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Users are encouraged to adopt a wide array of technologies and behaviors to reduce their security risk. However, the adoption of these "best practices," ranging from the use of antivirus products to keeping software updated, is not well understood, nor is their practical impact on security risk well established. To explore these issues, we conducted a large-scale measurement of 15,000 computers over six months. We use passive monitoring to infer and characterize the prevalence of various security practices as well as a range of other potentially security-relevant behaviors. We then explore the extent to which differences in key security behaviors impact the real-world outcomes (i.e., that a device shows clear evidence of having been compromised). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the combining of software-defined networks (SDNs) and blockchain (BC) technology, and it mentions computer network security issues such as Denial of Service (DoS) attacks and the hijacking of an SDN network. According to the article, a BC-enabled SDN provides a higher level of security and reliability for users as compared to centralized SDN applications. Lightweight consensus protocols, the decoupling of data, and trust-based validation are assessed.

The authors discuss the significance of machine learning (ML) and its applications as built and utilized by humans via a description of their development of the Overton and Ludwig declarative ML systems. It discusses software engineering and ML, technological advances of ML systems, and the unique aspects of declarative ML systems.

The article presents a discussion between several high technology firm employees and chief technology officers (CTOs) including Jim Waldo, Miguel Guevara, and Terry Coatta about the concept of differential privacy. The participants discuss the use of statistics, practical applications, and user experiences with differential privacy.

The author discusses the issue of ethics in computer science in the European Union. She mentions the question of computer privacy and the impact of the General Data Protection Regulation, the concerns of individual users in applying their personal ethics to computing and computer data, and the work of various computing organizations to establish ethical recommendations.

The article reports on user discovery of the abilities of virtual assistants. It mentions dealing with user expectations by developers, the use of context awareness by the assistant, and the use of algorithms to provide recommendations.

The article reports on the migration of Google's virtual desktops to a cloud environment. It mentions the planning phases that preceded the migration, the implementation of the technical details including test rollouts, and the actual process of migrating users and the lessons learned from the process.

The article presents the author's views on the ethical challenges of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies, with particular focus given to the effectiveness of AI systems for users with disabilities. Topics of discussion include privacy risks, the potential of AI system output errors on safety, and concerns over the use of disability simulation.

The article provides information on ability-based design, a design approach for interactive systems based on users' abilities rather than disabilities. It explains how this method shifts responsibility of enabling access from users to the system before looking at contexts that limit technology use which can be addressed with ability-based design.

The article discusses the authors' views about the need for the distributed systems research community to improve the state of the art in fault tolerance testing as of 2018, and it mentions how ordinary users need the tools to automate the selection of custom-tailored faults to inject. Cloud software applications, Chaos Engineering, and computer failures are assessed, along with the Jepsen fault-injection testing technique and the superusers that are known as Chaos Engineers.

The article discusses various aspects of computer and information security practices, and it mentions computer user behavior in relation to information privacy and security-related problems. Computer user behavior-based data collection is examined, along with analyses of how individuals react to advice regarding security measures and procedures. Exposure to computer-based vulnerabilities is assessed, as well as user interviews and passive measurements of user behavior.

The article discusses the engineering of discomfort as a means to engage computer user experience by integrating perspectives from human-computer interaction and performance studies. Topics covered include a way for designers to employ visceral and cultural discomfort, effects of uncomfortable interaction on users, the involvement of a tradition of discomfort in the arts, the prototype amusement park ride called Breathless and the primary forms of discomfort, It also discusses ethical challenges posed by discomfort.

The article discusses strategies for optimizing the performance of websites as of August 2013, focusing on front-end optimization that improves user experiences. Topics include loading times, the increasing use of mobile devices by consumers, and variances in mobile latency and download speeds. Recommendations include reducing HTTP requests, using browser caching, and embedding resources in the HTML document markup language. Network connections and the SPDY protocol for avoiding performance bottlenecks from the Internet services company Google Inc.

The article discusses several Private Information Retrieval (PIR) schemes that contain cryptographic protocols designed to protect database users' privacy of user queries to public databases. According to the article, PIR allows clients to retrieve records from public databases while hiding the records' identity from database owners. PIR computational scheme, also called information theoretic, offers a guarantee that each server participating in protocol execution doesn't receive any information about what users are after. Locally decodable codes and Hadamard codes are discussed.

