NEW CYBERSECURITY CHALLENGES IN AVIATION INDUSTRY

The integration of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) tools into mechanical devices in routine use within the aviation industry has heightened cyber-security concerns. The extent of the inherent vulnerabilities in the software tools that drive these systems escalates as the level of integration increases. Moreover, these concerns are becoming even more acute as the migration within the industry in the deployment of electronic-enabled aircraft and smart airports gathers pace. A review of cyber-security attacks and attack surfaces within the aviation sector over the last 20 years provides a mapping of the trends and insights that are of value in informing on future frameworks to protect the evolution of a key industry. The goal is to identify common threat actors, their motivations, attacks types and map the vulnerabilities within aviation infrastructures most commonly subject to persistent attack campaigns. The analyses will enable an improved understanding of both the current and potential future cyber-security protection provisions for the sector. Evidence is provided that the main threats to the industry arise from Advance Persistent Threat (APT) groups that operate, in collaboration with a particular state actor, to steal intellectual property and intelligence in order to advance their domestic aerospace capabilities as well as monitor, infiltrate and subvert other sovereign nations’ capabilities. A segment of the aviation industry commonly attacked is the Information Technology (IT) infrastructure, the most prominent type of attack being malicious hacking with intent to gain unauthorised access. The analysis of the range of attack surfaces and the existing threat dynamics has been used as a foundation to predict future cyber-attack trends. The insights arising from the review will support the future definition and implementation of proactive measures that protect critical infrastructures against cyber-incidents that damage the confidence of customers in a key service-oriented industry.

The integration of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in language teaching is profoundly influenced by educators’ attitudes and perspectives towards its use. Conversely, the ideologies or viewpoints held by individuals can significantly affect the facilitation or hindrance of information and communication technology adoption and utilization. The use of information and communication technology tools in English language instruction is widespread and varies greatly. Nonetheless, the beliefs and perspectives of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) teachers play a crucial role in either reinforcing or undermining the importance of this application. The incorporation of innovative technological tools, such as information and communication technology, into educational practices depends on the essential involvement of educators. To optimize student learning results, teachers' attitudes must change. This is demonstrated by the relationshipbetween the effectiveness of instructional reforms and their capacity to adjust to new technology. By employing the Theory-Context-Characteristics-Methodology framework, a systematic review of the literature was conducted as part of the research. The literature covered 79 empirical studies published in the last 10 to 15 years that examined the relationship between teachers' perceptions of and actual use of information and communication technology in language teaching and learning. This study demonstrates the relationship that exists between how teachers view the usage of information and communication technology and how it is actually used in language instruction. It also looks at the variables affecting how instructors view the usage of information and communication technology.

Explosive growth of information technologies (IT) has prompted interest in examining the role of IT in new product development (NPD). Through desktop software and Web‐based tools, IT has been used to aid idea generation and product testing as well as for NPD activities such as process and portfolio management. Recent research suggests, however, that a gap exists between IT availability and usage. Given the importance of IT in creating business value through the development of new products and services, the present study seeks to identify factors that affect IT usage. Further, anecdotal evidence and conceptual studies intimate that the usage of IT tools for NPD can shorten time to market, can improve product quality, and can increase productivity. However, empirical substantiation of this impact is mostly nonexistent. The current study investigates the relationship between IT usage and two measures of new product performance: speed to market and market performance. Employing a mail‐survey methodology, the study uses data from a sample of practitioner members from the Product Development & Management Association to examine the effect of project risk, existence of a champion, autonomy, innovative climate, IT infrastructure, and IT embeddedness on the extent of IT usage. These data are also used to explore the impact of IT usage on speed to market and market performance. The results indicate that project risk, existence of a champion, and IT embeddedness positively affect the extent of IT usage for NPD. Additionally, IT usage positively and significantly influences the performance of the new product in the marketplace. Surprisingly, and contrary to popular belief, IT usage does not have any impact on speed to market. An important implication of this study is that IT usage influences performance but not in the way managers expect. Specifically, IT usage does not seem to affect speed to market but rather positively impacts the performance of the new product in the marketplace. This result suggests that IT usage in NPD provides far more value to firms than previously thought and provides evidence to support greater investments in IT for product development efforts. Other implications of the study are that unless IT is embedded into the NPD process and champions for IT tools exist, chances are that IT will not be used and its benefits will not be realized.

