Real-time adult authentication scheme for digital contents using X.509 certificate in ubiquitous Web environment

In the ubiquitous Web environment which exploits real-time image processing methods, easy access to a variety of digital contents such as movies, e-books, and digital songs significantly enhances people’s quality of life. However, most digital content sites do not provide a concrete mechanism to prohibit minors from accessing harmful content, even though a few mechanisms are available in the market to screen out minors from accessing inappropriate content. This paper proposes a fundamental approach that confirms the age of a user using his digital signature with the X.509 certificate when the user attempts to access specific digital content. Its performance is verified by the implementation of the approach.     

Analysis of emerging technology adoption for the digital content market

The digital content market is undergoing an evolution in networking and digitalization technologies, offering diverse information and services. Due to the characteristics of these emerging technologies, the digital content market is growing rapidly and traditional content providers face service transformation decisions. While a majority of the previous technology adoption studies have focused on the viewpoints of users and customers, cost reduction, or electronic channel related technologies, in this research we analyze the emerging technology adoption decisions of competing firms for providing new content services from a strategic perspective. Utilizing game theoretical models, we examine the effects of market environments (technology cost, channel cannibalization, brand power, brand extension, information asymmetry and market uncertainty) on firms’ adoption decisions. This research contributes a number of unique and interesting implications for the issues of emerging technology adoption for new content service provision.     

How can the security market bring salvation?

Autumn is the time of year when the smart card industry takes stock. This year the theme is likely to be that the boom days are well and truly over. Tim Gower of Datamonitor tells me that annual growth for the next few years is likely to show an unspectacular 5%. The roll-out of EMV cards across Europe is now well under way and sales in the wireless telecoms sector is becalmed. However, there is one ray of light: Gower sees growth coming from the use of smart cards as a security enabler. Smart cards can be used for logical access to networks and applications, for physical access to buildings and rooms, to store private keys and digital certificates, and to store authentication information such as user data and biometrics. “Wherever you see a need for security,” says Gower, “smart-card-based solutions have been brought to market.”     

This is Your Life: How secure is your CRM data?

If you bank, buy insurance, financial services or shop for groceries or consult a dealer about a new car, you may be surprised to learn that your data has found its way into CRM (Customer Relationship Management) systems. CRM solutions are used increasingly by household names: Direct Line, Safeway, Barclays, Delta Air Lines, Renault and Peugeot, to build knowledge about customer interactions and the customer’s buying behaviour while giving the customer access to the organization through multiple channels.     

Emerging high-speed access technologies

Networks are fast becoming the backbone of many businesses, but the technology behind them is probably the most complex and least understood IT subject. It's not enough to have a particular network in place-you must also keep data flowing from site to site and to and from the Internet at adequate speed. This is where the choice of access technologies-the various ways your enterprise can connect to larger networks-is crucial. Your choices have never been more diverse. After years of talk about how to upgrade the “last mile” (the connection from your location to a hub or central office), vendors now have products to offer. Some are relatively immature, having only recently become commercially available. Regardless, they can make an immediate difference in throughput. To benefit, you'll need to navigate some complex vendor options and keep an eye on future developments in technology and standards. To help guide your decision making, the authors present a brief overview of new network access technologies. Be aware that deployment depends on location and market: some of these technologies may be available in your area, others may not. The following are mentioned: phone line access; digital subscriber lines; cable modems; and direct broadcast satellites     

Integrating Knowledge and Processes in A Learning Organization

When we ask people to change - as we do in improvement or technology adoption efforts - we are asking them to learn. If you pay attention to how people learn, you will be capable of more effective change management. Learning and technology change management reinforce one another. If you are smart about working on how you manage change, you will help to make your workplace a learning organization.     