The article reports on user involvement in continuous computer software development. Computer software companies, in order to maintain adequate levels of customer satisfaction, spend an estimated 50-75% of total software development costs on testing the software, eliminating errors in the software, and verification activities. However, it is difficult to eliminate all errors in computer software and so companies have involved computer users in the process of error reporting with an error reporting system where the computer user informs the company directly or through a third party vendor.

The article discusses a gathering of computer architects, database researchers, and computer users which met in May 2008 to examine the state of database research and the effects such research is having on actual practice. A consensus was reached that, due to both the explosion of data and usage scenarios, as well as shifts seen in computing hardware and platforms, the database community was at a major turning point. Topics include future directions of database research, database engine architectures, and declarative programming languages.

This article discusses efforts to make Web browsers both secure and usable. The typical computer is the embodiment of contradictions, the authors state, where great effort and money is spent on firewalls, security audits, and virus checkers, yet at the same time the access given to a Web browser often makes such defense measures meaningless. Topics of discussion include Web browsers that cause problems for computer users and software developers and consumer expectations that computers will handle sophisticated operations such as online banking and micro network interactions.

The article discusses the manner in which performance of the Internet may be improved by building scalable and fast content-delivery systems. The biggest bottleneck related to the performance of commercial-grade Web applications, the author states, is the "middle mile," or the amount of time data takes to travel the Internet between the origin server and the end user. Other topics include the middle mile as a heterogeneous infrastructure that is owned by competing entities and the peering and transit points where networks trade traffic.

The article focuses on computer users' behavior regarding security mechanisms. It mentions that the user problem in security problems concerns how people think of risk that guides their behavior. Users think that they are less likely to be harmed by computer vulnerability. Due to this, survey showed that only 72% of home users did not have a properly configured firewall and only one third had updated their antivirus programs. The author declares that users are only unmotivated and enumerates the reasons why users behave that way. While the author suggests increasing the immediate and tangible reward for secure actions to increase compliance, he also recommends catching corporate security policy violators.

The article discusses the unauthorized use of wireless Internet by users that are external to an organization. The use is problematic for both sides of the organization, since unauthorized users risk civil and criminal liability and network providers risk system intrusion and disruption. The authors examine the motivation for roaming use outside of the network as well as an organization's justification for Wi-Fi networks, which include operational benefits, lower economic costs, and convenient Internet access.

This article describes Domain Name System Security Protocol (DNSSEC) and its role as an ecology of security protocols and measures. Most U.S. Internet users cite privacy and data confidentiality as their main security concerns. Experts, however, remain more uneasy about infrastructure, with many predicting a catastrophic event being executed through the networked information infrastructure or the country's power grid. Infrastructure attacks occur outside their normal frame of reference and control.

This article reports on ways to limit the amount of damage that can be caused by computer software viruses. The author believes that putting an end to the excess authority that every computer program gets from the operating system is the key to limiting the negative impact of viruses. The author also discusses Polaris, a package for Windows XP that is being developed by a group called the Virus Safe Computing Initiative at Hewlett-Packard Laboratories. The package allows users to configure most applications so that they launch with just the specific rights that the user requires. INSETS: VIRUSES AND WORMS;PRIVILEGE, PERMISSION, AND AUTHORITY.

This article reports on a new primitive called externally verifiable code execution. This primitive allows an external entity (the verifier) with the assurance that any piece of code, referred to as the target executable, executes untampered by any malware that may exist on an external computing device. The article examines both software- and hardware-based techniques for externally verifiable code execution. Both techniques require a root of trust. The root of trust is a computing base that can be trusted with the responsibility of enforcing externally verifiable code execution.

The author describes a technique he employed to determine the global penetration of Sony Corp.'s rootkit installations on computers. By using the Domain Name System (DNS), he was able to trace connections to a Sony Web site and estimate the extent to which personal computers had been infected by the Sony rootkit installation, which sent information to Sony about computer users' music copying and also made it difficult for purchasers of Sony Music to copy their music to iTunes or other music players.

