Emerging IT risks: insights from German banking

How do German banks manage the emerging risks stemming from IT innovations such as cyber risk? With a focus on process, roles and responsibilities, field data from ten banks participating in the 2014 ECB stress test were collected by interviewing IT managers, risk managers and external experts. Current procedures for handling emerging risks in German banks were identified from the interviews and analysed, guided by the extant literature. A clear gap was found between enterprise risk management (ERM) as a general approach to risks threatening firms’ objectives and ERM’s neglect of emerging risks, such as those associated with IT innovations. The findings suggest that ERM should be extended towards the collection and sharing of knowledge to allow for an initial understanding and description of emerging risks, as opposed to the traditional ERM approach involving estimates of impact and probability. For example, as cyber risks emerge from an IT innovation, the focus may need to switch towards reducing uncertainty through knowledge acquisition. Since individual managers seldom possess all relevant knowledge of an IT innovation, various stakeholders may need to be involved to exploit their expertise

Interdependence of strain and shape in self-assembled coherent InAs islands on GaAs

6 páginas, 3 figuras.-- PACS: 68.55.-a Thin film structure and morphology, 61.05.C- X-ray diffraction and scattering, 61.10.-i X-ray diffraction and scattering.Self-assembled coherent InAs islands on GaAs (100) have been investigated by a novel version of grazing-incidence diffraction ("iso-strain scattering"). This method permits the determination of the interdependence of strain and shape, as well as the relaxation gradient within the InAs dots. The relaxation in the islands ranges from fully strained at the bottom to completely relaxed at the top of the islands. The radius of the dots at a given height depends linearly on the local elastic lattice relaxation, with a rapidly increasing relaxation gradient when approaching the top of the islands.We would like to acknowledge the support by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft under grant number Pe 127/1-6+2 and the help in travelling expenses by HASYLAB.Peer reviewe

Interdependence of strain and shape in self-assembled coherent InAs islands on GaAs

Self-assembled coherent InAs islands on GaAs (100) have been investigated by a novel version of grazing-incidence diffraction ("iso-strain scattering”). This method permits the determination of the interdependence of strain and shape, as well as the relaxation gradient within the InAs dots. The relaxation in the islands ranges from fully strained at the bottom to completely relaxed at the top of the islands. The radius of the dots at a given height depends linearly on the local elastic lattice relaxation, with a rapidly increasing relaxation gradient when approaching the top of the islands

Nanometer surface gratings on Si(100) characterized by x-ray scattering under grazing incidence and atomic force microscopy

During rapid melting and resolidification of As-implanted Si(100) by pulsed laser irradiation a periodic lateral grating has been created on the Si surface. Structure and perfection of the grating is investigated by specular and diffuse x-ray scattering under grazing incidence and exit angles. Using synchrotron radiation we find sharp, off-specular diffraction rods perpendicular to the sample surface. Their lateral separation is given by the periodicity of the grating (522±1 nm), which is nearly the same as the light wavelength (530 nm) used in laser annealing the samples. Intensity measurements along the diffraction rods are used to determine the detailed structure of the surface grating by fitting the experimental results with model calculations. A sinusoidal shape is found with an average amplitude of 6±1 nm. This structure is confirmed by atomic force microscopy studies. The x-ray method presented will be a unique tool also applicable in the case of buried lateral nanostructures which are not accessible by surface-sensitive techniques, e.g., scanning probe methods