This review examines human vulnerabilities in cybersecurity within Microfinance Institutions, analyzing their impact on organizational resilience. Focusing on social engineering, inadequate security training, and weak...This review examines human vulnerabilities in cybersecurity within Microfinance Institutions, analyzing their impact on organizational resilience. Focusing on social engineering, inadequate security training, and weak internal protocols, the study identifies key vulnerabilities exacerbating cyber threats to MFIs. A literature review using databases like IEEE Xplore and Google Scholar focused on studies from 2019 to 2023 addressing human factors in cybersecurity specific to MFIs. Analysis of 57 studies reveals that phishing and insider threats are predominant, with a 20% annual increase in phishing attempts. Employee susceptibility to these attacks is heightened by insufficient training, with entry-level employees showing the highest vulnerability rates. Further, only 35% of MFIs offer regular cybersecurity training, significantly impacting incident reduction. This paper recommends enhanced training frequency, robust internal controls, and a cybersecurity-aware culture to mitigate human-induced cyber risks in MFIs.展开更多
Recently,several edge deployment types,such as on-premise edge clusters,Unmanned Aerial Vehicles(UAV)-attached edge devices,telecommunication base stations installed with edge clusters,etc.,are being deployed to enabl...Recently,several edge deployment types,such as on-premise edge clusters,Unmanned Aerial Vehicles(UAV)-attached edge devices,telecommunication base stations installed with edge clusters,etc.,are being deployed to enable faster response time for latency-sensitive tasks.One fundamental problem is where and how to offload and schedule multi-dependent tasks so as to minimize their collective execution time and to achieve high resource utilization.Existing approaches randomly dispatch tasks naively to available edge nodes without considering the resource demands of tasks,inter-dependencies of tasks and edge resource availability.These approaches can result in the longer waiting time for tasks due to insufficient resource availability or dependency support,as well as provider lock-in.Therefore,we present Edge Colla,which is based on the integration of edge resources running across multi-edge deployments.Edge Colla leverages learning techniques to intelligently dispatch multidependent tasks,and a variant bin-packing optimization method to co-locate these tasks firmly on available nodes to optimally utilize them.Extensive experiments on real-world datasets from Alibaba on task dependencies show that our approach can achieve optimal performance than the baseline schemes.展开更多
Intelligent Reflecting Surface(IRS),with the potential capability to reconstruct the electromagnetic propagation environment,evolves a new IRSassisted covert communications paradigm to eliminate the negligible detecti...Intelligent Reflecting Surface(IRS),with the potential capability to reconstruct the electromagnetic propagation environment,evolves a new IRSassisted covert communications paradigm to eliminate the negligible detection of malicious eavesdroppers by coherently beaming the scattered signals and suppressing the signals leakage.However,when multiple IRSs are involved,accurate channel estimation is still a challenge due to the extra hardware complexity and communication overhead.Besides the crossinterference caused by massive reflecting paths,it is hard to obtain the close-formed solution for the optimization of covert communications.On this basis,the paper improves a heterogeneous multi-agent deep deterministic policy gradient(MADDPG)approach for the joint active and passive beamforming(Joint A&P BF)optimization without the channel estimation,where the base station(BS)and multiple IRSs are taken as different types of agents and learn to enhance the covert spectrum efficiency(CSE)cooperatively.Thanks to the‘centralized training and distributed execution’feature of MADDPG,each agent can execute the active or passive beamforming independently based on its partial observation without referring to others.Numeral results demonstrate that the proposed deep reinforcement learning(DRL)approach could not only obtain a preferable CSE of legitimate users and a low detection of probability(LPD)of warden,but also alleviate the communication overhead and simplify the IRSs deployment.展开更多
In this paper, the problem of non-response with significant travel costs in multivariate stratified sample surveys has been formulated of as a Multi-Objective Geometric Programming Problem (MOGPP). The fuzzy programmi...In this paper, the problem of non-response with significant travel costs in multivariate stratified sample surveys has been formulated of as a Multi-Objective Geometric Programming Problem (MOGPP). The fuzzy programming approach has been described for solving the formulated MOGPP. The formulated MOGPP has been solved with the help of LINGO Software and the dual solution is obtained. The optimum allocations of sample sizes of respondents and non respondents are obtained with the help of dual solutions and primal-dual relationship theorem. A numerical example is given to illustrate the procedure.展开更多
