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The article explores the cybersecurity practices of businesses and the necessity of a federal government cyber insurance program in the U.S. Topics discussed include the liability that companies may face for failing to implement effective cybersecurity solutions under a negligence theory, the challenges in establishing professional cybersecurity standards, and the financial and economic risks associated with cyberattacks.

In this paper, a novel one-time password authentication scheme based on the negative database ( NDB ) is proposed. The authentication data, which involve a user password and random number, are converted to an NDB before they are transmitted to the network. Recovering the original database ( DB ) from an NDB is an NP -hard problem. Even if the data transmitted in the network have been intercepted by an attacker, the attacker cannot recover the password due to the hardness of reversing the NDB . The proposed scheme is the first one-time password authentication scheme based on the NDB . Following the method used in this paper, the NDB can be added to other authentication schemes as an extra layer to further improve security. The proposed scheme can be adopted into other applications such as business management, network-based consumer electronics, and intelligent household systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Organisations use Enterprise Architecture (EA) to reduce organisational complexity, improve communication, align business and information technology (IT), and drive organisational change. Due to the dynamic nature of environmental and organisational factors, EA descriptions need to change over time to keep providing value for its stakeholders. Emerging business and IT trends, such as Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA), may impact EA frameworks, methodologies, governance and tools. However, the phenomenon of EA evolution is still poorly understood. Using Archer's morphogenetic theory as a foundation, this research conceptualises three analytical phases of EA evolution in organisations, namely conditioning, interaction and elaboration. Based on a case study with a government agency, this paper provides new empirically and theoretically grounded insights into EA evolution, in particular in relation to the introduction of SOA, and describes relevant generative mechanisms affecting EA evolution. By doing so, it builds a foundation to further examine the impact of other IT trends such as mobile or cloud-based solutions on EA evolution. At a practical level, the research delivers a model that can be used to guide professionals to manage EA and continually evolve it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An increasing number of companies use social media such as micro blogs to promote celebrities in Internet communities. Companies may run their official micro blogs differently, which in turn leads to different public engagements on micro blogging sites. This study takes a perspective on the adoption behaviours of micro blogs in enterprises by looking at the relationship between media frame and audience frame based on the China Fortune 500 firms in 2014. The results show that the updates, active days and followings are associated with public engagement with the corporate official micro blogs. In particular, we found information overload from information updates. The marginal utility of the public engagement decreases as number of updates increases. The results also show that the daily variance of updates has a significant influence on the audience frame. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

El artículo discurre sobre el concepto y la implementación de metodologías ágiles, o el uso de servicios de software, en el entorno empresarial. El autor comenta sobre la prevalencia del fracaso de nuevas empresas y describe la importancia de la aplicación e incorporación de metodologías ágiles para ayudar a prevenir el fracaso.

As social network services have been integrated with organizations' business, it is trying to apply them to a variety of organizations' tasks from normal enterprise processes such as tourism, fashion and distribution to public institutions' processes. Organizations need to build an environment not resistant to new environments by enhancing applications of the existing built ICT technologies for focusing on various utilizations of SNS and integrating with the existing enterprise systems within the organizations to use them. Accordingly, there is a need to develop the ICT use index and the ICT use development level for objectively diagnosing enterprises' ICT use state to integrate with SNS services. However, the studies so far have focused on only understanding enterprises' introduction effects of ICT technologies or fragmentary status of ICT use and external use of SNS. In addition, there are insufficient studies on the business processes that could show results of applying ICT technologies which are bases to be integrated with SNS. Therefore, this study would like to analyze characteristics and performance by organizations' ICT use levels so that SNS services could be applied in earnest from various perspectives based on the organizations' characteristics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the contemporary economy, work is increasingly becoming freelance-based while moving online. Open source software communities are rapidly becoming arenas in which individuals identify, cocreate, and realize opportunities through shared resources and expertise. Operating in a communal setting, these individuals, who we label open entrepreneurs, work and collaborate with members of their own open source community. In this article, we investigate how networked work benefits open entrepreneurs, and in particular, we focus on how open entrepreneurs are connected to other community members and how these networks affect entrepreneurial processes. Our results suggest that through different aspects of networked work, open entrepreneurs fulfill their profit motives not only in the short term but also in the long term as their networking activities facilitate the overall functioning and sustainability of the community. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article focuses on the data privacy laws for the business's objectives. Topics discussed include data privacy laws in India and Brazil for the prevention of data breaching, regulations proposed in each country since the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) revelations and effects of the laws on individuals and businesses. It also mentions a solution to the disjoined Internet privacy laws on an international scale.