Bridging the digital divide – an Australian story

There is increasing evidence that the lack of access to information and communication technology (ICT) or the ‘digital divide’ severely limits education, employment and economic prospects. This paper reports on the evaluation of a project that aims to bridge the digital divide. In particular, the case study data has been used to bring to life the impact that access to the internet, often for the first time, can make in people's lives. If you are isolated, suffer poor health or do not speak English then the internet can take on a very different meaning, it becomes an essential tool to your ability to communicate, feel connected and to your health and well-being. What is evident from this snapshot of practice of the Wired Community@Collingwood project is actually how it can improve these outcomes for the current participants. A multi-method approach was implemented in the first year of the evaluation, included the collection of qualitative data. Connecting with participants to engage them to tell their story provided the project with a rich source of information, but it required a time-consuming methodology that respected the barriers which participants faced. However, the narrative that is now a part of this project brought to life the impact of ICT in this community. Being a part of the digital divide in the twentieth century disconnects you from a part of your world that now exists for others. At Collingwood, these participants are making those connections on a daily basis and are excited about the new possibilities of being a part of the available technology. This study evidences the impact of bridging the digital divide in one of the most disadvantaged communities in Australia.     

High-end IT Security: No Longer a Distant Pipe Dream for SMEs

Many of Europe’s small to medium enterprises (SMEs) have been left behind in the E-commerce race. They still have a long way to go to catch up with larger companies already responding to customer demand for online cashless payment schemes, sales automation programs, supply chain integration applications, secure database access for remote employees, secure messaging and Web access, and digital document management. Already struggling to grasp market share and provide value to customers which differentiates them, provision of an E-commerce channel to market is an additional pressure.     

Success factors of systematic reuse

Systematic software reuse is a paradigm shift in software engineering from building single systems to building families of related systems. The goal of software reuse research is to discover systematic procedures for engineering new systems from existing assets. Implementing systematic reuse is risky. Not doing it is also risky. Trying systematic reuse unsuccessfully can cost precious time and resources and may make management sceptical of trying it again. But if your competitors do it successfully and you do not, you may lose market share and possibly an entire market. There is no cookbook solution-each organization must analyze its own needs, implement reuse measurements, define the key benefits it expects, identify and remove impediments, and manage risk. Reliable data on how much this costs and the benefits an organization will derive are insufficient. The article addresses issues from management, measurement, law, economics, libraries, and the design of reusable software     

Ontology based policy interoperability in geo-spatial domain

With advances of digital technology two or more organizations form a federation for a temporary purpose. It is possible that an employee of an organization needs to access resource of another organization. While languages like XACML are very good for access control of a single organization, they are not able to address interoperability issues of such federations. Lack of interoperability of access control policies does not allow someone to access remote resources. In this paper we propose an approach by augmenting with knowledge-base, Ontology that will facilitate access control policies to provide resources of remote organizations. In addition, we introduce a new effect of the rule, partial permit in our application domain (Geo-Spatial).     

A PRNU-based counter-forensic method to manipulate smartphone image source identification techniques

The increased diffusion of digital images generated by mobile devices through social networks, personal and professional communications, etc. is self-evident. This creates potential problems because some of these images may be used as supporting evidence for different criminal cases. In this paper, algorithms are proposed based on sensor noise and wavelet transforms which can alter the information which is usually employed to find the source of an image, and forge it so that it could point to a different, unrelated device. In the state of art we will show that there are already some algorithms capable of carrying out these manipulations, but they generally need much more and more complex data than our proposal. They also generally need physical access to the camera whose generated images you want to tamper. Our proposal algorithm to destruct the image identifiable data, only needs the picture which will be anonymized. Also, our proposal to forge the image identifiable data only needs a set of photos from the attacker camera, and the picture to be tampered. In particular, it does not need access to the camera that will be falsely linked to the picture. These scenarios are the most common and realistic. The algorithms proposed will help to strengthen existing techniques and develop new forensic approaches for mobile image source identification that will be more robust against attacks.     

PROBLEM-SOLVING SUPPORT FOR TQM A Hypertext Approach

New IS technology is contributing to continuous quality improvement throughout the organization. Hypertext and hypermedia offer new ways for decision makers to gain easy and relevant access to information. By combining hypertext with total quality tools, decision makers are able to explore the richness of data bases in more creative and useful ways. This article describes how you can develop a hypertext system that can help employees improve their job performance through better problem solving.     

