Cybersecurity Awareness and Training (CAT) Framework for Remote Working Employees

Currently, cybersecurity plays an essential role in computing and information technology due to its direct effect on organizations’ critical assets and information. Cybersecurity is applied using integrity, availability, and confidentiality to protect organizational assets and information from various malicious attacks and vulnerabilities. The COVID-19 pandemic has generated different cybersecurity issues and challenges for businesses as employees have become accustomed to working from home. Firms are speeding up their digital transformation, making cybersecurity the current main concern. For software and hardware systems protection, organizations tend to spend an excessive amount of money procuring intrusion detection systems, antivirus software, antispyware software, and encryption mechanisms. However, these solutions are not enough, and organizations continue to suffer security risks due to the escalating list of security vulnerabilities during the COVID-19 pandemic. There is a thriving need to provide a cybersecurity awareness and training framework for remote working employees. The main objective of this research is to propose a CAT framework for cybersecurity awareness and training that will help organizations to evaluate and measure their employees’ capability in the cybersecurity domain. The proposed CAT framework will assist different organizations in effectively and efficiently managing security-related issues and challenges to protect their assets and critical information. The developed CAT framework consists of three key levels and twenty-five core practices. Case studies are conducted to evaluate the usefulness of the CAT framework in cybersecurity-based organizational settings in a real-world environment. The case studies’ results showed that the proposed CAT framework can identify employees’ capability levels and help train them to effectively overcome the cybersecurity issues and challenges faced by the organizations

Niosomes: An aproach to current drug delivery-A review

Niosomes are a novel drug delivery system (NDDS), in which the medication is encapsulated in a vesicle. The vesicle is composed of a bilayer of non-ionic surface active agents and hence the name niosomes. The niosomes are very small, and microscopic in size. Their size lies in the nanometric scale. Although structurally similar to liposomes, they offer several advantages over them. It has been a study interest in the development of a NDDS. NDDS has an object to deliver the drug at a rate directed by the needs of the body during the period of treatment of a disease, and reach the active ingredient to the site of action. A number of NDDS have been reported through various routes of administration, to achieve controlled and targeted drug delivery. Encapsulation of the drug in vesicular structures is one of the most important systems, which can be predicted to prolong the existence of the drug in systemic circulation and reduce the toxicity, if prescribed uptake can be achieved. Consequently a number of vesicular drug delivery systems such as liposomes, niosomes, transfersomes, and pharmacosomes were developed. Advances have since been made in the area of vesicular drug delivery, leading to the development of systems that allow drug targeting and the sustained or controlled release of conventional medicines. The focus of this review is to the various method of preparations, characterization of niosomes, advantages and brings out the application vesicular systems

Advances and development in transdermal drug delivery system-A review

It is one of the best pharmaceutical dosage forms for those patients, they cannot take medicaments orally. Transdermal drug delivery system (TDDS) established itself as an integral part of novel drug delivery systems (NDDS). On the application of Transdermal patches, the delivery of the drug across dermis gives the systemic effect. TDDS is costly alternative to conventional formulation. It is also important due to its unique advantage. Controlled absorption, more uniform plasma levels, improved bioavailability, reduced side effects, painless and simple application and flexibility of terminating drug administration by simply removing the patch from the skin are some of the potential advantages of transdermal drug delivery. Development of controlled release transdermal dosage form is a complex process involving extensive efforts. This review article describes the methods of preparation of different types of transdermal patches. In addition, the various methods of evaluation of transdermal dosage form and Advance Development in TDDS have also been reviewed

Advance development and current challenges in nails drug delivery-A review

Nails drug delivery system (NDDS) is an important delivery system in mammals, in which their nails are highly affected by the fungal diseases. Disorders of the nail unit range from relatively innocuous conditions such as pigmentation in heavy smokers, to painful and debilitating states where the nail unit can be dystrophied, hypertrophied, inflamed, infected etc. The human nail forms a resistant barrier to the topical penetration of drugs. Thus, treatment of nail disorders, such as fungal infections, remains a challenge because of the difficulty encountered in achieving therapeutic concentrations of drugs at the site of infection, which is often under the nail. Ungual and trans-ungual drug delivery continues to receive significant attention due to the need for efficacious topical therapies for onychomycosis given the potential risk of systemic adverse effects associated with the conventional oral therapy. To successfully treat nail disorders, applied drugs must permeate through the dense keratinized nail plate and reach the deeper layers of the nail plate, nail bed and the nail matrix. Physical, chemical and mechanical methods have been used to decrease the nail barrier. This current review include anatomy of human nail, nails disorders, factors affecting tans-ungual delivery of drugs and methods used for enhancement of drugs penetration into/across the nail