This paper presents an architecture for semantic context-aware recommender systems intended to be implemented on organizational settings. We described the use of this architecture in the development of the Find-It! project to validate its utility. The Find-It! project consider contextual factors to recommend people, knowledge objects, places, activities, events, technological resources and services to the visitors of an organization. The architecture defines an inference module to filter the items subject of recommendation by using different contextual dimensions that are modeled in a single ontologies, the novelty of an item, users' perception of recommendations and contextual conditions considered when they were recommended in previous visits. We also defined a mobile client interface capable to adapt to the user characteristics and device. This client interface counts with implicit and explicit mechanisms to identify the user satisfaction degree with the recommendations received and its quality. Experience obtained with the development of the Find-It! project shows a satisfactory performance. In this way, it is adequately considered to use the architecture to develop a wide range of organizational recommender systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since last century, multiple researches have been made with the goal of incrementing the efficiency in the storage and access to analytical databases, upon which results large companies have introduced commercial products. In this aspect, Microsoft SQL Server 2012 offers two independent options for the creation of analytical models, the multidimensional model and the more recent tabular model. This work looks deeply into the features and potentialities of each model, proposing the most important points that, in the authors' judgment, must be taken into account when undertaking a new project. A computational solution that provides both specialists and executives a particular as well as inclusive vision of the state of the business is proposed, taking advantage of the recent facilities provided by the Microsoft Business Intelligence platform for implementing the models, both multidimensional and tabular. CIMEX Enterprise Group has been the stage where the solution proposal has been developed. For checking the approximation validity four experiments were performed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper researches the investment of enterprise social media (ESM) by organizations as a means to establish networks of practice and employee knowledge exchange. It seeks to determine the drivers for knowledge exchanges in social media-enabled electronic networks of practice (ENoP) and focuses on the question-answer format in the quality of knowledge exchanged. The authors studies the relationship between knowledge seekers and contributors and consider their dyadic relationship from an activity-centered language/action point of view.

Recommender systems are in the center of network science, and they are becoming increasingly important in individual businesses for providing efficient, personalized services and products to users. Previous research in the field of recommendation systems focused on improving the precision of the system through designing more accurate recommendation lists. Recently, the community has been paying attention to diversity and novelty of recommendation lists as key characteristics of modern recommender systems. In many cases, novelty and precision do not go hand in hand, and the accuracy--novelty dilemma is one of the challenging problems in recommender systems, which needs efforts in making a trade-off between them. In this work, we propose an algorithm for providing novel and accurate recommendation to users. We consider the standard definition of accuracy and an effective self-information--based measure to assess novelty of the recommendation list. The proposed algorithm is based on item popularity, which is defined as the number of votes received in a certain time interval. Wavelet transform is used for analyzing popularity time series and forecasting their trend in future timesteps. We introduce two filtering algorithms based on the information extracted from analyzing popularity time series of the items. The popularity-based filtering algorithm gives a higher chance to items that are predicted to be popular in future timesteps. The other algorithm, denoted as a novelty and population-based filtering algorithm, is to move toward items with low popularity in past timesteps that are predicted to become popular in the future. The introduced filters can be applied as adds-on to any recommendation algorithm. In this article, we use the proposed algorithms to improve the performance of classic recommenders, including item-based collaborative filtering and Markov-based recommender systems. The experiments show that the algorithms could significantly improve both the accuracy and effective novelty of the classic recommenders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Today?s businesses and consumer applications are becoming increasingly dependent on cloud solutions, making them vulnerable to service outages that can result in a loss of communication or access to business-critical services and data. Are we really prepared for such failure scenarios? Given that failures can occur on both the network and data center sides, is it possible to have efficient end-to-end recovery? The answer is mostly negative due to the separate operation of these domains. This article offers a solution to this problem based on network virtualization, and discusses the necessary architecture and algorithm details. It also answers the question of whether it is better to provide