Security policy refinement using data integration: a position paper.

In spite of the wide adoption of policy-based approaches for security management, and many existing treatments of policy verification and analysis, relatively little attention has been paid to policy refinement: the problem of deriving lower-level, runnable policies from higher-level policies, policy goals, and specifications. In this paper we present our initial ideas on this task, using and adapting concepts from data integration. We take a view of policies as governing the performance of an action on a target by a subject, possibly with certain conditions. Transformation rules are applied to these components of a policy in a structured way, in order to translate the policy into more refined terms; the transformation rules we use are similar to those of global-as-view database schema mappings, or to extensions thereof. We illustrate our ideas with an example. Copyright 2009 ACM

Expressive Policy Analysis with Enhanced System Dynamicity

Despite several research studies, the effective analysis of policy based systems remains a significant challenge. Policy analysis should at least (i) be expressive (ii) take account of obligations and authorizations, (iii) include a dynamic system model, and (iv) give useful diagnostic information. We present a logic-based policy analysis framework which satisfies these requirements, showing how many significant policy-related properties can be analysed, and we give details of a prototype implementation. Copyright 2009 ACM

Collaborative Privacy Policy Authoring in a Social Networking Context.

Recent years have seen a significant increase in the popularity of social networking services. These online services enable users to construct groups of contacts, referred to as friends, with which they can share digital content and communicate. This sharing is actively encouraged by the social networking services, with users privacy often seen as a secondary concern. In this paper we first propose a privacy-aware social networking service and then introduce a collaborative approach to authoring privacy policies for the service. In addressing user privacy, our approach takes into account the needs of all parties affected by the disclosure of information and digital content. © 2010 Crown

Privacy Butler: A personal privacy rights manager for online presence.

The online presence projected by a person is comprised of all the information about them available on the Internet. In online communities and social networking services, it is often possible for third-parties to modify this content by, for example, commenting on existing content or uploading new content. This has the potential to negatively impact the privacy of a presence owner (the person referred to by the on-line content) by disclosing information about them without consent. In this paper we propose a Privacy Butler, an automated service that can monitor a persons online presence and attempt to make corrections based on policies specified by the owner of the online presence. © 2010 IEEE.Accepted versio

Non-consumptive effects of native and invasive predators on juvenile Caribbean parrotfish

Non-consumptive effects of predators can have important impacts on aquatic food webs, but there are few data on how predators change the behaviour of Caribbean reef fishes. Such changes may include behavioural responses to the invasive predatory lionfish (Pterois volitans/P. miles). This study used an aquarium experiment to examine the behaviour of herbivorous parrotfish (Scarus iseri) in the absence of other fish (control), with a non-piscivore present, and with a predatory threat from a native grouper or lionfish. Treatments were repeated with and without additional parrotfish shelters to examine the potential effects of degraded reefs (loss of refuges). Using video, parrotfish behaviours (sheltering, swimming in open areas, foraging, aggressive conspecific interactions, bite rates, and shoaling behaviour) were recorded for groups of four parrotfish. Compared to the control, the average number of parrotfish hiding was reduced by 65 % and foraging shoals were 10 % larger when threatened by grouper, likely as a specific response to an ambush predator. When exposed to lionfish, parrotfish reduced their bite rates by 50 %, possibly to be more vigilant of this predator’s unique stalking behaviour. The absence of additional shelter had limited effects although parrotfish formed 10 % larger shoals when swimming in open water, potentially as a defensive behaviour because of a perceived lack of refuges. The reduction in parrotfish bite rates caused by lionfish may have important demographic consequences. Furthermore, parrotfishes are important grazers of macroalgae, and these behavioural changes may exacerbate the direct effects of lionfish predation and potentially affect reef benthic dynamics

A formal framework for policy analysis

We present a formal, logical framework for the representation and analysis of an expressive class of authorization and obligation policies. Basic concepts of the language and operational model are given, and details of the representation are defined, with an attention to how different classes of policies can be written in our framework. We show how complex dependencies amonst policy rules can be represented, and illustrate how the formalization of policies is joined to a dynamic depiction of system behaviour. Algorithmically, we use a species of abductive, constraint logic programming to analyse for the holding of a number of interesting properties of policies (coverage, modality conflict, equivalence of policies, etc.). We describe one implementation of our ideas, and conclude with remarks on related work and future research