Perception of Ultimate Utilization of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) as an Impetus in Enhancing Employee Performance in a Few Selected Municipalities in the Eastern Cape of South Africa

The study examined the challenges of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) tools for managerial functions among private secondary school administrators in Ilorin metropolis, Kwara State, Nigeria. Both primary and secondary data were used in the paper. Using a standardized questionnaire, the principals of the private secondary schools in the Ilorin Metropolis provided the data. The total population of Private Secondary Schools within Ilorin Metropolis is 141. The entire population was used as a sample for the study. Findings from the study showed that the majority of the respondents strongly disagreed that there is a non-availability of computers in private secondary schools. The respondents disagreed with the unavailability of internet services in the Ilorin metropolis. The majority of the respondents agree that inadequate Information and Communication Technology tools in private secondary schools. The study concluded that fear of technology use among principals, inadequate Information and Communication Technology tools, and power failure are the challenges confronting the effective use of ICT among principals in private secondary schools in the Ilorin metropolis. The paper recommended that the proprietors of private secondary schools in the Ilorin metropolis should procure more Information and Communication Technology tools. Computer literacy experts should be appointed as the principal. The management should introduce solar energy to save the school from the interrupted power supply.

This study examines information technology (IT) usage for new product development (NPD) in a global context. Specifically, this research seeks to ascertain the factors that influence IT usage and the relationship between IT usage and new product performance in two different countries—the United States and the Netherlands. The interest here is in discovering if, and how, these relationships may be different depending on the country within which the NPD effort is undertaken. Employing a mail survey methodology, the present study uses data from a sample of U.S. practitioner members from the Product Development & Management Association (PDMA) and new product managers from Dutch manufacturing companies to examine the effect of IT infrastructure, IT embeddedness, NPD process formalization, colocation, outsourcing of NPD projects, and length of time on the job on the extent of IT usage. The data are also used to explore the impact of IT usage on speed to market and market performance. The results indicate that IT embeddedness and NPD process formalization positively influence IT usage in both the United States and the Netherlands. Colocation and length of time on the job are negatively associated with IT usage only in Dutch firms. Similarly, outsourcing of NPD projects is positively related to IT usage only in U.S. firms. Finally, IT usage has a positive relationship with speed to market in the Netherlands and with market performance in the United States. An important implication of the present study is that IT usage does impact speed to market and market performance, confirming anecdotal evidence. However, these relationships are not the same in each country. Moreover, the antecedents to IT usage also vary by country. Thus, the precursors and consequences of IT usage in NPD are context specific. Another implication of this research is that unless IT is embedded into the NPD process, it is unlikely that the benefits of IT will come to fruition. Finally, this study suggests that as firms use more globally dispersed teams for NPD and outsource more of their development activities, IT usage is likely to increase to facilitate communication and cooperation.

This chapter focuses on some of the crucial pragmatic concerns associated with a group of passive, non-interactive, and non-performing ESL (English as Second Language) learners (our target learners) in multi-lingual classrooms. It broadly investigates the ways in which metacognitive skills (Flavell JH, Am Psychol 34:906–911, 1979) of the identified group of language learners are developed through certain task-based activities and by the usage of information and communication technology (ICT) tools. The chapter describes those language-learning strategies that modern smart technology supports and helps the learners to develop individual autonomy. The learners’ autonomy facilitates the process of self-regulated learning. The subject learners are B. Tech students from two institutions in India, one is Adamas University (Kolkata) and the other is Indian Institute of Information Technology (Guwahati). The chapter follows a combination of experimental, descriptive, and analytical methods to formulate its observations and arguments. From the learners’ responses to different task-based activities aimed to enhance their listening, speaking, reading, and writing skills, that were conducted twice—without and with ICT tools—the chapter deduces that ICT-based language teaching empowers the target learners, offers them alternative strategies to claim their space within the educational fold, and articulates their self and aspirations. This model, for further results, may be specifically tested across Indian classrooms on learners belonging to marginalized sections of India. The chapter is divided in the following sections—first, it situates the problem that challenged the authors intellectually; the second section highlights the research gap in the existing ICT-based language learning literature and poses the research questions; the operative relationship between ICT tools and critical thinking is discussed in the third section; in the fourth section, we propose metacognition as an effective language learning strategy; finally, the fifth section states the implication of the current research.

Existing studies on the information technology (IT) usage of firms are constrained within the perspective of “IT tool” or “IT investment.” Few studies have analyzed the IT usage of firms from a new perspective. This study aims to fill this gap by examining the impact of IT usage on the innovation performance of small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) from the perspective of the product value chain (PVC). A research model integrating IT usage width, IT usage frequency, manufacturing flexibility, human capital quality, and firm innovation performance was proposed for this analysis. Furthermore, a quantitative analysis was performed on a sample of more than 1300 Chinese manufacturing firms using the newest data provided by the World Bank. Results validate that IT usage width and IT usage frequency have a significantly positive impact on the innovation performance of SMEs. Manufacturing flexibility plays a partially mediating role between IT usage frequency and the innovation performance of SMEs. Moreover, human capital quality has a significantly positive moderating effect on IT usage width and the innovation performance of SMEs. IT usage width and IT usage frequency appear to be important predictors of the innovation performance of SMEs, whereas there are substantial differences in the influencing mechanism of IT usage width and IT usage frequency on the innovation performance of SMEs.