resilience in the virtual or physical layer from a cost effectiveness and failure coverage perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The Electronic Commerce System should provide prompt responses for user requests and continuous services despite partial failures of its sub systems. In addition, scalability and flexibility should be supported as the number of customers increases. Because Electronic Commerce is beyond the national border, the system should be implemented across different subnets for its efficiency and business needs. This paper proposes the design and implementation of a distributed system infrastructure across different subnets for Electronic Commerce. When the Electronic Commerce system is owned and managed by a small enterprise, the cost should be considered as well as fault tolerance, high availability and scalability. The proposed infrastructure was evaluated and discussed in the aspect of economics such as implementation and management cost, performance and overhead. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The impact of Internet on companies and society has been tremendous. This revolution has created new behaviors among consumers, such as electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM), which has already been studied. Nevertheless, there is a very similar and frequent behavior that the academic field has not yet addressed in which employees and ex-employees publicly evaluate their companies as employers. We refer to that behavior, to which specific and important websites have been devoted, as weWOM (worker electronic word of mouth). In this article we describe weWOM, where it may be found, its relevance, and its consequences and implications for companies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the creation of a so-called Physical Internet, which would move goods the same way that digital data is moved on the Internet, by several researchers including industrial engineer Benoit Montreuil at Laval University in Quebec City, Canada. Topics include the Physical Internet's use to promote collaboration within the supply chain, which includes developing standardized containers, and the de-emphasis of logistics by many shipping companies such as DHL Express.

The article describes the processes involved in migration to open source software (OSS) use, as exemplified in the case of systems within the NTT Group of companies. Topics include the importance of analyzing migration feasibility before a migration and benefits and challenges faced in the use of OSS migration technology. Also mentioned is a case of updating a business support system in an NTT Group company.

In the last few years, the appealing features of cloud computing have been fueling the integration of cloud environments in the industry, which has been consequently motivating the research on related technologies by both the industry and the academia. The possibility of paying-as-you-go mixed with an on-demand elastic operation is changing the enterprise computing model, shifting on-premises infrastructures to off-premises data centers, accessed over the Internet and managed by cloud hosting providers. Regardless of its advantages, the transition to this computing paradigm raises security concerns, which are the subject of several studies. Besides of the issues derived from Web technologies and the Internet, clouds introduce new issues that should be cleared out first in order to further allow the number of cloud deployments to increase. This paper surveys the works on cloud security issues, making a comprehensive review of the literature on the subject. It addresses several key topics, namely vulnerabilities, threats, and attacks, proposing a taxonomy for their classification. It also contains a thorough review of the main concepts concerning the security state of cloud environments and discusses several open research topics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Governments and large enterprises are cognizant of and appreciate the benefits of globalization. They also recognize their increasing reliance on commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) information technology (IT) components (software and hardware) necessary to meet the needs of their business missions. As cyberattacks increase in sophistication, stealth, and severity, governments and larger enterprises are taking a more comprehensive approach to risk management and product assurance. Simply improving today's security practices is insufficient. A comprehensive approach involves understanding the practices commercial technology suppliers can employ to protect the integrity of their products and services in the global supply chainVincluding an understanding of how suppliers manage the risks inherent in globalized product development and manufacturing. This paper outlines the nature of the global technology supply chain, the challenges posed, and the impact on consumers. It describes the added importance of a framework for addressing these challenges based on an approach of IBM, as well as evolving industry open standards efforts to address technology supply chain risks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