Microfinance institutions in Kenya play a unique role in promoting financial inclusion,loans,and savings provision,especially to low-income individuals and small-scale entrepreneurs.However,despite their benefits,most...Microfinance institutions in Kenya play a unique role in promoting financial inclusion,loans,and savings provision,especially to low-income individuals and small-scale entrepreneurs.However,despite their benefits,most of their products and programs in Machakos County have been reducing due to re-payment challenges,threatening their financial ability to extend further credit.This could be attributed to ineffective credit scoring models which are not able to establish the nuanced non-linear repayment behavior and patterns of the loan applicants.The research objective was to enhance credit risk scoring for microfinance institutions in Machakos County using supervised machine learning algorithms.The study adopted a mixed research design under supervised machine learning approach.It randomly sampled 6771 loan application ac-count records and repayment history.Rstudio and Python programming lan-guages were deployed for data pre-processing and analysis.Logistic regression algorithm,XG Boosting and the random forest ensemble method were used.Metric evaluations used included the performance accuracy,Area under the Curve and F1-Score.Based on the study findings:XG Boosting was the best performer with 83.3%accuracy and 0.202 Brier score.Development of legal framework to govern ethical and open use of machine learning assessment was recommended.A similar research but using different machine learning al-gorithms,locations,and institutions,to ascertain the validity,reliability and the generalizability of the study findings was recommended for further re-search.展开更多
The COVID-19 pandemic necessitated the emergence of Decentralized Clinical Trials (DCTs) due to patientretention, accelerating trials, improving data accessibility, enabling virtual care, and facilitating seamlesscomm...The COVID-19 pandemic necessitated the emergence of Decentralized Clinical Trials (DCTs) due to patientretention, accelerating trials, improving data accessibility, enabling virtual care, and facilitating seamlesscommunication through integrated systems. However, integrating systems in DCTs exposes clinical data to potentialsecurity threats, making them susceptible to theft at any stage, a high risk of protocol deviations, andmonitoring issues. To mitigate these challenges, blockchain technology serves as a secure framework, acting as adecentralized ledger, creating an immutable environment by establishing a zero-trust architecture, where dataare deemed untrusted until verified. In combination with Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled wearable devices,blockchain secures the transfer of clinical trial data on private blockchains during DCT automation and operations.This paper proposes a prototype model of the zero-Trust Architecture Blockchain (z-TAB) to integratepatient-generated clinical trial data during DCT operation management. The EigenTrust-based PracticalByzantine Fault Tolerance (T-PBFT) algorithm has been incorporated as a consensus protocol, leveragingHyperledger Fabric. Furthermore, the IoT has been integrated to streamline data processing among stakeholderswithin the blockchain platforms. Rigorous evaluation has been done for immutability, privacy and security,mutual consensus, transparency, accountability, tracking and tracing, and temperature‒humidity controlparameters.展开更多
Predicting the progression from Mild Cognitive Impairment(MCI)to Alzheimer's Disease(AD)is a critical challenge for enabling early intervention and improving patient outcomes.While longitudinal multi-modal neuroim...Predicting the progression from Mild Cognitive Impairment(MCI)to Alzheimer's Disease(AD)is a critical challenge for enabling early intervention and improving patient outcomes.While longitudinal multi-modal neuroimaging data holds immense potential for capturing the spatio-temporal dynamics of disease progression,its effective analysis is hampered by significant challenges:temporal heterogeneity(irregularly sampled scans),multi-modal misalignment,and the propensity of deep learning models to learn spurious,noncausal correlations.We propose CASCADE-Net,a novel end-to-end pipeline for robust and interpretable MCI-to-AD progression prediction.Our architecture introduces a Dynamic Temporal Alignment Module that employs a Neural Ordinary Differential Equation(Neural ODE)to model the continuous,underlying progression of pathology from irregularly sampled scans,effectively mapping heterogeneous patient data to a unified latent timeline.This aligned,noise-reduced spatio-temporal data is then processed by a predictive model featuring a novel Causal Spatial Attention mechanism.This mechanism not only identifies the critical brain regions and their evolution predictive of conversion but also incorporates a counterfactual constraint during training.This constraint ensures the learned features are causally linked to AD pathology by encouraging invariance to non-causal,confounder-based changes.Extensive experiments on the Alzheimer’s Disease Neuroimaging Initiative(ADNI)dataset demonstrate that CASCADE-Net significantly outperforms state-of-the-art sequential models in prognostic accuracy.Furthermore,our model provides highly interpretable,causally-grounded attention maps,offering valuable insights into the disease progression process and fostering greater clinical trust.展开更多
