SECURITY AND PRIVACY ISSUES IN MOBILE NETWORKS, DIFFICULTIES AND SOLUTIONS

Mobile communication is playing a vital role in the daily life for the last two decades; in turn its fields gained the research attention, which led to the introduction of new technologies, services and applications. These new added facilities aimed to ease the connectivity and reachability; on the other hand, many security and privacy concerns were not taken into consideration. This opened the door for the malicious activities to threaten the deployed systems and caused vulnerabilities for users, translated in the loss of valuable data and major privacy invasions. Recently, many attempts have been carried out to handle these concerns, such as improving systems’ security and implementing different privacy enhancing mechanisms. This research addresses these problems and provides a mean to preserve privacy in particular. In this research, a detailed description and analysis of the current security and privacy situation in the deployed systems is given. As a result, the existing shortages within these systems are pointed out, to be mitigated in development. Finally a privacy preserving prototype model is proposed. This research has been conducted as an extensive literature review about the most relevant references and researches in the field, using the descriptive and evaluative research methodologies. The main security models, parameters, modules and protocols are presented, also a detailed description of privacy and its related arguments, dimensions and factors is given. The findings include that mobile networks’ security along with users are vulnerable due to the weaknesses of the key exchange procedures, the difficulties that face possession, repudiation, standardization, compatibility drawbacks and lack of configurability. It also includes the need to implement new mechanisms to protect security and preserve privacy, which include public key cryptography, HIP servers, IPSec, TLS, NAT and DTLS-SRTP. Last but not least, it shows that privacy is not absolute and it has many conflicts, also privacy requires sophisticated systems, which increase the load and cost of the system.fi=Opinnäytetyö kokotekstinä PDF-muodossa.|en=Thesis fulltext in PDF format.|sv=Lärdomsprov tillgängligt som fulltext i PDF-format

Understanding Cyberprivacy : Context, Concept, and Issues

Cyberprivacy has become one of the most worrisome issues in the age of digitalization, as data breaches have increased at an alarming rate, and the development of technology has changed privacy norms themselves. Thus, maintaining cyberprivacy is important for both academia and practitioners. However, the literature on cyberprivacy is fragmented, since the topic is multidisciplinary and often confused with cybersecurity and data privacy. In this study, we seek to understand cyberprivacy by conducting a comprehensive literature review and analyzing 79 selected articles on the topic between 2008 and 2021. Our analysis shows that there are eight contexts associated with cyberprivacy. We proposed concepts on cyberprivacy from different views and highlighted four issues related to cyberprivacy for future consideration. Taken together, the knowledge on cyberprivacy, its challenges and its practices does not seem to accumulate. Consequently, there is a need for more targeted research on the topic to cover different contexts.©2022 The Association for Information Systems (AIS), Friedrich-Alexander-Universität, International Conference on Wirtschaftsinformatik.fi=vertaisarvioitu|en=peerReviewed

Understanding Cyberprivacy: Context, Concept, and Issues

Cyberprivacy has become one of the most worrisome issues in the age of digitalization, as data breaches have increased at an alarming rate, and the development of technology has changed privacy norms themselves. Thus, maintaining cyberprivacy is important for both academia and practitioners. However, the literature on cyberprivacy is fragmented, since the topic is multidisciplinary and often confused with cybersecurity and data privacy. In this study, we seek to understand cyberprivacy by conducting a comprehensive literature review and analyzing 79 selected articles on the topic between 2008 and 2021. Our analysis shows that there are eight contexts associated with cyberprivacy. We proposed concepts on cyberprivacy from different views and highlighted four issues related to cyberprivacy for future consideration. Taken together, the knowledge on cyberprivacy, its challenges and its practices does not seem to accumulate. Consequently, there is a need for more targeted research on the topic to cover different contexts

Towards a Complete Automation Feature Recognition System for Sheet Metal Manufacturing

Sheet metal processing is automated, but the step from product models to the production machine control still requires human intervention. This may cause time consuming bottlenecks in the production process and increase the risk of human errors. In this paper we present a system, which automatically recognizes features from the CAD-model of the sheet metal product. By using these features, the system produces a complete model of the particular sheet metal product. Then the model is used as an input for the sheet metal processing machine. Currently the system is implemented, capable to recognize more than 11 of the most common sheet metal structural features, and the procedure is fully automated. This provides remarkable savings in the production time, and protects against the human errors. This paper presents the developed system architecture, applied algorithms and system software implementation and testing.© 2017 World Academy of Science, Engineering and Technology.fi=vertaisarvioimaton|en=nonPeerReviewed

Effects of combined exposure to aluminum chloride and γ-radiation on histological and ultrastructure of intestinal Paneth cells