Collecting data for comparability: benchmarking softwaredevelopment productivity

Whether you are benchmarking an organization or simply a project, it all boils down to one thing-data. Do you have the necessary data in your company, and is that data valid and comparable? How can you access data from other organizations? To help you answer these questions and avoid some common serious mistakes in the benchmarking process, the author has summarized her practical real-life experiences with software project data collection and benchmarking efforts in the guidelines     

Bridging IT and business: techno MBAs

As we more fully enter the information age, technology is creating new competitors and new strategic options for business. Moreover, as operations become more critical in a world with shorter product cycles and lead times, the importance of integrated information systems becomes apparent. On the other hand, businesses often have many disparate systems in place for order fulfillment, shop floor management, and accounting. Businesses would like to model this information and have it accessible for coordinated analysis of processes, finances, and business goals. Not surprisingly, suppliers of integrated enterprise systems are seeing tremendous sales growth. In general, companies are struggling to answer the questions: Are investments in information technologies paying off? How do we successfully manage the implementation of these new and complex systems? If you are a supplier of information technology, whether it be software or hardware, are there people in your organization who can help answer such questions? Do you have people who know business, understand technology, and have some feel for the pitfalls that occur when the two worlds collide? To fill the perceived gap, several universities have developed programs to produce these hybrid business managers with one foot in the business world and the other in the IT world     

Whistleblowers and informants — Part 1

Senior managers rely on accurate and complete information to assess the state of the organization, to make decisions, to allocate resources, and to control. Similarly, security and audit professionals need accurate and complete information. Too often, neither managers nor security and audit professionals get the information they need, or, they are fed half-truths and outright lies. Employees know about violations that YOU do not. These people could be surrogate auditors throughout the organization, IF they felt comfortable reporting coworkers. The truth is, most employees will NOT report others. This is the first part of two articles exploring some nonlegal aspects of whislteblowing and informing. What motivates people to blow the whistle? Why don't people tattle more often? What goes through the minds of informants, and how does ‘informing’ change their lives? What should you do when you get a tip? You can encourage informants but you may NOT want to do so.     

Making universal digital access universal: lessons from COVID-19 in Singapore

Digital resources—which include devices, internet connection and digital literacy—have become basic needs. Thus with the global COVID-19 pandemic having accelerated digitalization, the urgency for universal digital inclusion has hastened. Otherwise, digital inequality will lead to social inequality and impede social mobility. Using Singapore as a case study, this article applies the insights learned from a participatory action research to recommend a policy framework for universal digital access, with practical humanistic steps towards full digital inclusion. Singapore is a digitally advanced nation with almost universal digital availability, yet when COVID-19 forced rapid digital adoption, gaps in access by vulnerable groups such as low-income households, elderly and migrant workers were found. From the learning points on gaps and measures taken by community groups, volunteers and policy-makers in our research, we recommend making access to all three digital resources automatic and affordable, with an undergirding principle to implement technology among the most digitally excluded first before national roll out. A public-community-corporate funding and partnership model is also proposed to sustain universal provision.

     

Trusting mobile user devices and security modules

The market for devices like mobile phones, multifunctional watches, and personal digital assistants is growing rapidly. Most of these mobile user devices need security for their prospective electronic commerce applications. While new technology has simplified many business and personal transactions, it has also opened the door to high-tech crime. We investigate design options for mobile user devices that are used in legally significant applications     