Each year,accidents involving ships result in significant loss of life,environmental pollution and economic losses.The promotion of navigation safety through risk reduction requires methods to assess the spatial distr...Each year,accidents involving ships result in significant loss of life,environmental pollution and economic losses.The promotion of navigation safety through risk reduction requires methods to assess the spatial distribution of the relative likelihood of occurrence.Yet,such methods necessitate the integration of large volumes of heterogenous datasets which are not well suited to traditional data structures.This paper proposes the use of the Discrete Global Grid System(DGGS)as an efficient and advantageous structure to integrate vessel traffic,metocean,bathymetric,infrastructure and other relevant maritime datasets to predict the occurrence of ship groundings.Massive and heterogenous datasets are well suited for machine learning algorithms and this paper develops a spatial maritime risk model based on a DGGS utilising such an approach.A Random Forest algorithm is developed to predict the frequency and spatial distribution of groundings while achieving an R2 of 0.55 and a mean squared error of 0.002.The resulting risk maps are useful for decision-makers in planning the allocation of mitigation measures,targeted to regions with the highest risk.Further work is identified to expand the applications and insights which could be achieved through establishing a DGGS as a global maritime spatial data structure.展开更多
The emerging field of Discrete Global Grid Systems(DGGS)provides a way to organise,store and analyse spatio-temporal data at multiple resolutions and scales(from near global scales down to microns).DGGS partition the ...The emerging field of Discrete Global Grid Systems(DGGS)provides a way to organise,store and analyse spatio-temporal data at multiple resolutions and scales(from near global scales down to microns).DGGS partition the entire planet into a discrete hierarchy of global tessellations of progressively finer resolution zones(or cells).Data integration,decomposition and aggregation are optimised by assigning a unique spatio-temporal identifier to each zone.These identifiers are encodings of both the zone’s location and its resolution.As a result,complex multi-dimensional,multi-resolution spatio-temporal operations are simplified into sets of 1D array and filter operations.展开更多
文摘This review examines human vulnerabilities in cybersecurity within Microfinance Institutions, analyzing their impact on organizational resilience. Focusing on social engineering, inadequate security training, and weak internal protocols, the study identifies key vulnerabilities exacerbating cyber threats to MFIs. A literature review using databases like IEEE Xplore and Google Scholar focused on studies from 2019 to 2023 addressing human factors in cybersecurity specific to MFIs. Analysis of 57 studies reveals that phishing and insider threats are predominant, with a 20% annual increase in phishing attempts. Employee susceptibility to these attacks is heightened by insufficient training, with entry-level employees showing the highest vulnerability rates. Further, only 35% of MFIs offer regular cybersecurity training, significantly impacting incident reduction. This paper recommends enhanced training frequency, robust internal controls, and a cybersecurity-aware culture to mitigate human-induced cyber risks in MFIs.
基金The financial support of the National Natural Science Foundation of China under grants 61901416 and 61571401(part of the Natural Science Foundation of Henan under grant 242300420269)the Young Elite Scientists Sponsorship Program of Henan under grant 2024HYTP026the Innovative Talent of Colleges and the University of Henan Province under grant 18HASTIT021。
文摘Recently,several edge deployment types,such as on-premise edge clusters,Unmanned Aerial Vehicles(UAV)-attached edge devices,telecommunication base stations installed with edge clusters,etc.,are being deployed to enable faster response time for latency-sensitive tasks.One fundamental problem is where and how to offload and schedule multi-dependent tasks so as to minimize their collective execution time and to achieve high resource utilization.Existing approaches randomly dispatch tasks naively to available edge nodes without considering the resource demands of tasks,inter-dependencies of tasks and edge resource availability.These approaches can result in the longer waiting time for tasks due to insufficient resource availability or dependency support,as well as provider lock-in.Therefore,we present Edge Colla,which is based on the integration of edge resources running across multi-edge deployments.Edge Colla leverages learning techniques to intelligently dispatch multidependent tasks,and a variant bin-packing optimization method to co-locate these tasks firmly on available nodes to optimally utilize them.Extensive experiments on real-world datasets from Alibaba on task dependencies show that our approach can achieve optimal performance than the baseline schemes.
