A review of Australian information privacy laws and standards for secure digital ecosystems

Information privacy is mainly concerned with protection of personally identifiable information. Information privacy is an arduous task, in particular, in the context of complex adaptive and multi-party heterogeneous digital ecosystems. There is a need to identify and understand the relevant privacy laws and standards for designing the secure digital ecosystems. This paper presents the results of our information privacy research in digital ecosystems through the lens of Australian privacy regulations and standards. The research results indicate that information privacy is a critical phenomenon; however, it is not adequately addressed in the context of end-to-end digital ecosystem. It is recommended that a multi-layered approach is required by reviewing and mapping Australian information privacy laws and standards at different layers to design secure digital ecosystems

Adaptive Digital Identity Verification Reference Architecture (ADIVRA) Framework

University of Technology Sydney. Faculty of Engineering and Information Technology.Digital ecosystems comprise interacting actors such as organizations, people and things that are supported by digital platforms. The interconnection of actors may involve sharing personally identifiable information such as digital identity information for verification within the digital ecosystem. One of the key privacy challenges in digital ecosystems is the verification of a digital identity in a manner that is secure and compliant with regulatory requirements. The identity verification process is compromised if personally identifiable information is lost, which can lead to identity theft and more serious instances of data breaches. Therefore, a practical digital identity verification solution should enable secure digital identity verification for actors operating in the inherently complex and diverse regulatory environment of digital ecosystems. Several research and industry initiatives have been taken to address this challenge however, there is a lack of capability in existing solutions and guidance for implementing a digital identity verification solution that can comply to regulatory requirements and securely verify an identity without storing personally identifiable information. Hence, this thesis aims to address a pressing research need: how to ensure regulatory compliance and the privacy of personally identifiable information involved in digital identity verification in a digital ecosystem? This thesis aims to address this practice-oriented research question by proposing an adaptive digital identity verification reference architecture (ADIVRA) framework. The ADIVRA has been incrementally developed by the iterative cycles of build, intervene, and evaluate, reflection and learning, and the formalization of learning research activities following the principles of well-known action design research. ADIVRA comprises three main components: Assess, Design and Evolve. The Assess component helps to assess the environmental risks and gaps. The Design component fills the gaps identified by Assess component. The third and final component of the ADIVRA framework is Evolve, which analyzes the changes and identifies the adjustments against changing privacy risks, regulatory requirements, and business needs. The proposed ADIVRA framework is evaluated via design and review workshops in industry partners’ organizational settings and industry experts’ field survey. The results of this evaluation indicate that the proposed ADIVRA framework could be helpful for guiding the development of adaptive digital identity verification solutions that are privacy aware and support regulatory compliance. ADIVRA is intended for use by industry practitioners, law makers, regulators, and researchers as a comprehensive reference architecture for developing privacy aware and regulatory compliant digital identity verification solutions

Using Adaptive Enterprise Architecture Framework for Defining the Adaptable Identity Ecosystem Architecture

Digital identity management is often used to handle fraud detection and hence reduce identity thefts. However, using digital identity management presents additional challenges in terms of privacy of the identity owner meanwhile managing the security of the verification. In this paper, drawing on adaptive enterprise architecture (EA) with an ecosystem approach to digital identity, we describe an identity ecosystem (IdE) architecture to handle identity management (IdM) while safeguarding security and privacy. This study is a part of the larger action design research project with our industry partner DZ. We have used adaptive EA as a theoretical lens to define a privacy aware adaptive IdM with a view to improve the Id operations and delivery of services in the public and private sector. The value of the anticipated architecture is in its generic yet comprehensive structure, component orientation and layered approach which aim to enable the contemporary IdM

Secure big data ecosystem architecture : challenges and solutions

Big data ecosystems are complex data-intensive, digital–physical systems. Data-intensive ecosystems offer a number of benefits; however, they present challenges as well. One major challenge is related to the privacy and security. A number of privacy and security models, techniques and algorithms have been proposed over a period of time. The limitation is that these solutions are primarily focused on an individual or on an isolated organizational context. There is a need to study and provide complete end-to-end solutions that ensure security and privacy throughout the data lifecycle across the ecosystem beyond the boundary of an individual system or organizational context. The results of current study provide a review of the existing privacy and security challenges and solutions using the systematic literature review (SLR) approach. Based on the SLR approach, 79 applicable articles were selected and analyzed. The information from these articles was extracted to compile a catalogue of security and privacy challenges in big data ecosystems and to highlight their interdependencies. The results were categorized from theoretical viewpoint using adaptive enterprise architecture and practical viewpoint using DAMA framework as guiding lens. The findings of this research will help to identify the research gaps and draw novel research directions in the context of privacy and security in big data-intensive ecosystems. © 2021, The Author(s)

