategy can be effective and at what cost. It also seeks to determine if budgeting for security in projects will lead to more secure project assets and products. This qualitative study uses three sources of data to deduce conclusions and recommendations. One, literary sources, two, subject interviews of security and project management professionals, and three, a computerized model built to simulate a defense in depth strategy. The primary finding of this research is that the concept of managing information security in projects is valid, and that doing so will lead to more secure project assets and products. This type of management will increase the security posture of the project itself and the organization as a whole. Recommendations are made by the researcher as to what steps a project manager and the organization above it must take to leverage the management of information security risks on projects

Shop level maintenance of inertial platforms without a surveyed site

The initial installation of a rotary tilt table for an aircraft inertial navigation system test facility includes accurately aligning the rotary tilt table to local level and true north coordinates. The survey techniques presently employed are an encumbrance during installation and complicate remote deployment. The objective of this thesis is to determine if an inertial platform or platforms can practically be used to replace the role of the survey techniques in the rotary tilt table alignment. The construction, capability and operation of a rotary tilt table are reviewed. The tests necessary to test and calibrate an inertial platform are outlined, including those requiring an accurately aligned rotary tilt table. The basic principles of inertial platform self-alignment are stated so a determination of the ideal behavior of the gyrocompass and level servo loops, in the absence of error, can be later used for error models. Typical gaussian error sources, representative of practical inertial components are injected and assessed to determine the standard deviation of the steady state gyrocompass and level servo loop errors for a system. System response times are selected, such that a specific mechanization may be evaluated for specific values of steady state error. Test equipment and procedures are presented that outline validation measures to be taken to ascertain that system errors are within acceptable limits. The cumulative alignment and readout errors are evaluated to define the rotary tilt table alignment accuracy achievable with one inertial platform. The accuracy is improved by utilizing multiple inertial platforms. This rotary tilt table alignment is then compared to the test requirements outlined initially. The findings are summarized and it is concluded that it is practical to use an inertial system (platform) to perform azimuth alignment of a rotary tilt table and, that leveling is best accomplished using precision spirit levels --Abstract, pages ii-iii

Tilt-Table Alignment For Inertial-Platform Maintenance Without A Surveyed Site

A method for aligning the rotary tilt table for an inertial-platform maintenance facility without surveying the site is analyzed and evaluated. The method utilizes multiple measurements of the tilt-table azimuth alignment error with different inertial platforms to determine a best estimate of the alignment error. Error analysis indicates that useful facility performance can be obtained with only a small number of measurements. The tilt-table alignment accuracy can be improved as more measurements of the alignment error are made during normal facility operation. © 1973, IEEE. All rights reserved

Equivariant Symplectic Geometry of Gauge Fixing in Yang-Mills Theory

The Faddeev-Popov gauge fixing in Yang-Mills theory is interpreted as equivariant localization. It is shown that the Faddeev-Popov procedure amounts to a construction of a symplectic manifold with a Hamiltonian group action. The BRST cohomology is shown to be equivalent to the equivariant cohomology based on this symplectic manifold with Hamiltonian group action. The ghost operator is interpreted as a (pre)symplectic form and the gauge condition as the moment map corresponding to the Hamiltonian group action. This results in the identification of the gauge fixing action as a closed equivariant form, the sum of an equivariant symplectic form and a certain closed equivariant 4-form which ensures convergence. An almost complex structure compatible with the symplectic form is constructed. The equivariant localization principle is used to localize the path integrals onto the gauge slice. The Gribov problem is also discussed in the context of equivariant localization principle. As a simple illustration of the methods developed in the paper, the partition function of N=2 supersymmetric quantum mechanics is calculated by equivariant localizationComment: 46 pages, added remarks, typos and references correcte

Inner topological structure of Hopf invariant

In light of $\phi$-mapping topological current theory, the inner topological structure of Hopf invariant is investigated. It is revealed that Hopf invariant is just the winding number of Gauss mapping. According to the inner structure of topological current, a precise expression for Hopf invariant is also presented. It is the total sum of all the self-linking and all the linking numbers of the knot family.Comment: 13pages, no figure. Accepted by J.Math.Phy

Representations of p-brane topological charge algebras

The known extended algebras associated with p-branes are shown to be generated as topological charge algebras of the standard p-brane actions. A representation of the charges in terms of superspace forms is constructed. The charges are shown to be the same in standard/extended superspace formulations of the action.Comment: 22 pages. Typos fixed, refs added. Minor additions to comments sectio

The Standard Model Fermion Spectrum From Complex Projective spaces

It is shown that the quarks and leptons of the standard model, including a right-handed neutrino, can be obtained by gauging the holonomy groups of complex projective spaces of complex dimensions two and three. The spectrum emerges as chiral zero modes of the Dirac operator coupled to gauge fields and the demonstration involves an index theorem analysis on a general complex projective space in the presence of topologically non-trivial SU(n)xU(1) gauge fields. The construction may have applications in type IIA string theory and non-commutative geometry.Comment: 13 pages. Typset using LaTeX and JHEP3 style files. Minor typos correcte

Romantic Partnerships and the Dispersion of Social Ties: A Network Analysis of Relationship Status on Facebook

A crucial task in the analysis of on-line social-networking systems is to identify important people --- those linked by strong social ties --- within an individual's network neighborhood. Here we investigate this question for a particular category of strong ties, those involving spouses or romantic partners. We organize our analysis around a basic question: given all the connections among a person's friends, can you recognize his or her romantic partner from the network structure alone? Using data from a large sample of Facebook users, we find that this task can be accomplished with high accuracy, but doing so requires the development of a new measure of tie strength that we term `dispersion' --- the extent to which two people's mutual friends are not themselves well-connected. The results offer methods for identifying types of structurally significant people in on-line applications, and suggest a potential expansion of existing theories of tie strength.Comment: Proc. 17th ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing (CSCW), 201

Loop space, (2,0) theory, and solitonic strings

We present an interacting action that lives in loop space, and we argue that this is a generalization of the theory for a free tensor multiplet. From this action we derive the Bogomolnyi equation corresponding to solitonic strings. Using the Hopf map, we find a correspondence between BPS strings and BPS monopoles in four-dimensional super Yang-Mills theory. This enable us to find explicit BPS saturated solitonic string solutions.Comment: 29 pages, v3: section 5 is rewritten and string solutions are found, v4: a new section on general covariance in loop spac

Link Invariants for Flows in Higher Dimensions

Linking numbers in higher dimensions and their generalization including gauge fields are studied in the context of BF theories. The linking numbers associated to $n$-manifolds with smooth flows generated by divergence-free p-vector fields, endowed with an invariant flow measure are computed in different cases. They constitute invariants of smooth dynamical systems (for non-singular flows) and generalizes previous results for the 3-dimensional case. In particular, they generalizes to higher dimensions the Arnold's asymptotic Hopf invariant for the three-dimensional case. This invariant is generalized by a twisting with a non-abelian gauge connection. The computation of the asymptotic Jones-Witten invariants for flows is naturally extended to dimension n=2p+1. Finally we give a possible interpretation and implementation of these issues in the context of string theory.Comment: 21+1 pages, LaTeX, no figure