基金supported by the Key Laboratory of Near Ground Detection and Perception Technology(No.6142414220406 and 6142414210101)Shaanxi and Taicang Keypoint Research and Invention Program(No.2021GXLH-01-15 and TC2019SF03)。
文摘Intelligent Reflecting Surface(IRS),with the potential capability to reconstruct the electromagnetic propagation environment,evolves a new IRSassisted covert communications paradigm to eliminate the negligible detection of malicious eavesdroppers by coherently beaming the scattered signals and suppressing the signals leakage.However,when multiple IRSs are involved,accurate channel estimation is still a challenge due to the extra hardware complexity and communication overhead.Besides the crossinterference caused by massive reflecting paths,it is hard to obtain the close-formed solution for the optimization of covert communications.On this basis,the paper improves a heterogeneous multi-agent deep deterministic policy gradient(MADDPG)approach for the joint active and passive beamforming(Joint A&P BF)optimization without the channel estimation,where the base station(BS)and multiple IRSs are taken as different types of agents and learn to enhance the covert spectrum efficiency(CSE)cooperatively.Thanks to the‘centralized training and distributed execution’feature of MADDPG,each agent can execute the active or passive beamforming independently based on its partial observation without referring to others.Numeral results demonstrate that the proposed deep reinforcement learning(DRL)approach could not only obtain a preferable CSE of legitimate users and a low detection of probability(LPD)of warden,but also alleviate the communication overhead and simplify the IRSs deployment.
文摘In this paper, the problem of non-response with significant travel costs in multivariate stratified sample surveys has been formulated of as a Multi-Objective Geometric Programming Problem (MOGPP). The fuzzy programming approach has been described for solving the formulated MOGPP. The formulated MOGPP has been solved with the help of LINGO Software and the dual solution is obtained. The optimum allocations of sample sizes of respondents and non respondents are obtained with the help of dual solutions and primal-dual relationship theorem. A numerical example is given to illustrate the procedure.
文摘Microfinance institutions in Kenya play a unique role in promoting financial inclusion,loans,and savings provision,especially to low-income individuals and small-scale entrepreneurs.However,despite their benefits,most of their products and programs in Machakos County have been reducing due to re-payment challenges,threatening their financial ability to extend further credit.This could be attributed to ineffective credit scoring models which are not able to establish the nuanced non-linear repayment behavior and patterns of the loan applicants.The research objective was to enhance credit risk scoring for microfinance institutions in Machakos County using supervised machine learning algorithms.The study adopted a mixed research design under supervised machine learning approach.It randomly sampled 6771 loan application ac-count records and repayment history.Rstudio and Python programming lan-guages were deployed for data pre-processing and analysis.Logistic regression algorithm,XG Boosting and the random forest ensemble method were used.Metric evaluations used included the performance accuracy,Area under the Curve and F1-Score.Based on the study findings:XG Boosting was the best performer with 83.3%accuracy and 0.202 Brier score.Development of legal framework to govern ethical and open use of machine learning assessment was recommended.A similar research but using different machine learning al-gorithms,locations,and institutions,to ascertain the validity,reliability and the generalizability of the study findings was recommended for further re-search.