Information professionals in a globalized world: Digital inclusion initiatives in Brazil: Improving education and information seeking behavior through government‐academic partnerships

An examination of prospective teachers' information and communication technology (ICT) skills development in an undergraduate program indicated that the only course available to practice these skills was the teaching practice course. However, the practice and development of these ICT skills in the tea chi ng practice course has not been clearly elucidated. In other words, while the contribution of the teaching practice course in terms of theoretical ICT knowledge is known, how this knowledge is applied is unknown. Under such uncertainties, it is impossible to determine the roles of teaching practice course stakeholders play in terms of ICT integration. Based on transformative learning theory at a micro level, the ai m of this study was to analyze prospective Information Technology (IT) teachers' ICT transformations. Methodological triangulation, a mixed methods research design, was adopted arid designed as a survey method. Over an academic year, data was collected from 54 prospective IT teachers, two university supervisors, and six. practice teachers. Learning Data Collection Sets (questionnaire and interview form) were used to analyze the ICT practice transformations, with interview forms, focus group interview forms, and the researcher's diary being used as the data collection tools. The results showed that though a majority of the prospective IT teachers were likely to experience transformative learning, approximately one-third were able to achieve an ICT transformation within the scope of the teaching practice course. In this context, a more efficient model is proposed for ICT practices in the scope of a teaching practice course.KeywordsInformation and Communication Technology Integration, Information arid Communication Technology Integration in Adult Education, Teaching Practice Course, Transformative Learning Theory.It could be argued that all actors in education, such as teachers, prospective teachers, instructors, and administrators, regarding issues such as infrastructure requirements and education programs, are now interactively involved in the process of information and communication technologies integration. When ICT in Turkey is examined in terms of its historical developments, computers were first introduced to public schools in 1984 (Ozar & Askar, 1997) and computer courses were added to the curriculum as elective courses (Deryakulu, 2008). Though such a start could be considered a precursor to ICT integration, the combination of hardware and software at that time restricted overall integration (Earle, 2002). ICT began with the training of teachers rather than with the setting up of its substructure (World Links, 2007), and so ICT was defined as a tool for students to gain access to course achievements (Kocak Usluel, Kuskaya Mumcu, & Demiraslan, 2007; Fulton, Glenn, & Valdez, 2004). However, ICT has a very complex structure today, and needs to be viewed from the stakeholders' positions to allow for a more stringent examination. Semenov (2005) indicated teachers, students, and administrators as the ICT stakeholders in higher education. Teachers (Gorder, 2008; Okojie, Olinzock, & Okojie-Boulder, 2006; Summerville & Reid-Griffin, 2008), students (Chen, 2004; Davies, 2011; Dexter & Riedel, 2003) and administrators (Green & Gilbert, 1995; Hooper & Rieber, 1995; International Society for Technology in Education [ISTE], 2011; Schiller, 2003) have important duties in ICT integration, initiation, and implementation , and need to overcome the difficulties to encourage the use of ICT education as a part of school culture.In spite of the many technological opportunities for ICT in education, the instructional use of ICT in the classroom is a less common practice than imagined (Surry & Land, 2000; Turkish Council of Higher Education-Yuksekogretim Kurulu [YOK], 2007). …

PurposeFirms invest much money in information technology (IT) since IT support has been recognized as a critical enabler of employee outcomes. However, the value obtained by organizations and their employees is not always as much as they anticipated because of, at least partly, a poor relationship between IT staff and users. The purpose of this paper is to apply the social capital theory to examine relationship management between IT and business and explores mechanisms through which social capital between IT staff and users affect users’ employee outcomes, including job satisfaction and job performance.Design/methodology/approachBased on social capital theory and past literature, the researchers propose a research model and explore the effect of social capital on knowledge sharing, IT users’ perceived service quality, job satisfaction and ultimately job performance. Based on a survey of 289 respondents, this study applies the partial least square technique to test the research model.FindingsMediation test was performed to explore the effect mechanisms of social capital on employee outcomes, and the results indicate that three dimensions of social capital affect IT users’ job satisfaction and job performance in different approaches.Originality/valueThis study uses social capital theory to direct how to improve the poor relationship between IT staff and users and provides a useful insight into the mechanisms through which three dimensions of social capital improve users’ job satisfaction and job performance.

