Ransomware

Author(s):  
Rajashree Chaurasia

“Ransomware” is a type of malware that tries to extort money from its victims by hijacking the victim's computer in some way and holding it to ransom. It renders the computer unusable until a ransom amount is paid to the extortionist. And it is very unfortunate that, in many cases, even after the ransom is paid, the victim's computer is not released. Ransomware, as we know it, is gaining popularity at an immense rate among the most notorious cyber-criminals of the world. It isn't just a virus, it's a damned good game plan to becoming a millionaire in a matter of months! This chapter details what ransomware is, how it originated, which families of attacks it falls under, how ransomware is classified, the impact of ransomware on a global scale, the life cycle of a typical ransomware attack, mitigation and containment strategies, trending strains of 2017, and future trends in ransomware attacks. In future, these attack types will dominate our industries and wreak havoc, destroying life and property, if left unchecked.

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tom Smith

<p>Often in developing countries the spatial coverage with surface weather observations is sparse and the reliability of existing systems is lower than in other parts of the world. These gaps in the availability of observation data have significant negative consequences, locally and globally. For decades international funds have been used to acquire meteorological infrastructure with little to no focus on life-cycle management. Furthermore, improvements in one part of the value chain are often not connected with further downstream services meaning local benefits are generated with substantial delay, if at all.</p><p>DTN is one of the few organizations offering comprehensive solutions across the value chain from deployment and operation of observation systems through to weather analytics creating valuable insights for business, consumers and governments across the globe. DTN not only project manages the setup of weather observation systems but also maintains and operates measurement networks on different continents. The sensor agnostic approach enables us to offer the right sensor solution for each situation.</p><p>We see an opportunity to correct the mistakes of the past, changing the focus from acquiring observation systems to life cycle management to ensure the systems are maintained and leveraged effectively to provide forecasts and warnings for protection of life and property and enabling NMSs to focus on fulfilling their mission.</p><p>Funding organizations such as the World Bank must change the focus from hardware procurement to a performance-based PPE/P model that ensures the value of investments in infrastructure are realized. This sustainable approach will; ensure long lasting partnerships, harness the innovation in the private sector, create local jobs maintaining infrastructure and enable economic development through improved ability to manage the impact of weather and climate events.</p>


Author(s):  
Rafael Vargas-Bernal ◽  
Gabriel Herrera-Pérez ◽  
Margarita Tecpoyotl-Torres

Since its discovery in 1991 and 2004, carbon nanotubes (CNTs) by Sumio Iijima, and graphene by Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov in 2004, these materials have been extensively studied around the world. Both materials have electronic, thermal, magnetic, optical, chemical, and mechanical extraordinary properties. International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors (ITRS) has predicted that these nanomaterials are potential replacements of the conventional materials used in the manufacture of integrated circuits. Two of the technological aspects that both materials share and have reduced their extensive use are processing and dispersion required to homogenize the electrical properties of the materials based on them. Fortunately, these problems are being solved thanks to the ongoing investigation, and in a short time the materials used in today's electronics industry will be replaced by devices based on these novel materials. The impact of the applications of both materials in the electronics industry, as well as future trends in the following decades are discussed in this paper.


Author(s):  
David W. Forslund ◽  
David G. Kilman

With the arrival of the “World Wide Web,” we have witnessed a transition toward a truly global perspective with respect to electronic health records. In recent years, much more discussion has focused on the potential for international virtual electronic health records and what is required for them to become a reality in the world today (Kilman & Forslund, 1997). As the Internet becomes more ubiquitous and Web-enabled, we see access to electronic health records using these technologies becoming more commonplace. Even so, these Web-enabled health records still remain technologically isolated from other medical records in the distributed continuum of care; much of the standardization challenge still stands before us. We have witnessed startling technological advances, but we still face considerable obstacles to the goal of having globally standardized electronic health records. In this chapter we describe some of the issues associated with Web-enabled health records, the role of standards in the evolution of Web-enabled health records, and some of the barriers to the development of globally accessible electronic health records. We discuss possible ways to overcome these barriers and the kinds of benefits and opportunities that global health records will help provide. The global scale perspective makes more evident the very real and potentially tragic consequences of prolonged and unnecessary delays in deploying these technologies. Therefore, in an effort to promote a fuller consciousness of health safety, the chapter concludes with a comparative look at the negative impact of impediments in the movement toward global extensible electronic health records.