At present, many enterprises have built their business network, and the abilities of application of computers of their employees are different. With the rapid development of computer network and the increasing use of electronic commerce, employee often work with enterprise network. But employees computers are poisoned frequently, and it affects the normal operation of workers and electronic commerce in the network. Endpoint access technology is a good way to solve this problem. It is the whole network system security vulnerabilities, viruses from the user terminal computer cannot enter the network, such that only safe users can use the enterprise network. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recently, large supermarkets causing new changes in the domestic distribution structure with price break and large store operation are expanding their advancement of super supermarket (SSM) into small-amount purchasing customers and causing frictions with regional retail stores. So the government passed 'the Large, Small and Medium-sized Enterprises Co-prosperity Cooperation Promotion Law (Win-Win Law)' at the National Assembly in November 2010 to protect traditional markets and has been making a lot of effort to find solutions to the problem of coexistence of the SSM with regional retail stores. So this paper attempts to explore the ways for regional retail stores to secure competitiveness against SSM amid the changes in the domestic distribution environment caused by the advancement of SSM. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A review of the knowledge management experiences of BP, Royal Dutch Shell, Chevron, ExxonMobil, ConocoPhillips, Halliburton, Schlumberger, Paragon Engineering Services, BHP, Marathon Oil, and Murphy Oil identified two major types of knowledge management practices: applications of information and communications technology to the management of explicit knowledge and the use of person-to-person knowledge management techniques to facilitate the transfer of tacit knowledge. The study pointed to the challenges of converting tacit into explicit knowledge and the importance of knowledge management initiatives that combined the enthusiasm of bottom-up initiatives with strong top-down support from senior management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The adoption of Service Oriented Architectures (SOA) by the companies shows high failure rates, mainly because of the way this paradigm is adopted. Thus, the complexity of this process should be addressed by using the evolutionary approach that maturity models offer. However, the diversity of maturity models makes difficult the selection and implementation of most of them. Taking this into account, the objective of this paper is to carry out a comparative analysis between the most representative maturity models and to determine whether they are sufficient in order to evaluating and planning the adoption of SOA with effectiveness. The inadequacies detected after a comprehensive assessment, restrict the evaluation and planning capacities that these models offer. In order to overcome them and using the international experience gained in this field, it were defined the constructs (principles, elements and structure) that support a more integral maturity model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Convincing arguments for using critical realism as an underpinning for theories of IT-associated organizational change have appeared in the Information Systems literature. A central task in developing such theories is to uncover the generative mechanisms by which IT is implicated in organizational change processes, but to do so, we must explain how critical realism's concept of generative mechanisms applies in an IS context. Similarly, convincing arguments have been made for using Gibson's (1986) affordance theory from ecological psychology for developing theories of IT-associated organizational change, but this effort has been hampered due to insufficient attention to the ontological status of affordances. In this paper, we argue that affordances are the generative mechanisms we need to specify and explain how affordances are a specific type of generative mechanism. We use the core principles of critical realism to argue how affordances arise in the real domain from the relation between the complex assemblages of organizations and of IT artifacts, how affordances are actualized over time by organizational actors, and how these actualizations lead to the various effects we observe in the empirical domain. After presenting these arguments, we reanalyze two published cases in the literature, those of ACRO and Autoworks, to illustrate how affordance-based theories informed by critical realism enhance our ability to explain IT-associated organizational change. These examples show how researchers using this approach should proceed, and how managers can use these ideas to diagnose and address IT implementation problems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Performative hactivism is the use of the Internet for expressing extreme political dissent online. It differs from cyber harassment in that performative hactivism is politically motivated. We found that there are contagion and other social effects among hactivists and that hactivism exhibits feature patterns that define them as subcultures. To conduct our research, we created a provocative Website and blog and then promoted it on the Internet. Using sentiment analyses and logistic regression, we identified features associated with performative hactivism. We then studied the blog remarks and used Website analytics to gain a better understanding of the implications for business security. The results from this work should help business and information security researchers (especially in social engineering), as well as business practice managers, strategists, and security analysts, to predict the lifecycles and impacts of hactivism on their operations and assist them in the creation of interventions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Honeypots, which are traps designed to resemble easy-to- compromise computer systems, have become essential tools for security professionals and researchers because