Cyber Vulnerabilities and the Tourism Industry: Developing a Conceptual Framework

In the post 9/11 era tourism remains a growing global industry worth an estimated $2bn/day. In response to the physical threat of terrorism, governments and industry have been very active in implementing changes. However, it is noticeable as the industry becomes increasingly reliant on the Internet and other information technologies how little discussion there has been of the potential threats from cyber vulnerabilities. As research in the e-security and e-forensics domains highlights there has been a marked increase in the sophistication and targeting of cyber attacks that has the potential to threaten individual firms, destination brands or the industry as a whole. In an effort to explore these potential vulnerabilities, examine their impacts and consider meaningful responses, this research-in-progress paper outlines a developing conceptual framework for investigating these issues in a coherent manner. This framework forms the basis for ongoing research into cyber vulnerabilities in the Tasmanian tourist industr

Robust Watermarking Method By Systematic Block Diffusion Using Discrete Cosine Transform

Digital watermarks have long been considered as a security feature. A watermarking method that involves the diffusion of limited watermark information into a large part of an image’s data has high robustness. The diffused information is summed up to a single component before detecting the watermark. The summing up process eliminates small noises by an averaging effect, which improves the robustness of the embedded watermark against attack. In this field, thus far, only an asymmetrical Chirp transformation with a small block size has been attempted. In this study, a new verification experiment for a large block size of 256 × 256 pixels is conducted. High robustness of the proposed method is revealed. This includes the finding that, in the case of a JPEG compression attack, the proposed system is robust even at strong compression of 1/70. As for a clipping attack, embedded watermarks can be detected with up to seven pixel clipping of an embedded image

Spartan Daily February 16, 2012

Volume 138, Issue 11https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/spartandaily/1010/thumbnail.jp

Digital Evidence in Criminal Procedures

Digital evidence can be a litigant's best friend or worst nightmare, depending on the type of evidence, how it is used, and in what court it is presented. Therefore this article aims to provide an overview of computer forensics from general definitions on digital evidence, their potential sources and basic principles regarding the evaluation of phases of "crime scene investigation" and seizure of data in order to determinate the "fingerprints" of the crime. We illustrated the procedure regarding digital evidence in the USA because of its contemporariness. At last the purpose of this paper is to illustrate the “handling” of digital evidence in Macedonia and to give recommendations for a better compliance with the international instruments regarding this issue

Identification of Issues in E-Crime and Forensic Computing

As organisations around the world have embraced the Internet and e-Commerce, so too have commercial criminals. e-Fraud is a multi-billion dollar threat to organisations, and like any other crime, these e-Crimes should be brought to justice. The process of gathering electronic evidence of an e-Fraud is known as forensic computing. This paper addresses the issues that law enforcement, private forensic specialists, network administrators, and e- Businesses face when attempting to prosecute e-Crimes. Through a research forum focus group these issues were identified and prioritized so that the computer forensic community can then identify the existing strengths, weaknesses and threats, and thereby introduce a strategy that allocates scarce resources and skills to the most needed areas

Development of a micro-extruder with vibration mode for microencapsulation of human keratinocytes in calcium alginate

Microencapsulation is a promising technique to form microtissues. The existing cell microencapsulation technologies that involved extrusion and vibration are designed with complex systems and required the use of high energy. A micro-extruder with an inclusion of simple vibrator that has the commercial value for creating a 3D cell model has been developed in this work. This system encapsulates human keratinocytes (HaCaT) in calcium alginate and the size of the microcapsules is controllable in the range of 500-800 µm by varying the flow rates of the extruded solution and frequency of the vibrator motor ( I 0-63 Hz). At 0.13 ml/min of flow rate and vibration rate of 26.4 Hz, approximately 40 ± IO pieces of the alginate microcapsules in a size 632.14 ± I 0.35 µm were produced. Approximately I 00 µm suspension of cells at different cells densities of 1.55 x I 05 cells/ml and 1.37 x I 07 cells/ml were encapsulated for investigation of microtissues formation. Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) analysis showed the different functional groups and chemistry contents of the calcium alginate with and without the inclusion of HaCaT cells in comparison to the monolayers of HaCaT cells. From Field Emission Scanning Electron Microscope (FESEM) imaging, calcium alginate microcapsules were characterised by spherical shape and homogenous surface morphology. Via the nuclei staining, the distance between cells was found reduced as the incubation period increased. This indicated that the cells merged into microtissues with good cell-cell adhesions. After 15 days of culture, the cells were still viable as indicated by the fluorescence green expression of calcein­acetoxymethyl. Replating experiment indicated that the cells from the microtissues were able to migrate and has the tendency to form monolayer of cells on the culture flask. The system was successfully developed and applied to encapsulate cells to produce 3D microtissues