2018 ◽  
Vol 49 (1) ◽  
pp. 57-78 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yongkui Li ◽  
Yujie Lu ◽  
Liang Ma ◽  
Young Hoon Kwak

A mega-event is an open socioeconomic system characterized by massive budget demands and multiple types of subprojects and their complex interrelationships. Although a mega-event is an opportunity for a country to show its international reputation, management capacity, and societal strength, it demands a long preparation time; an enormous amount of investment; and massive resource mobilization, with far-reaching effects on both the economic and social development of a country. Mega-event projects (MEPs) face remarkable challenges in terms of overrun costs, delayed schedules, and political issues, indicating that the research on such mega-events is still insufficient and that there is a lack of effective theories to support the management and governance of MEPs. Existing studies have also ignored the dynamic evolution and adaptation of governance in a changing environment, particularly in relation to the success of MEPs. To fill this research gap, this study aims to examine the dynamic governance of MEPs on the basis of a new theory—evolutionary governance theory (EGT)—which combines institutional economics, systems theory, and project governance. The study was conducted in three main steps: (1) studying the case of the evolutionary governance of the World Expo 2010 in China during its life cycle stage, including planning, construction, operation, and post-event development; (2) discussing the impact of the hierarchical and cross-functional governance structure of the Expo; and (3) summarizing the theories and best practices of dynamic governance mechanisms for MEPs. The result of the study can deepen understanding of the multi-level governance of mega-events during the life cycle process and can also support the evolution of governance transition over the different stages.


Author(s):  
P. V. Ushanov

The article terminates the author's series of publications on the impact of system of stereotypes of behaviour – "success formula" - on the development of phases of the life cycle of the socio-economic systems [7-11]. The author argues in favor of the view that lifecycle of any object of management is a complex spiral consisting of 10 phases, each of which, in turn, can be regarded as a separate life cycle. Because of the stereotypes of behaviour, prevailing during previous lifecycle phases, a change of lifecycle phases often leads to a crisis and is accompanied by painful correction of exchange proportions. The author motivates his conclusion that the modern economic crisis is caused by the distortion of exchange proportions. The indexes of changes in exchange proportions are proposed to use as an indicator of stability of the world market. Proposals on overcoming the crisis are made.


2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 203-224
Author(s):  
Marcin Prościak ◽  
Beata Prościak

Aim. The aim of this thesis is to present the impact of students exclusion (including SPEs) on their virtual behaviour in social media. Students with no special educational needs and those with SEN were taken into account. The relationship between exclusion of SPE and digitisation exclusion will be indicated . In addition, social exclusion in the family area was included. Methods: The analysis was based on statistical methods, such as: range, standard deviation, variance. Surveys were used. They were conducted on the Internet through the Facebook social portal on a national and global scale. Results: Respondents from around the world feel more excluded by the SPE than respondents in Poland. In contrast, respondents from the SPE use fewer social networking sites than in groups of computer players, both in Poland and worldwide. Conclusions: In Poland, SPE is not a barrier to communication with peers for most respondents, unlike global respondents. Respondents from the SPE spend less time on social portals because it absorbs their time devoted to learning, which can be an indicator of digital exclusion. Cognitive value: The originality of the research is to focus on introducing the global and Polish scale of the problem excluding students from SPE from the social media, which was calculated by the author’s method based on the indicator digital exclusion.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ganira Ibrahimova