The article discusses the importance of managing computer system changes that are made post-system deployment in a systematic manner. The authors feel that more research is needed in the area of managing post-system deployment because the majority of Information Technology (IT) research has focused on managing system development. They recognize that computer system changes are often necessary after system development and deployment. However, if these changes are not made carefully, with the cooperation and feedback of users, the risks are greater than in the system development phase.

The article discusses how Information Services (IS) departments can best establish a reciprocal relationship with computer users. Providing users a good customer service experience is essential for the functioning of the IS department. Technological efficiency and skills are not what most affect how computer users feel about their IS department, which has an impact on the degree to which the users cooperate with the goals of the department. If users feel that they are respected, listened to, dealt with as individuals and they receive frequent communications, the IS department can be successful. If user trust breaks down, the IS department could be outsourced or will not function well.

The author makes the argument that Wi-Fi hotspots can be unsafe for the vast majority of non-corporate users. He argues that Wi-Fi hotspots can be easily "spoofed" and that it is difficult, or impossible, for a casual user to determine if their machine is secure when using a public hotspot. The vast majority of public Wi-Fi hotspots do not provide a manner to authenticate whether a machine is connected to a legitimate hotspot. Also, the author is concerned about software that can decode user passwords that are sent out across the network. He also sees "spoofed" Web sites as a problem; by setting up these Web sites, hackers can "phish" for users' data.

This article focuses on stereotypes of information technology professionals and how that effects employment in that field. The popular image of an IT professional is a technology geek, which can reduce the attractiveness of the profession to prospective entrants. The author expresses concerns over the possibility that IT human resources also project invalid images of IT professionals and the importance of ensuring an organization's HR practices are based on valid descriptions of IT professionals. The author discusses a survey on IT stereotypes taken by IT professionals.

This article articulates a framework that can guide and organize future discourse on the spyware topic, and suggests how the framework might be applied to the legislative domain. Many prominent definitions of spyware are specific and focus on surreptitious communication over the Internet that cause negative consequences to the direct user. Firstly, it is believed that the secret nature of spyware is becoming increasingly less applicable. Specifically, many spyware components use the veiled approach of placing the intention to monitor notification within End User License Agreements (EULAs) immediately before the installation of other programs. But because users commonly accept the EULAs without being aware they are installing software that will monitor their activities, there may be consent without awareness, certainly not true informed consent. The framework is based on two key considerations: user consent and user consequences. Consent is the extent to which the user has agreed to allow a given software component to be installed and executed. Consequences are the extent to which the component provides a beneficial functionality to the direct user.

This article focuses on spyware awareness among consumers, particularly regarding general computer use habits, security procedures and general spyware knowledge. Consumer Web behavior literature suggests Web usage includes functional activities, such as information searching, communication, and online shopping, as well as entertainment activities, such as listening to music or watching video clips. Identifying consumer Internet shopping behavior is critical in effective market segmentation. Consumers use search engines to primarily look for needed information. Search mechanisms and shopping enjoyment are surely correlated, and thus affect the consumer's intention to purchase online. Consumer knowledge literature argues strongly that knowledge has a significant and essential influence on the consumer's decision making. Knowledge encompasses two components: product familiarity and expertise. Consumer knowledge is found to relate to privacy protection, consumer defection, consumer choice, information search, and perceived product category uncertainty.

This article discusses the issue of perplexing penetration of spyware in PCs used in business, government, and academia. Software vendors, who have already made a great start, must provide low-cost and uncomplicated tools for spyware detection and removal; and they must continuously update those tools. Their diligence will be tested by the purveyors of spyware. Pressure must be placed on the creators of spyware to ensure they maintain a sense of fairness and are more forthcoming in informing potential computer users of what their particular breed of spyware can and will do, and the conditions under which this may happen. Steve Gibson is credited with creating the first anti-spyware program, OptOut, in 2000. Regardless of the source, they all allow a conclusion that spyware is relatively new. It is believed that a measure of computer user knowledge relative to spyware is important. To accomplish this, a survey was reported in "Computers and Security" in 1993, to measure computer user knowledge regarding computer viruses.