Semantic-based policy engineering for autonomic systems

This paper presents some important directions in the use of ontology-based semantics in achieving the vision of Autonomic Communications. We examine the requirements of Autonomic Communication with a focus on the demanding needs of ubiquitous computing environments, with an emphasis on the requirements shared with Autonomic Computing. We observe that ontologies provide a strong mechanism for addressing the heterogeneity in user task requirements, managed resources, services and context. We then present two complimentary approaches that exploit ontology-based knowledge in support of autonomic communications: service-oriented models for policy engineering and dynamic semantic queries using content-based networks. The paper concludes with a discussion of the major research challenges such approaches raise

Do workplace fish tanks influence employee wellbeing and cognitive performance? An embedded mixed-methods study

Evidence from “pet-friendly” workplaces highlights potential benefits associated with taking companion animals to work, including reduced stress among employees. Ornamental fishes carry a much lower risk than other companion animals and may be a suitable alternative in situations where other animals would introduce too great a risk (e.g., allergy, accidental injury). The aim of this study was to investigate whether watching an aquarium during the working day influenced employee wellbeing through the reduction of stress and improvements in stress-related outcomes. An embedded mixed-methods study was conducted, comprising two within-subjects trials (Trials A and B) and a qualitative follow-up. Participants were university employees and research students who participated during their working day. In Trial A (n = 30), the immediate effects of watching live fishes on mood, physiological stress, and cognitive performance were compared with the effects of watching a fish video or resting quietly. Although some outcomes improved from pre- to post-activity, there was no evidence that watching fishes (live or video) had greater effects than resting quietly. In Trial B (n = 27), the effects of repeatedly engaging in the same three activities over several weeks were examined. Watching fish videos was associated with improvements in “high pleasure-low arousal” and overall job-related affective wellbeing, but no further effects of condition were found. Qualitative follow-up data collected from a subset of participants from the experimental trials (n = 13) indicated that all three activities may be beneficial as leaving their desks provided detachment from work for a short period. Qualitative data suggested that live fishes were perceived as more engaging, but this did not translate to quantitative findings. Locating fish aquaria within offices (rather than a separate workplace location) may promote wellbeing by encouraging “microbreaks”; further research is needed to investigate this hypothesis

An Information Plane Architecture Supporting Home Network Management

Home networks have evolved to become small-scale versions of enterprise networks. The tools for visualizing and managing such networks are primitive and continue to require networked systems expertise on the part of the home user. As a result, non-expert home users must manually manage non-obvious aspects of the network - e.g., MAC address filtering, network masks, and firewall rules, using these primitive tools. The Homework information plane architecture uses stream database concepts to generate derived events from streams of raw events. This supports a variety of visualization and monitoring techniques, and also enables construction of a closed-loop, policy-based management system. This paper describes the information plane architecture and its associated policy-based management infrastructure. Exemplar visualization and closed-loop management applications enabled by the resulting system (tuned to the skills of non-expert home users) are discussed. © 2011 IEEE.Accepted versio

Feature integration in natural language concepts

Two experiments measured the joint influence of three key sets of semantic features on the frequency with which artifacts (Experiment 1) or plants and creatures (Experiment 2) were categorized in familiar categories. For artifacts, current function outweighed both originally intended function and current appearance. For biological kinds, appearance and behavior, an inner biological function, and appearance and behavior of offspring all had similarly strong effects on categorization. The data were analyzed to determine whether an independent cue model or an interactive model best accounted for how the effects of the three feature sets combined. Feature integration was found to be additive for artifacts but interactive for biological kinds. In keeping with this, membership in contrasting artifact categories tended to be superadditive, indicating overlapping categories, whereas for biological kinds, it was subadditive, indicating conceptual gaps between categories. It is argued that the results underline a key domain difference between artifact and biological concepts