The new economics of information

Anyone can profit through aggregation and integration, You only need to understand the new economics of information. The message is neither the medium nor the surprise. And it isn't in the breadth of information available on the Web. Rather, the message is in the aggregate. Value is added by organizing bits for easier consumption, by combining messages in such a way that consumers expend less effort. Information in the form of bits is no longer defined as the probability of ones and zeros. Instead, information is a kind of value add-on created by aggregating and integrating these bits. Companies that understand this receive higher market cap valuations than other companies. This is why AOL, Yahoo, Excite, and Amazon.com stock prices are rising. Whether conscious of it or not, investors understand the real value of information. In their financial world, content aggregation leads to large numbers of users, and the more users you have, the more you get. Web businesses that integrate one or more links in a value chain gain market share advantage, and the bigger your market share, the more it grows. Aggregation and integration feed increasing returns. The next Microsoft could very well be the company that best masters the new art of aggregation and integration     

Collaboration to Build a Meaningful Connection Between Library Content and the Researcher

Europeana Libraries is an EU-funded project that brings together the key networks of CENL (Conference of European National Librarians), LIBER (Association of European Research Libraries), CERL (Consortium of European Research Libraries), and the Europeana Foundation.

Together, they are uniting to accomplish the following objectives:

??Build a platform capable of large-scale aggregation of national and research libraries' collections;

??Feed this newly-aggregated content into a new website, specifically aimed at meeting the needs of digital humanities researchers, as well as to Europeana;

??Improve metadata quality, to address the need for better search results in both Europeana and the new portal;

??Offer digital collections where the text will be ready to be made fully searchable, making it possible to search inside books and other materials; and

??Develop an exploitation plan to prepare the service for its extension, initially to other libraries within the membership of LIBER, CERL, and CENL, as well as beyond the consortium partners

Nineteen European research libraries from across Europe are participating by adding first-class digital content, including 5.1 million pages, videos, books, theses, and articles, via Europeana Libraries to Europeana.

It is widely accepted that ease of access and, particularly, the one-stop shop approach, are favored by researchers as a clean and efficient way to access digital content. As well as ease of access, quality-assured content is of equal importance. Europeana Libraries addresses this issue directly by taking content from Europe's research libraries, where confidence can be placed in the metadata and the quality of the imaging. The development of full-text indexing as part of Europeana Libraries is of great importance as it will deliver a first-class tool for researchers, enabling them to undertake both deep textual analysis and types of research that are simply not possible in a paper environment.

In an environment where digitized and born digital content is growing at an accelerated pace, Europeana Libraries shows how previously disparate institutions can work together to seize the opportunities this presents and help libraries and researchers exploit the benefits of digital cultural heritage.     

Multimedia information using mobile computers: accessing the digital campus and the digital library

Abstract

It is clear that the role of the information resource is changing. Major publishers have been slow to adapt to the emergence of a global digital medium, but there are now signs that a great deal of information will be delivered on-line, (although at present only about 25 databases account for 80% of usage in UK and optical publishing is still in its early stages). However, digital publishing on the Internet — with services for libraries such as just-in-time purchasing and delivery, for example — will be a driving force in creating the ‘global digital medium’. One issue that will become increasingly relevant is how the individual user accesses rich multimedia data in the most appropriate way. The ‘digital university campus’ and the ‘digital library’ are coming to be important concepts, with the aim that users of information services will receive information on-line supported by a ‘ubiquistructure’ of information technology. For the ‘digital campus’ this means that not only scholarly but also teaching activities are based on interactive access to information, and where not only the digital library but also the digital bookshop and the digital classroom are becoming possible with the development of 140Mb/s SuperJANET links. However, it is recognised that libraries will not be truly digital for the foreseeable future, and that libraries will maintain traditional and digital media side by side. In this paper, reporting on work at the University of Bristol's Educational Technology Service multimedia resources unit MRU, and the University of the West of England's Centre for Personal Information Management (in collaboration with Hewlett-Packard Research Laboratories and the University of Bristol's Centre for Communications Research), we look the ‘digital library’ and ‘digital campus’ from the perspective of the individual user and her information needs. We are particularly interested in the use of small, mobile computers as access points to the global digital medium. We suggest that, in an environment of change — where the traditional campus and the traditional library exist alongside the digital campus and digital library — the most appropriate form of access technology is based on ‘personal technology’ which allows a linking between digital information and traditional paper-based information.