Cloud Servers: Resource Optimization Using Different Energy Saving Techniques

Currently, researchers are working to contribute to the emerging fields of cloud computing, edge computing, and distributed systems. The major area of interest is to examine and understand their performance. The major globally leading companies, such as Google, Amazon, ONLIVE, Giaki, and eBay, are truly concerned about the impact of energy consumption. These cloud computing companies use huge data centers, consisting of virtual computers that are positioned worldwide and necessitate exceptionally high-power costs to preserve. The increased requirement for energy consumption in IT firms has posed many challenges for cloud computing companies pertinent to power expenses. Energy utilization is reliant upon numerous aspects, for example, the service level agreement, techniques for choosing the virtual machine, the applied optimization strategies and policies, and kinds of workload. The present paper tries to provide an answer to challenges related to energy-saving through the assistance of both dynamic voltage and frequency scaling techniques for gaming data centers. Also, to evaluate both the dynamic voltage and frequency scaling techniques compared to non-power-aware and static threshold detection techniques. The findings will facilitate service suppliers in how to encounter the quality of service and experience limitations by fulfilling the service level agreements. For this purpose, the CloudSim platform is applied for the application of a situation in which game traces are employed as a workload for analyzing the procedure. The findings evidenced that an assortment of good quality techniques can benefit gaming servers to conserve energy expenditures and sustain the best quality of service for consumers located universally. The originality of this research presents a prospect to examine which procedure performs good (for example, dynamic, static, or non-power aware). The findings validate that less energy is utilized by applying a dynamic voltage and frequency method along with fewer service level agreement violations, and better quality of service and experience, in contrast with static threshold consolidation or non-power aware technique

Chitosan nanoparticles: a versatile platform for biomedical applications

Chitosan is a biodegradable and biocompatible natural polymer that has been extensively explored in recent decades. The Food and Drug Administration has approved chitosan for wound treatment and nutritional use. Furthermore, chitosan has paved the way for advancements in different biomedical applications including as a nanocarrier and tissue-engineering scaffold. Its antibacterial, antioxidant, and haemostatic properties make it an excellent option for wound dressings. Because of its hydrophilic nature, chitosan is an ideal starting material for biocompatible and biodegradable hydrogels. To suit specific application demands, chitosan can be combined with fillers, such as hydroxyapatite, to modify the mechanical characteristics of pH-sensitive hydrogels. Furthermore, the cationic characteristics of chitosan have made it a popular choice for gene delivery and cancer therapy. Thus, the use of chitosan nanoparticles in developing novel drug delivery systems has received special attention. This review aims to provide an overview of chitosan-based nanoparticles, focusing on their versatile properties and different applications in biomedical sciences and engineering.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

A Multivocal Literature Review on Growing Social Engineering Based Cyber-Attacks/Threats During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Challenges and Prospective Solutions

The novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic has caused a considerable and long-lasting social and economic impact on the world. Along with other potential challenges across different domains, it has brought numerous cybersecurity challenges that must be tackled timely to protect victims and critical infrastructure. Social engineering-based cyber-attacks/threats are one of the major methods for creating turmoil, especially by targeting critical infrastructure, such as hospitals and healthcare services. Social engineering-based cyber-attacks are based on the use of psychological and systematic techniques to manipulate the target. The objective of this research study is to explore the state-of-the-art and state-of-the-practice social engineering-based techniques, attack methods, and platforms used for conducting such cybersecurity attacks and threats. We undertake a systematically directed Multivocal Literature Review (MLR) related to the recent upsurge in social engineering-based cyber-attacks/threats since the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic. A total of 52 primary studies were selected from both formal and grey literature based on the established quality assessment criteria. As an outcome of this research study; we discovered that the major social engineering-based techniques used during the COVID-19 pandemic are phishing, scamming, spamming, smishing, and vishing, in combination with the most used socio-technical method: fake emails, websites, and mobile apps used as weapon platforms for conducting successful cyber-attacks. Three types of malicious software were frequently used for system and resource exploitation are; ransomware, trojans, and bots. We also emphasized the economic impact of cyber-attacks performed on different organizations and critical infrastructure in which hospitals and healthcare were on the top targeted infrastructures during the COVID-19 pandemic. Lastly, we identified the open challenges, general recommendations, and prospective solutions for future work from the researcher and practitioner communities by using the latest technology, such as artificial intelligence, blockchain, and big data analytics