Governing IT in HEIs: Systematic Mapping Review

Background: Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) are aware of the immense importance of achieving their strategic objectives to increase their impact on the society and to be competitive. As a board responsibility, information technology governance (ITG) plays an important role in the overall HEIs performance. Numerous HEIs are making great efforts to properly govern information technology (IT) by using ITG frameworks. Objectives: This study investigates the overall adoption of ITG frameworks in different HEIs through a systematic mapping review. Method: We analyzed forty relevant papers, filtered from 6 selected online libraries, and answered six research questions on ITG implementations at universities worldwide. Results: The results show an increasing number of publications on ITG usage in HEIs in the last decade. The largest number of applications is described in Asian countries, while the most popular used frameworks are COBIT, ISO versions, and in-house developed frameworks. Finally, we describe the top challenges and benefits of ITG implementation mentioned in research papers. Conclusion: This paper provides a deep insight into the level of integration of ITG in universities worldwide. The results will be presented to the involved stakeholders at our university to increase the awareness of ITG in HEIs and help its implementation process

Geographical Competitiveness for Powering Datacenters with Renewable Energy

Proceedings of: Third International Workshop on Sustainable Ultrascale Computing Systems (NESUS 2016). Sofia (Bulgaria), October, 6-7, 2016.In this paper we analyze the feasibility of using renewable energy for powering a data center located on the 60th parallel north. We analyze the workload energy consumption and the cost-energy trade-off related to available wind and solar energy sources. A wind and solar power model is built based on real weather data for three different geographical locations, and The available monthly and annual renewable energy is analyzed for different scenarios and compared with the energy consumption of a simulated data center. We show the impact different data center sizes have on the coverage percentage of renewables, and we discuss the competitiveness of constructing datacenters in different geographical location based on the results.The work presented in this paper has been partially supported by EU under the COST programme Action IC1305: Network for Sustainable Ultrascale Computing (NESUS) and under the Erasmus Mundus programme Euroweb+

Cyber attack against E-Albania and its social, economic and strategic effects

PURPOSE: During last years, even because of pandemic situation caused by covid-19 virus, in Albania most of governmental public services for citizens, businesses and other customers were offered in an electronic way by creating a national database (e-Albania), offering more than 2200 services. As this electronic system was newly implemented, time after time it was attacked from hackers in different sectors of services, causing the interruption of service for hours, downloading all the confidential information and publishing them. After several partial attacks, in July 2022 came the general attack of the whole system, which black out the system and services for several days. Cyber actors - identifying as “HomeLand Justice” - launched a destructive cyber-attack against e-Albania which rendered websites and services unavailable. An investigation indicates cyber actors acquired initial access to the victim’s network approximately 14 months before launching the destructive cyber-attack, which included a ransomware-style file encryptor and disk wiping malware. The actors maintained continuous network access for approximately a year, periodically accessing and exfiltrating e-mail content. From late July to mid-August 2022, social media accounts associated with HomeLand Justice demonstrated a repeated pattern of advertising Albanian Government information for release, posting a poll asking respondents to select the government information to be released by HomeLand Justice, and then releasing that information - either in a .zip file or a video of a screen recording with the documents shown. This cyber-attack creates social problems, economical loss and influenced negatively in the reputation of e-Albania and damage as well strategically the country and development of this sector in the future.METHODOLOGY: We have monitored the system and the attack, and we continue to do this. We analyze and synthesis the data collected, to come to conclusions and recommendations needed for the future. All the data which we have used are open for public, and mostly are primary data. The research method combines both quantitative and qualitative methods, but it is closer with qualitative method, as far as there in not enough data for using e pure quantitative analysis. We have used mostly the descriptive method.RESULTS/FINDINGS: Improving essentially the cyber infrastructure to avoid in the future such attacks with high social, economic and strategical cost.CONCLUSIONS: In the institution there was not a team for Cyber Security Monitoring the system, so called SOC (Security Operation Center), who controls in the real time all the logins. It was missing as well so called “Identifying Behavior”. There was not e separation of active directory, in physic machines and virtual machines, they were altogether. As the administrator had Full Right Privilege, the hacker doesn’t need to create a Privilege Escalation Vertical, so he easily took all the right of Admin.ORIGINALITY AND PRACTICAL IMPLICATIONS: The paper is original; it has not been previously published and it is not under consideration by any other publisher. The originality of the method stands in the fact that it is the first case in the world in information age, that a country (a whole electronic system, e-Albania), face a such complex, well organized and hard cyber-attack, which collapse the system for several days. All the data are authentic ones.peer-reviewe

Efficient Energy Sources Scheduling in Green Powered Datacenters: A Cloudsim Implementation

International audienceIn this paper we address the issue of managing different energy sources which supply green powered datacenters. The sources are scheduled based on a priority scheme, aiming to maximize the renewable energy utilization, minimize the energy used from the grid and optimize battery usage. Dynamic power capping technique is used to put a threshold on the drawn energy from the grid. The algorithm is implemented and tested in CloudSim simulator. Renewable energy is considered as solar energy. A workload scheduling algorithm is already implemented for higher renewable energy utilization. The results show that the proposed scheme is efficient and it is a promising direction in the field of the optimization in datacenters using renewable energy

Green preparation of silver nanoparticles using leaf extract of Amoora rohituka for antioxidant, antibacterial and anticancer applications

Metal nanoparticles made from biological source are currently catching a lot of attention to the researcher because of their versatile application in different fields. Realizing this fact, the present study describe the utilization of Amoora rohituka leaves to prepare silver nanoparticles (AgNPs) and make their characterization along with evaluating bioactivities using different techniques. In UV–Vis spectrum, the highest absorption peak at 446 nm confirmed the formation of AgNPs whereas the FTIR spectrum exposed the participation of phytoconstituents with different functional group that play as reducing and capping agents in AgNPs synthesis. The face centered cubic structure with crystalline nature was found for AgNPs in XRD analysis and SEM captured the spherical-shaped images of nanoparticles with diameter ranging 5.63–23.6 nm. In antioxidant assay, the synthesized AgNPs exhibited prominent free radical scavenging capability for DPPH (IC50: 35.34 μg/mL) and ABTS∙+ (IC50: 10.39 μg/mL) radicals. The antibacterial efficiency of AgNPs can be ranked as Shigella boydii > Staphylococcus aureus > Escherichia coli. Moreover, the AgNPs displayed cytotoxicity against EAC cells in a dose-dependent pattern (IC50: 15.84 ± 0.85 μg/mL). The overall findings help to conclude that this green manufactured AgNPs might be a promising candidate for many biomedical applications

Energy aware ultrascale systems

International audienceEnergy consumption is one of the main limiting factors for the design of ultrascale infrastructures. Multi-level hardware and software optimizations must be designed and explored in order to reduce energy consumption for these largescale equipment. This chapter addresses the issue of energy efficiency of ultrascale systems in front of other quality metrics. The goal of this chapter is to explore the design of metrics, analysis, frameworks and tools for putting energy awareness and energy efficiency at the next stage. Significant emphasis will be placed on the idea of “energy complexity,” reflecting the synergies between energy efficiency and quality of service, resilience and performance, by studying computation power, communication/data sharing power, data access power, algorithm energy consumption, etc