This paper examines the current state of IT benchmarking and the problem of using conventional IT benchmarking models to benchmark Information Security environments. A framework is presented as a starting point for further development to obtain a fully-fledged, operational Information Security benchmark model. This model will determine what money companies are spending on Information Security a...

To address current difficulties of SMEs that are reluctant to invest in information security due to cost, this paper intends to provide an information security guideline that will allow SMEs to adopt cost efficient security measures. In particular, the information security guideline categorizes SMEs by their informatization level, presents an architecture for determining the level of security r...

In this paper, we present a cluster computing environment established at a minority serving institution that aims to provide services for research and education in an undergraduate student body. We will address the cost efficiency of the cluster computing environment; student participation in the configuration of the lab; and research activities performed on the cluster that involves faculty/st...

Biomonitoring of waterbodies is vital as the number of anthropogenic stressors on aquatic ecosystems keeps growing. However, the continuous decrease in funding makes it impossible to meet monitoring goals or sustain traditional manual sample processing. In this paper, we review what kind of statistical tools can be used to enhance the cost efficiency of biomonitoring: We explore automated ident...

In the field of aeronautics, shape morphing has been used to identify those aircraft that undergo substantial geometrical changes in their external shape to enhance or adapt to their mission profiles during flight. This creates superior system capabilities not possible without morphing shape changes. The objective of morphing concepts is to develop high performance aircraft with lifting surface...

Public hospitals in Greece are part of a National Health System, established in 1983. This paper presents the hospital sector changes in Greece over the last 20 years, emphasizing cost efficiency. We break down its historical developments into two periods: 1983-1999 and 2000-2008. From the historical review, it is concluded that the system is cost inefficient, based on two components. First, a ...

Performance degradation assessment of rolling element bearings is vital for the reliable and cost-efficient operation and maintenance of rotating machines, especially for the implementation of condition-based maintenance (CBM). For robust degradation assessment of rolling element bearings, uncertainties such as those induced from usage variations or sensor errors must be taken into account. Thi...

Mercurio aims at the provision of an environment for the creation of secure e-commerce services. This is motivated by the observation that pure WWW technology (as we see it at the moment) is not sufficient to realise a big variety of services provided over the Internet. The main goal is to allow the operators of e-commerce service centers and the simple vendor to develop, deploy, operate, and m...

Abstract: The dimensioning of hardware components takes place at the end of the UMTS radio network planning process when a suitable NodeB site configuration has been found. Each connection to a NodeB requires a service specific number of hardware components and an incoming connection is blocked if not enough components are available. The aim of hardware dimensioning is to find the cost-optimal ...

We present a constraint-based model and planning engine for manufacturing process planning. By exploiting the expressive power of constraint programming (CP), all relevant, sometimes conflicting pieces of domain knowledge are represented. The planner applies standard propagation techniques and customized search to find cost-optimal solutions in presence of hard, soft and conditional constraints...