of their significant contribution in disclosing the underworld of cybercrimes. However, recent years have witnessed the development of several anti-honeypot technologies. Botmasters can exploit the fact that honeypots should not participate in illegal actions by commanding the compromised machine to act maliciously against specific targets which are used as sensors to measure the execution of these commands. A machine that is not allowing the execution of such attacks is more likely to be a honeypot. Consequently, honeypot operators need to choose the optimal response that balances between being disclosed and being liable for participating in illicit actions. In this paper, we consider the optimal response strategy for honeypot operators. In particular, we model the interaction between botmasters and honeypots by a Markov Decision Process (MDP) and then determine the optimal policy for honeypots responding to the commands of botmasters. The model is then extended using a Partially Observable Markov Decision Process (POMDP) which allows operators of honeypots to model the uncertainty of the honeypot state as determined by botmasters. The analysis of our model confirms that exploiting the legal liability of honeypots allows botmasters to have the upper hand in their conflict with honeypots. Despite this deficiency in current honeypot designs, our model can help operators of honeypots determine the optimal strategy for responding to botmasters’ commands. We also provide simulation results that show the honeypots’ optimal response strategies and their expected rewards under different attack scenarios. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we discuss Maneuver Warfare operations using cloud computing resources and how this can be utilized as part of a 21st century information security model used by the modern SME, operating at a national and international level. Proactive operations for securing digital assets and embedding a deception strategy within Computer Networks Operations can prove to be efficient and cost effective security controls, especially with the exponential increase in highly advanced technology in terms of processing power, storage, and application, coupled with the readily available knowledge through the power of the Internet, accessible by all normal users and threat agents alike. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Enterprise computing systems consume a large amount of energy, the cost of which contributes significantly to the operating budget. Consequently, dynamic energy management techniques are prevalent. Unfortunately, dynamic energy management for disks impose delays associated with powering up the disks from a low-power state. Systems designers face a critical trade-off: saving energy reduces operating costs but may increase delays; conversely, reduced access latency makes the systems more responsive but may preclude energy management. In this paper, we propose a System-wide Alternative Retrieval of Data (SARD) scheme. SARD exploits the similarity in software deployment and configuration in enterprise computers to retrieve binaries transparently from other nodes, thus avoiding access delays when the local disk is in a low-power state. SARD uses a software-based approach to reduce spin-up delays while eliminating custom buffering, shared memory infrastructure, or the need for major changes in the operating system. SARD achieves over 71% reduction in delays on trace-driven simulations and in an actual implementation. This will encourage users to utilize energy management techniques more frequently. SARD also achieves an additional 5.1% average reduction in energy consumption for typical desktop applications compared to the widely-used timeout-based disk energy management. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: The abundant computing resources in current organizations provide new opportunities for executing parallel scientific applications and using resources. The Enterprise Desktop Grid Computing (EDGC) paradigm addresses the potential for harvesting the idle computing resources of an organization’s desktop PCs to support the execution of the company’s large-scale applications. In these environments, the accuracy of response-time predictions is essential for effective metascheduling that maximizes resource usage without harming the performance of the parallel and local applications. However, this accuracy is a major challenge due to the heterogeneity and non-dedicated nature of EDGC resources. In this paper, two new prediction techniques are presented based on the state of resources. A thorough analysis by linear regression demonstrated that the proposed techniques capture the real behavior of the parallel applications better than other common techniques in the literature. Moreover, it is possible to reduce deviations with a proper modeling of prediction errors, and thus, a Self-adjustable Correction method (SAC) for detecting and correcting the prediction deviations was proposed with the ability to adapt to the changes in load conditions. An extensive evaluation in a real environment was conducted to validate the SAC method. The results show that the use of SAC increases the accuracy of response-time predictions by 35%. The cost of predictions with self-correction and its accuracy in a real environment was analyzed using a combination of the proposed techniques. The results demonstrate that the cost of predictions is negligible and the combined use of the prediction techniques is preferable. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