Information and Communication Technology (ICT) has become an indispensable tool, and therefore permeated all aspects of human life. It is against this backdrop that the researcher examined secondary school teachers’ attitudes on ICT tools for teaching Arabic Language in Ilorin South Local Government Area. Descriptive research method was adopted for this study. The population for this study comprised all secondary school Arabic teachers in Ilorin South Local Government Area while the target population is the Arabic teachers at SS I to SS III. Purposive sampling technique was used to sample 150 teachers as respondents which constituted the study sample. A researcher designed checklist was used for the instrument. The research question was answered with percentage. Finding of this study revealed that: Attitude of secondary school Arabic teachers towards the use of ICT tools for teaching in Ilorin South Local Government Area is positive; Based on this finding, it was concluded and recommended that government at all levels should assist in the provision of more modern Information and Communication Technology tools in secondary schools, these include satellite broadcast, digital player computer and PowerPoint and so on, also, the ministry of education should be inspecting and monitoring the use of available Information and Communication Technology tools in the schools more especially its usage in teaching Arabic language, teachers of Arabic should be trained with the requisite Information Technology (IT) skills to manage resources effectively and assist students in their quest for information needed to meet their diverse needs among others.

This study examines the influence of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) on students’ learning in higher education, with specific reference to Milton Margai Technical University and the College of Business and Information Technology in Sierra Leone. The research explored how the availability, accessibility, and usability of ICT resources affect students’ academic engagement and outcomes. A cross-sectional survey design was employed, using questionnaires and interviews to collect data from 440 respondents selected from a population of 3,173. The analysis applied Pearson correlation to test the hypotheses on the relationship between ICT usage and students’ learning. Findings revealed that ICT infrastructure in the two institutions is limited, with inadequate computer laboratories, internet connectivity, and teaching software. Despite these constraints, results indicated a significant positive correlation between ICT availability, accessibility, usability, and students’ learning. The study concludes that strengthening ICT facilities and training is crucial for improving academic quality. It recommends that universities invest in ICT infrastructure, ensure reliable internet access, and integrate ICT into teaching and learning practices to enhance educational outcomes. This study examines how Information and Communication Technology (ICT) influences student learning in higher education institutions in Sierra Leone, focusing on Milton Margai Technical University and the College of Business and Information Technology. A cross-sectional survey of 440 respondents was conducted to assess the availability, accessibility, and usability of ICT resources. The results revealed that while ICT facilities are present in limited quantities, their accessibility and effective utilization remain constrained by inadequate infrastructure, unreliable connectivity, and low digital literacy. However, statistical analysis indicated significant positive relationships between ICT integration and student learning outcomes. The study recommends increased investment in ICT infrastructure, capacity building for lecturers and students, and policy measures to promote digital inclusion across tertiary institutions in Sierra Leone. (López-Sánchez et al., 2023; World Bank, 2022).

The article focuses on the usage of information and communication technologies (ICT) in teaching English. Also, the article presents the essence of information and communication technologies, their role in teaching English in conditions of modernization of education, a classification of using for new information technologies in teaching English. The conclusion is made about the expediency of using ICT to improve the quality of students’ knowledge.

The Ukrainian aviation industry is undergoing digital transformation; however, the pace remains behind global and European standards due to several challenges. These include limited funding, a lack of skilled IT professionals, and a slow rate of modern technology adoption. The research, titled "Optimizing IT Project Management in Ukraine’s Aviation Sector: Challenges, Opportunities, and Strategic Insights," addresses the urgent need for improvements in IT project management to enhance efficiency, competitiveness, and technological advancement within the aviation sector in Ukraine. This article analyzes the sector's current challenges, including insufficient government and private sector investment, internet infrastructure issues, and a shortage of IT specialists. It also identifies opportunities in areas like automation, digitization, and the potential for public-private collaborations. The study's primary objective is to develop and evaluate an optimal IT project management framework tailored to Ukraine’s aviation industry. This framework aims to optimize resource usage, integrate modern technologies like AI, automation, and cybersecurity, and improve global competitiveness. Furthermore, the research offers a SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats) analysis of Ukraine’s aviation IT landscape, benchmarking it against European standards. A substantial gap exists between Ukraine and Europe regarding IT investment and automation, with European countries leading in adopting AI-driven systems, enhanced cybersecurity, and automated business and customer service processes. To bridge this divide, the study proposes an optimized IT project management model focused on strategic priorities such as investment in skill development, strengthening public-private partnerships, enhancing cybersecurity, implementing agile work methods, and supporting innovation through government initiatives. In conclusion, the study underscores that enhancing IT project management in Ukraine’s aviation industry is crucial for maintaining global competitiveness and improving operational efficiency. The proposed model offers actionable insights to address current challenges while capitalizing on new opportunities, thereby ensuring resilience in the face of ongoing global digitization and technological advancements.