This article presents information on a study related to the importance of paying attention to details (ATD). The results of this study raise important ironies and implications for action. One irony is that while there is almost unanimous agreement about the importance of ATD to IT work, there is no consensus about what ATD means. Many IT professionals view ATD as a personal quality and a trainable skill at which individuals can improve over time. The meaning of ATD also appears to vary somewhat by IT job level. A second irony is that while evidence suggests ATD is important and IT professionals could perform significantly better in terms of it, the IT community ignores ATD. Typically, when a problem is faced in a discipline, practitioners and/or academics focus effort to solve it. This has not happened with ATD in the IT field. A third irony is that the importance of ATD to IT work is growing at the same time that organizational forces are working to raise or meet competing objectives. Today, IT functions are under intense efficiency pressures. Some participants stated that IT shops follow an 80-20 rule that emphasizes getting 80% of what users want in a system out the door quickly, returning later to address the other 20%. While the findings surest that the negative effects of a lack of ATD in IT work are more severe than ever, there is greater likelihood for important items to fall between the cracks in today's IT environment.

This article focuses on usability of Internet in China. Internet use in China could have grown even more quickly. To help put things in perspective, it is worth comparing the growth of the Internet and the growth of the mobile phone market, both of which began in China in the early 1990s. While more costly than Internet access, mobile phones have become far more popular than using the Internet. As of December 2004, the country had more than 330 million mobile phone users, or 3.5 times more than the number of Internet users, according to the Ministry of Information Industry. The implication is that wireless communication networks have had a greater effect transforming Chinese society than have wired information networks. Thus, the Internet's enormous potential remains largely unrealized but could change if the medium becomes as convenient and useful as mobile phones for Chinese users. The Internet is a global medium in terms of technological capability. But most Chinese users use it primarily as a domestic medium.

This article reports that blogging is sometimes viewed as a new, grassroots form of journalism and a way to shape democracy outside the mass media and conventional party politics. Blog sites devoted to politics and punditry, as well as to sharing technical developments, receive thousands of hits a day. But the vast majority of blogs are written by ordinary people for much smaller audiences. This article reports the results of an ethnographic investigation of blogging in a sample of ordinary bloggers. Researchers investigated blogging as a form of personal communication and expression, with a specific interest in uncovering the range of motivations driving individuals to create and maintain blogs. Blogs combine the immediacy of up-to-the-minute posts, latest first, with a strong sense of the author's personality, passions and point of view. They found tremendous diversity in blog content, even in their limited sample. On the serious side, a graduate student in genetics, posted commentaries on science and health, covering such topics as AIDS, heart disease, science education and health care policy.

This article reports that early self-published online journals, or Weblogs, has allowed "bloggers" to bypass the corporate media gatekeepers to say and show practically anything they could think of to tens of millions of computer users around the world. Having to please no one but themselves, these bloggers began enthusiastically linking and cross-linking to and referencing one another's sites and commentaries. These links drove development of blog technology, as well as user curiosity and ultimately creation of the worldwide blogosphere. In contrast, today's generation of bloggers mainly wants to be heard or seen — instantly, throughout the Internet — even as they tend to ignore everything else. Weblog-tracking company Technorati Inc., reports almost 4.2 million Weblogs worldwide as of October 2004, up from about one million a year earlier. And a 2003 Pew/Internet survey estimated that more than 53 American adults, or 44% of Internet users, had used the Internet to publish their thoughts, respond to others, post pictures, share files and otherwise contribute to the content available online.

This article reports that blogs constitute a remarkable artifact of the Internet. Most people think of them as Web pages with reverse chronological sequences of dated entries, usually with sidebars of profile information and usually maintained and published with the help of a popular blog authoring tool. They tend to be quirky, highly personal, typically read by repeat visitors and interwoven into a network of tight-knit but active communities. By analyzing the structure and content of more than one million blogs worldwide, researchers have now unearthed some fascinating insights into blogger behavior. Three out of four livejournal bloggers are between 16 and 24 years of age. Their interests are highly correlated with age. The surprising category of 1-3 year olds consists of individuals creating blogs for their pets and newborn children. The age-correlated interest groups showed a steady progression from early high school through college, to 20-something lifestyle, into a more refined 30s, a somewhat conflicted 40s and even into later life.