A hybrid of node degree and k-shell index is more effective at identifying influential spreaders and has less computational overhead than either of these traditional measures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As part of a defense-in-depth security solution for domain-controlled enterprise networks, a proposed self-healing system architecture is designed to increase resiliency against botnets with minimal disruption to network services. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Research and technological developments in Enterprise Integration and Networking requires identifying achievements, challenges and trends in order to establish a set of coherent vision and roadmap for future research. This paper analysis and discusses on recent achievements and future trends on research for Enterprise Integration and Networking solutions, identifying principal challenges for this research area. Such challenges are then analysed with regard to the contributions of this special issue, organised with extended papers selected by the IFAC TC 5.3 and presented at the IFAC INCOM 2012 symposium held in Romania on May 2012. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

In the past several decades, manufacturing has begun the process of transforming from a production firm centric enterprise into one in which a lead firm engages multiple partner and supplier firms in a networked enterprise to produce complex systems and products. Inherent in this transformation is the notion of global manufacturing as a socio-technical enterprise, co-emphasizing socio-interaction among firms with the more traditional technical focus on meeting production quotas, minimizing costs and maximizing profits. This chapter presents the methodology of organizational simulation as applied to the study and analysis of global manufacturing. Computer simulation has a rich history of application in analyzing the behavior and performance of manufacturing systems from a technical perspective, focusing on such concepts as forecasted product demand, production capacities and lead times, transportation capacities and lead times, inventory locations and levels, and production schedules, as well uncertainties associated with these factors. This perspective fails to consider socio-behaviors associated with firms and their interactions. Organizational simulation is a new paradigm whereby technical process modeling and social behavior modeling are combined to represent the behavior and predict the performance of the socio-technical enterprise. It has been applied in military acquisition, product design and health care. This chapter presents its application in global manufacturing enterprises, particularly to the issues of stakeholder alignment during change, alignment of stakeholder expectations and allocation of limited shared resources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: The age of technology, where information and knowledge perform important roles in the organisational context, creates an opportunity for local government organisations (such as metropolitan municipalities) in South Africa to support knowledge-sharing. One such technology that supports knowledge-sharing is an intranet. If an intranet is not effectively managed, knowledge-sharing in an organisation shall not be augmented. Objective: To investigate whether or not an intranet augments knowledge-sharing in the selected organisation of eThekwini Municipality. Methods: In this study a quantitative research approach was adopted. Results: The results of this survey suggest that firstly the intranet appears to be at a medium maturity level; secondly, whilst there is information sharing, the intranet does not appear to be effective as a knowledge-sharing structure; and thirdly there appears to be scope for improvement of the content on the intranet. The implication thereof is that eThekwini Municipality's recently formed Municipal Institute of Learning (MILE) may be ideally poised to address the identified shortcomings. Conclusion: Intranet technology plays an important role in an organisation by enabling the effective acquisition, sharing and presentation of knowledge. Because of this an intranet must be effectively managed to readily augment knowledge-sharing in the organisational context of local government organisations (such as metropolitan municipalities) in South Africa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Large enterprise systems are composed of multiple applications deployed on sets of computing resources that compete for limited resources. Hybrid systems include a deployment of multiple hypervisors on different types of computing resources. Goal-based policies are deployed into these systems that indicate the relative business importance of the applications in the system, as well as the performance objectives of these applications. These policies are generally written without respect to the deployed architecture or hypervisor. The task of a goal-based performance management system is both to assign resources to applications in a manner that is consistent with the operating constraints that have been configured for the system and to assign platform resources to applications in a way that meets the policy objectives and makes tradeoffs in a manner consistent with the relative business importance of the applications. Such a management system has been developed for the IBM zEnterprise® hybrid architecture. This paper describes how goals and policies are defined for these systems and how the resources within zEnterprise are managed to meet the performance goals for each application in the context of what has been more specifically defined as a workload. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction is presented in which the author discusses the IBM zEnterprise Systems from International Business Machines Corp.