There are already numerous opinions and forecasts about what the world economy will look like in the nearest future, in the wake of a post-pandemic period. The global world is facing now а social and economic crisis, never experienced before, the COVID-19 pandemic became a very significant trigger changing the way the world production was conducted in the previous era. In these conditions, large and small businesses are trying to cooperate with each other within the Global Value chains framework, to survive. As the main drivers of global production and financial systems, large corporations had to improve, but it is still difficult to say how long it will take. On the other side, after the pandemic recession, it is becoming more and more obvious that SME sector has increased its impact not only within the national economies, but also in a global scale. A huge amount of financial and institutional support is being provided to the SME sector by the governments, which eventually will lead to an improvement in the International Capital Reproduction System. However, there is still a gap in existing connections within the global value chains, which makes a big challenge for this integration process to be achieved. Although many aspects of globalization are now clearly understood, still there is scarce information on the transforming relations between large companies and their partners - smaller firms and the ways the formers integrate into the Global Value Chains. This study aims to define the evolution of the role of SMEs in the global value chains, identify and assess the factors that contribute to the integration of SMEs into global value chains and explore the impact of GVC onto their institutional framework.


This book provides a series of case studies concerning ports and port communities from around the world, in attempt to determine the impact of globalisation on the port industry and the link between local and global port conditions. It also presents the case for the absolute necessity of ports and port systems to trade and industry on a global scale. The book is comprised of ten essays, the first six of which concern local issues in a rapid globalising industry. The second section contains the remaining four essays, which consider port systems from national perspectives.


2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. E. Koukouli ◽  
M. Zara ◽  
C. Lerot ◽  
K. Fragkos ◽  
D. S. Balis ◽  
...  

Abstract. The main aim of the paper is to demonstrate an approach for post-processing of the Dobson spectrophotometers total ozone columns [TOCs] in order to compensate for their known stratospheric effective temperature (Teff) dependency and its resulting effect on the usage of the Dobson TOCs for satellite TOCs validation. The Dobson observations employed are those routinely submitted to the World Ozone and UV Data Centre (WOUDC) of the World Meteorological Organization whereas the effective temperatures have been extracted from two sources: the European Space Agency, ESA, Ozone Climate Change Initiative, Ozone-CCI, GODFIT version 3 (GOME-type Direct FITting) algorithm applied to the GOME2/MetopA, GOME2A, observations as well as the one derived from the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) outputs. Both temperature sources are evaluated utilizing co-located Ozonesonde measurements also retrieved from the WOUDC database. Both GODFIT_v3 and ECMWF Teffs are found to be unbiased against the ozonesonde observations and to agree with high correlation coefficients, especially for latitudes characterized by high seasonal variability in Teff. The validation analysis shows that, when applying the GODFIT_v3 effective temperatures in order to post-process the Dobson TOC, the mean difference between Dobson and GOME2A GODFIT_v3 TOCs moves from 0.63 ± 0.66 to 0.26 ± 0.46 % in the Northern Hemisphere and from 1.25 ± 1.20 to 0.80 ± 0.71 % in the Southern Hemisphere. The existing solar zenith angle dependency of the differences has been smoothed out, with near-zero dependency up to the 60 to 65° bin and the highest deviation decreasing from 2.38 ± 6.6 to 1.37 ± 6.4 % for the 80 to 85° bin. We conclude that the global scale validation of satellite TOCs against collocated Dobson measurements benefits from a post-correction using suitably estimated Teffs.


Author(s):  
Hannah R. Marston ◽  
Kelly Niles-Yokum ◽  
Paula Alexandra Silva

This paper explores the intersection of the World Health Organization’s (WHO) concepts of age-friendly communities and The Blue Zones® checklists and how the potential of integrating the two frameworks for the development of a contemporary framework can address the current gaps in the literature as well as consider the inclusion of technology and environmental press. The commentary presented here sets out initial thoughts and explorations that have the potential to impact societies on a global scale and provides recommendations for a roadmap to consider new ways to think about the impact of health and wellbeing of older adults and their families. Additionally, this paper highlights both the strengths and the weaknesses of the aforementioned checklists and frameworks by examining the literature including the WHO age-friendly framework, the smart age-friendly ecosystem (SAfE) framework and the Blue Zones® checklists. We argue that gaps exist in the current literature and take a critical approach as a way to be inclusive of technology and the environments in which older adults live. This commentary contributes to the fields of gerontology, gerontechnology, anthropology, and geography, because we are proposing a roadmap which sets out the need for future work which requires multi- and interdisciplinary research to be conducted for the respective checklists to evolve.


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