Spectrum of Mutations of Beta Thalassemia

Objective: To identify gene mutations known to cause thalassemia major and intermedia amongst patients coming to thalassemia Centre of Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences(PIMS). Patients and Methods: Hundred transfusion dependent thalassemia patients were recruited from PIMS. Genome DNA was isolated by using phenol-chloroform method. Allele specific PCR was performed by using primers specific for twelve known disease causing mutations, prevalent in Pakistan. The PCR product was run on 6% polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis and visualized by silver staining technique. Results were recorded and data were entered and analyzed using SPSS version 16. Results: Total Number of patients included in the study was 100, among them 46% were males and 54% were females. Parenteral consanguinity was seen in 95% cases. Most common homozygous mutations were Fr 8-9 [23(28.7%)], followed by IVSI-5 [17(21.3%)] cases. Compound heterozygous mutations were seen in 20% cases, among them the most common was Fr 8-9/IVS1-5 (5/20 cases), and Fr 8-9/del 619 (3/20 cases). Analysis of type of mutation in different ethnic groups showed that Fr 8-9 was the most common mutation in Punjabis and Pathans seen in 14/63 and 6/28 cases respectively, followed by IVS1-5 seen in 11/63 and 5/28 cases respectively. The most common mutation in Thalassemia major was Fr 8-9 seen in 22 (25%) cases followed by IVS1-5 seen in 15 (17%) cases and Fr 41-42 seen in 10 (11.4%) cases. The number of patients of Thalassemia Intermedia was low in this study (n=12), however among these the commonest mutations were Cap +1, Fr 8-9, IVS1-5 and del 619, presenting as homozygous or compound heterozygous mutations. Conclusion: Molecular characterization of Thalassemia major and intermedia patients is very essential so that we can set trigger of hemoglobin level accordingly before putting them on regular transfusion. Less frequent transfusion, iron chelation and HU therapy will significantly reduce serum ferritin, liver and spleen size of this group of patients and thus significantly improve their quality of life.&nbsp

Cybersecurity Enterprises Policies: A Comparative Study

Cybersecurity is a critical issue that must be prioritized not just by enterprises of all kinds, but also by national security. To safeguard an organization’s cyberenvironments, information, and communication technologies, many enterprises are investing substantially in cybersecurity these days. One part of the cyberdefense mechanism is building an enterprises’ security policies library, for consistent implementation of security controls. Significant and common cybersecurity policies of various enterprises are compared and explored in this study to provide robust and comprehensive cybersecurity knowledge that can be used in various enterprises. Several significant common security policies were identified and discussed in this comprehensive study. This study identified 10 common cybersecurity policy aspects in five enterprises: healthcare, finance, education, aviation, and e-commerce. We aimed to build a strong infrastructure in each business, and investigate the security laws and policies that apply to all businesses in each sector. Furthermore, the findings of this study reveal that the importance of cybersecurity requirements differ across multiple organizations. The choice and applicability of cybersecurity policies are determined by the type of information under control and the security requirements of organizations in relation to these policies

Identification and application of biocontrol agents against Cotton leaf curl virus disease in Gossypium hirsutum under greenhouse conditions

Biological control is a novel approach in crop protection. Bacteria, such as Bacillus spp. and Pseudomonas spp., are reported for this purpose and some of their products are already commercially available. In this study, the rhizosphere and phyllosphere of healthy cotton plants were used as a source of bacterial isolates with properties of potential biocontrol agents. The isolates were screened for phosphate solubilization activity, indole acetic acid (IAA) production and antifungal activity. Two isolates, S1HL3 and S1HL4, showed phosphate solubilization and IAA production simultaneously, while another two, JS2HR4 and JS3HR2, demonstrated potential to inhibit fungal pathogens. These bacteria were identified as Pseudomonas aeruginosa (S1HL3), Burkholderia sp. (S1HL4) and Bacillus sp. (JS2HR4 and JS3HR2) based on biochemical and molecular characteristics. The isolates were tested against Cotton leaf curl virus (CLCuV) in greenhouse conditions, both as individual bacterial isolates and consortia. Treated plants were healthy as compared to control plants, where up to 74% of the plants were symptomatic for CLCuV infection. Maximum inhibition of CLCuV was observed in the plants treated with a mixture of bacterial isolates: the viral load in the treated plants was only 0.4% vs. up to 74% in controls. This treatment consortium included P. aeruginosa S1HL3, Burkholderia sp. S1HL4 and Bacillus spp. isolates, JS2HR4 and JS3HR2. The principal-component biplot showed a highly significant correlation between the viral load percentage and the disease incidence