AbstractPurposeThe use of aluminum chloride (AlCl3) as in purification of water and the exposure to ionizing radiation (IR) in therapeutic treatments are believed to be relatively safe. However, their combined effects remain unclear. The aim of the present study is to investigate the effects of concomitant exposure to aluminum chloride and gamma radiation on the histological and ultra-structural pattern of the crypt Paneth cells (PC) of the small intestine in albino rats.Materials and methodsForty male albino rats were divided randomly into four groups (n = 10). Group 1: Control group, Group 2: Aluminum treated group (Rats received a daily a dose of 0.5 mg of AlCl3 per kg of body weight/day), Group 3: γ-Radiation group (rats are exposed to a total dose of 8 Gy in 4 fractions of 2 Gy/week) and Group 4 Rats exposed to AlCl3 and exposed to γ-Radiation. Animals were sacrificed after 4 weeks, one day after the last radiation dose.ResultsHistological and ultra-structural studies in small intestine showed that exposure to γ-rays induced alterations in PC including apoptotic nuclei, presence of injury in secretory granules and completely damaged organelles at the sites of bacterial translocation in the crypt of lumens. Aluminum exposure during irradiation potentiate the damage notified by abnormal PC morphology, dilation the crypt's lumen and erosions of its villi with increased apoptosis in the crypt cells and appearance of homogenously electron-lucent granules.ConclusionsIt is concluded that concomitant exposure to aluminum and IR increased detrimental structural changes in PC of rat intestine due to their combined effect. It is thus recommended to limit the intake of aluminum when human are at risk of over exposure to ionizing radiation

Towards A Massive Open Online Course for Cybersecurity in Smart Grids – A Roadmap Strategy

The major trends and transformations in energy systems have brought many challenges, and cybersecurity and operational security are among the most important issues to consider. First, due to the criticality of the energy sector. Second, due to the lack of smart girds’ cybersecurity professionals. Previous research has highlighted skill gaps and shortage in cybersecurity training and education in this sector. Accordingly, we proceeded by crafting a roadmap strategy to foster cybersecurity education in smart grids. This paper outlines the methodology of teaching cybersecurity in smart grids to a large group of students in selected European universities via implementing a Massive Open Online Course. Unlike other solutions, this one focuses on hands-on practical skills without trading-off theoretical knowledge. Thus, flipped learning methodology and gamification practices were used to maximize retention rate. Also, a remote lab that includes a real-time simulator was established for training. Here, the process, outcome, and obstacles to overcome in future deployments, are presented.©2022 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works.fi=vertaisarvioitu|en=peerReviewed

Enhancing Smart Grid Resilience : An Educational Approach to Smart Grid Cybersecurity Skill Gap Mitigation

Cybersecurity competencies are critical in the smart grid ecosystem, considering its growing complexity and expanding utilization. The smart grid environment integrates different sensors, control systems, and communication networks, thus augmenting the potential attack vectors for cyber criminals. Therefore, interdisciplinary competencies are required from smart grid cybersecurity specialists. In the meantime, there is a lack of competence models that define the required skills, considering smart grid job profiles and the technological landscape. This paper aims to investigate the skill gaps and trends in smart grid cybersecurity and propose an educational approach to mitigate these gaps. The educational approach aims to provide guidance for competence-driven cybersecurity education programs for the design, execution, and evaluation of smart grids.© 2024 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).fi=vertaisarvioitu|en=peerReviewed

Multicenter Analysis of Urinary Urgency and Urge Incontinence in Patients with Anterior Urethral Stricture Disease before and after Urethroplasty

PurposeLittle published data exist on the impact of urethral stricture surgery on urinary urgency. We evaluated urinary urgency and urge incontinence before and after anterior urethroplasty.Materials and methodsMale patients who underwent 1-stage anterior urethroplasty were retrospectively identified at 8 centers. Patients with preoperative and 2-month or greater postoperative subjective urinary urgency assessments were included in study. Patients who received anticholinergic medications preoperatively were excluded. Univariate and multivariate analysis was done to analyze the association of patient characteristics with preoperative and postoperative symptoms as well as improvement or worsening of symptoms after surgery.ResultsSymptom and followup data on urgency and urge incontinence were available in in 439 and 305 patients, respectively. Preoperatively 58% of the men reported urgency and 31% reported urge incontinence. Postoperatively this decreased to 40% of men for urgency and 12% for urge incontinence (each p <0.01). Of the men 37% reported improvement in urgency and 74% experienced improvement in urge incontinence. Few of those without preoperative symptoms showed worse symptoms, including urgency in 9% and urge incontinence in 5%. New urgency was more likely to develop in men with a higher body mass index (OR 1.09, p = 0.02). Men with stricture recurrence were less likely to show improvement in urgency (OR 0.24, p = 0.03). Older men were more likely to have new urge incontinence (OR 1.06, p = 0.01) and less likely to notice improvement in urge symptoms (OR 0.92, p <0.01).ConclusionsThe prevalence of urgency and urge incontinence in male patients with anterior urethral stricture is high. The majority of men experience symptom stability or improvement in urinary urge symptoms following anterior urethroplasty

Gentamicin affects the bioenergetics of isolated mitochondria and collapses the mitochondrial membrane potential in cochlear sensory hair cells

Aminoglycoside antibiotics are widely prescribed to treat a variety of serious bacterial infections. They are extremely useful clinical tools, but have adverse side effects such as oto- and nephrotoxicity. Once inside a cell they are thought to cause mitochondrial dysfunction, subsequently leading to apoptotic cell death due to an increase in reactive oxygen species (ROS) production. Here we present evidence of a direct effect of gentamicin (the most commonly prescribed aminoglycoside) on the respiratory activities of isolated rat liver and kidney mitochondria. We show that gentamicin stimulates state 4 and inhibits state 3u respiratory rates, thereby reducing the respiratory control ratio (RCR) whilst simultaneously causing a collapse of the mitochondrial membrane potential (MtMP). We propose that gentamicin behaves as an uncoupler of the electron transport chain (ETC) – a hypothesis supported by our evidence that it reduces the production of mitochondrial ROS (MtROS). We also show that gentamicin collapses the MtMP in the sensory hair cells (HCs) of organotypic mouse cochlear cultures