Studies have shown that for the generation of U.S.-based youth that grew up with the Internet, it is gradually displacing television as their main source of entertainment, communication, and education. This article explores how the Internet has become indispensable to people in their daily lives and develops a conceptual model allowing us to address the associated research questions. The idea is that the Internet has become so embedded in the daily fabric of people's lives that they simply cannot live without it. The number of adult Americans using the Internet increased 50% from 2000 to 2003, reaching 126 million users in 2003. Most of this increase is accounted for by individuals 30 years and older, although younger users are still the most wired. The increase is recorded among both men and women equally; African-Americans show the highest increase during this period, although they still lag behind Caucasians and Hispanics. Compared to the general population, college students are the heaviest Internet users.

In the early days of the Internet, an occasional sarcastic or confrontational remark was considered part of its "charm." As Internet settlers from cyber communities, the importance of etiquette grows. Indeed, the lack of it is weakening sociability and even destroying online communities. Etiquette online is not just nice to have, it is necessary. Like the pioneers of the Wild West, early Internet adopters were a rough and tumble gang. an occasional sarcastic comment, expletive, or confrontational challenge was part of the fun. But times have changed. Today's settlers flock online in the millions. a single word aptly summarizes these settlers: " diverse." These Internet users come from many cultures and walks of life. They arrive with a mix of expectations using a variety of technologies, which they access in different ways. The new settlers include children and adults, healthy and infirm, eager and reluctant. English speakers dominate but other languages and cultures are gaining prominence.

Periodically, articles appear that use various criteria to rank the top journals in computer science and information systems. These rankings are helpful to faculty members and practitioners seeking the best outlet for their research. This article identifies which indexes have the best coverage of the 25 top Information Systems (IS) journals. Overall, Ingenta has the best coverage of the seven databases, indexing 24 of the top 25 journals. INSPEC and Web of Science follow Ingenta with abstracts for 21 titles. EBSCO Business Source Premier has 19 titles, 10 of which are current full text and one that is full text through September 2000. Most librarians have limited budgets with which to work and therefore must use great care in selecting subscriptions to digital resources. The cost of a subscription is an important selection criterion. Pricing is determined through negotiation between a library or library consortia and the vendor. Most often, the charges to libraries are a price per full-time equivalent number of simultaneous users to the database.

This article addresses key architectural aspects of integration and interoperability encountered during the Government-wide Computer-based Project (GCPR). For a single sign-on system to be implemented, for example, the various security policies and procedures associated with certification and authentication of legitimate system users had to be reconciled. Unlike a typical hospital e-record system, the GCPR project required the formation of an architecture that allowed for the sharing and integration of a patient's e-record among three federal health care agencies. The need for interoperability led to the selection of the Reference Model for Open Distributed Processing (RM-ODP), an ISO standard, as the best suited framework because it spanned the entire gamut of interoperability concerns mentioned. The information viewpoint captures the information shared between Open Distributed Processing (ODP) applications in terms of metadata, states and structures of an object.

The article focuses on the notion of human capital and discusses the role of learning in the development of interface loyalty by users. The authors found by their research that users acquire skills that are easily transferable from one interface to the other. It was also found that non-transferable skills result in a greater relative preference for the incumbent interface. Elaborating the human capital model, the authors state that users direct their search activities to maximize the gain of their accumulated expertise. It is viewed that the human capital model should act as an important principle in design of electronic interfaces for online shopping. The authors suggest that non-transferable user skills should be encouraged to promote user loyalty.

The article focuses on a Web privacy study. Researchers started with two lists of Web sites. The popular list consisted of 91 Web sites designated as the most popular in January 2000, and the random list consisted of 335 consumer-oriented Web sites. Some of these sites no longer exist. Researchers found that 58% of popular Web sites and 36% of random Web sites contain Web bugs somewhere close to their home page. Without an appropriate disclosure, the users of these sites really have no way to know that they may be participating in a third-party surveillance network.

The article discusses the application of the user cube concept to the classification of of end users in information technology. Emphasis is given to an analysis of data related to end user computing support and identification of end users who develop applications. Other topics include controllers in management positions and ranking of support sources.

Despite the sophistication of the technology, interacting with today's computers, cell phones, and personal digital assistants can involve painful contortions. Miniature displays and keyboards make some portable devices amazingly small, but users' hands do not shrink accordingly; neither does their eyesight sharpen to match postage-stamp-size displays. Here, it is addressed a significant part of the problem: the keyboard. Beginning in 1999, it was proposed using a single tiny sensor to observe the user's fingers, transforming motions into keystrokes. The idea was to make a keyboard out of light, projecting it onto desktops, airplane tray tables, even kitchen counters. Suddenly, there would be nothing to carry around. The keyboard would not be stowed or folded away merely switched off. A few extra grams and a few more cubic millimeters would be integrated into users' devices of choice typing would be as fast as their fingers allowed on a full-size keyboard.