文摘The COVID-19 pandemic necessitated the emergence of Decentralized Clinical Trials (DCTs) due to patientretention, accelerating trials, improving data accessibility, enabling virtual care, and facilitating seamlesscommunication through integrated systems. However, integrating systems in DCTs exposes clinical data to potentialsecurity threats, making them susceptible to theft at any stage, a high risk of protocol deviations, andmonitoring issues. To mitigate these challenges, blockchain technology serves as a secure framework, acting as adecentralized ledger, creating an immutable environment by establishing a zero-trust architecture, where dataare deemed untrusted until verified. In combination with Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled wearable devices,blockchain secures the transfer of clinical trial data on private blockchains during DCT automation and operations.This paper proposes a prototype model of the zero-Trust Architecture Blockchain (z-TAB) to integratepatient-generated clinical trial data during DCT operation management. The EigenTrust-based PracticalByzantine Fault Tolerance (T-PBFT) algorithm has been incorporated as a consensus protocol, leveragingHyperledger Fabric. Furthermore, the IoT has been integrated to streamline data processing among stakeholderswithin the blockchain platforms. Rigorous evaluation has been done for immutability, privacy and security,mutual consensus, transparency, accountability, tracking and tracing, and temperature‒humidity controlparameters.
文摘Predicting the progression from Mild Cognitive Impairment(MCI)to Alzheimer's Disease(AD)is a critical challenge for enabling early intervention and improving patient outcomes.While longitudinal multi-modal neuroimaging data holds immense potential for capturing the spatio-temporal dynamics of disease progression,its effective analysis is hampered by significant challenges:temporal heterogeneity(irregularly sampled scans),multi-modal misalignment,and the propensity of deep learning models to learn spurious,noncausal correlations.We propose CASCADE-Net,a novel end-to-end pipeline for robust and interpretable MCI-to-AD progression prediction.Our architecture introduces a Dynamic Temporal Alignment Module that employs a Neural Ordinary Differential Equation(Neural ODE)to model the continuous,underlying progression of pathology from irregularly sampled scans,effectively mapping heterogeneous patient data to a unified latent timeline.This aligned,noise-reduced spatio-temporal data is then processed by a predictive model featuring a novel Causal Spatial Attention mechanism.This mechanism not only identifies the critical brain regions and their evolution predictive of conversion but also incorporates a counterfactual constraint during training.This constraint ensures the learned features are causally linked to AD pathology by encouraging invariance to non-causal,confounder-based changes.Extensive experiments on the Alzheimer’s Disease Neuroimaging Initiative(ADNI)dataset demonstrate that CASCADE-Net significantly outperforms state-of-the-art sequential models in prognostic accuracy.Furthermore,our model provides highly interpretable,causally-grounded attention maps,offering valuable insights into the disease progression process and fostering greater clinical trust.
基金This work is partly funded by the University of Southampton’s Marine and Maritime Institute(SMMI)and the European Research Council under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program(grant agreement number:723526:SEDNA).
文摘Each year,accidents involving ships result in significant loss of life,environmental pollution and economic losses.The promotion of navigation safety through risk reduction requires methods to assess the spatial distribution of the relative likelihood of occurrence.Yet,such methods necessitate the integration of large volumes of heterogenous datasets which are not well suited to traditional data structures.This paper proposes the use of the Discrete Global Grid System(DGGS)as an efficient and advantageous structure to integrate vessel traffic,metocean,bathymetric,infrastructure and other relevant maritime datasets to predict the occurrence of ship groundings.Massive and heterogenous datasets are well suited for machine learning algorithms and this paper develops a spatial maritime risk model based on a DGGS utilising such an approach.A Random Forest algorithm is developed to predict the frequency and spatial distribution of groundings while achieving an R2 of 0.55 and a mean squared error of 0.002.The resulting risk maps are useful for decision-makers in planning the allocation of mitigation measures,targeted to regions with the highest risk.Further work is identified to expand the applications and insights which could be achieved through establishing a DGGS as a global maritime spatial data structure.
文摘The emerging field of Discrete Global Grid Systems(DGGS)provides a way to organise,store and analyse spatio-temporal data at multiple resolutions and scales(from near global scales down to microns).DGGS partition the entire planet into a discrete hierarchy of global tessellations of progressively finer resolution zones(or cells).Data integration,decomposition and aggregation are optimised by assigning a unique spatio-temporal identifier to each zone.These identifiers are encodings of both the zone’s location and its resolution.As a result,complex multi-dimensional,multi-resolution spatio-temporal operations are simplified into sets of 1D array and filter operations.