Solutions are needed for the technological challenges that are paradoxically the result of the recent tremendous progress in information and communication technology (ICT), sensors, and embedded computing. Computing began with a focus on data and later shifted to information and communication. To address the requirements of today's emerging network-based applications, the focus must shift again, this time to experience and insight. Decision makers at all organizational levels routinely using computers need insights that can come only from their own experience and experimentation with all available data sources. They must be able to explore and experience events from multiple perspectives and revisit them as often as needed to obtain that insight. In an experiential computing environment, users apply their senses directly, observing event-related data and information of interest. Moreover, users explore the data by following their own personal interests within the context of an event.

The decline in personal computer (PC) sales makes sense once we examine the preferences of different adopter categories. Research on PC adoption has tended to assume the same set of innovation characteristics that influence adoption across all adopter categories, yet in reality, systematic differences exist across adopter categories. Early adopters are the opinion leaders, receiving social esteem by being the first of their group to adopt, and maintaining their position by judiciously evaluating innovations for others. Our research findings illustrate the folly of assuming current non-adopters care about the same things as innovators and early adopters, or assuming that all they care about is PC cost. While cost may be a factor for those still holding out, it is neither the only nor the most important factor. Instead, later adopters want long-lasting products that have yet to appear on the horizon. Until the PC industry convinces this group of potential consumers that their PC will operate like a refrigerator, PC sales are likely to continue in their current stalled state.

While the business risk of being connected to the Internet is analogous to many traditional business types of risk, some characteristics of Internet-related risk are unique, in terms of location, degree, and visibility. For example, a perpetrator of information theft or property damage may be thousands of miles away from the business location when committing the crime via the Internet. Firms traditionally carry insurance to safeguard against various business, natural, and political risks. However, traditional policies do not comprehensively address the additional risk firms face as a result of being a part of the digital economy. The growth of the Internet has therefore created a demand for new insurance products that hedge some of the risk of connectivity.

Severely disabled people are largely excluded from the benefits information and communication technologies have brought to our industries, economies, appliances, and general quality of life. This is the goal and promise of the Adaptive Brain Interfaces (ABI) project, which aims to augment natural human capabilities by enabling people to interact with computers through the direct control of their thoughts. Users interact with physical devices through nothing more than the voluntary control of their own mental activity.

This article focuses on regulating Internet activities so that targeted outcomes remain within acceptable limits in business. However, either too much or too little Internet management can be dysfunctional for an organization. For instance, optimal outcomes will be achieved when businesses restrict usage by policy and check the policy by monitoring or filtering software. At one end of the spectrum, if there is no access or if access is severely limited, organizational outcomes may suffer. Blocking is problematic because it is difficult to keep updated and easier to get around. At the other end of the spectrum, vague, not monitored or enforced, or no policies expose the organization to a number of legal, financial, and operational risks, such as, losses of confidential information, network congestion, threats to network integrity diversion of employee attention, and increased legal liability. An Internet usage policy (IUP) defines appropriate behavior when using company Internet resources and outlines ramifications for violations. An effective IUP can even allow for personal surfing and e-mail.

To most of the hundred millions of computer users around the world, inner workings of a computer are an utter mystery. Opening the box holds as much attraction as lifting the hood of a car. Users expect information technology professionals to help them with their needs for designing, locating, retrieving, using, configuring, programming, maintaining and understanding computers, networks, applications and digital objects. They expect academic computer science to educate and train computing professionals, to be familiar with the changing technologies and to maintain research programs that contribute to these ends. Students aspiring to be professionals look to faculty for a comprehensive, up-to-date view of a world with many fragments, for making sense of rapidly changing technologies, for assistance in framing and answering important questions and for training in effective professional practices. In short, everyone has become dependent on IT professionals as much as on the information technologies themselves. Who are the IT professionals? They are a much larger and more diverse group than computer scientists and engineers. They have organized themselves into professional groups in three categories covering at least 40 specialties.