Remote IT Research Articles

How H R Practices can be optimized for effective management of remote and virtual team in IT industry

exploring ways to enhance HR practices for the efficient administration of IT sector remote and virtual teams Analysing methods for efficient virtual team management, HR optimised the rise of remote work. Topics covered include technology developments, globalisation, shifting labour demographics, pandemics, and corporate cost savings as drivers of remote work's ascent. Issues with communication, trust-building, time zone differences, accountability, and productivity are some of the difficulties discussed in the article as they pertain to virtual team management and remote work. Future trends in remote work, including hybrid work models, the gig economy, and artificial intelligence, are also covered in the article. It also discusses methods for managing virtual teams effectively, ways to collaborate, and case studies of successful remote work implementation. In light of the fact that remote work is constantly changing the way organisations function, manage teams, and collaborate, the conclusion stresses the need of constant adaptation and learning. Key Words Remote IT team management: HR practices, challenges, strategies, future trends

The Influence of Covid-19 on the Activities of Law Firms

The subject of this study is the analysis of the functioning of law firms during the Covid-19 pandemic. The lockdown introduced by the legislator resulted in the closure or limitation of the functioning of public administration bodies, including courts and related institutions, especially law firms (advocates or legal advisers). As a consequence, law firms significantly limited their activities and, moreover, were forced to equip their offices with ICT tools allowing for remote work and IT training for their employees. As a consequence, law firms experienced a drop in income, which was confirmed by the results of a survey conducted by the Supreme Bar Council. However, positive aspects of the changes caused by the pandemic should also be noted, including introducing flexible forms of work, greater use of ICT tools.

Remote consultations in primary care across low-, middle- and high-income countries: Implications for policy and care delivery.

The COVID-19 pandemic mandated a substantial switch in primary health care delivery from an in-person to a mainly remote telephone or video service. As the COVID-19 pandemic approaches its third year, limited progress appears to have been made in terms of policy development around consultation methods for the post-acute phase of the pandemic. In September 2020, the International Primary Care Respiratory Group convened a global panel of primary care clinicians - including family physicians, paediatricians, pharmacists, academics and patients - to consider the policy and health management implications of the move to remote consultations in the primary care setting. The group gave special consideration to how and how far remote consultations should be integrated into routine primary health care delivery. Remote consultations can be a useful alternative to in-person consultations in primary care not only in situations where there is a need for viral infection control but also for the routine delivery of chronic disease management. However, they may not be more time efficient for the clinician, and they can add to the workload and work-related stress for primary care practitioners if they remain the dominant consultation mode. Remote consultations are also less appropriate than in-person consultations for new disease diagnosis, dealing with multiple issues and providing complex care. Ensuring health care professionals have the appropriate skill set to effectively deliver remote consultations, administrative and/or IT support and appropriate reimbursement will be key to achieving optimal integration of remote consultations into routine clinical practice. Addressing digital access and digital literacy issues at a societal level will also be essential to ensure individuals have fair and equitable access to the internet and sufficient security for exchange of personal and health-related data.

Applying Logarithm and Russian Multiplication Protocols to Improve Paillier’s Cryptosystem

Cloud computing provides on-demand access to a diverse set of remote IT services. It offers a number of advantages over traditional computing methods. These advantages include pay-as-you-go pricing, increased agility and on-demand scalabil-ity. It also reduces costs due to increased efficiency and better business continuity. The most significant barrier preventing many businesses from moving to the cloud is the security of crucial data maintained by the cloud provider. The cloud server must have complete access to the data to respond to a client request. That implies the decryption key must be sent to the cloud by the client, which may compromise the confidentiality of data stored in the cloud. One way to allow the cloud to use encrypted data without knowing or decrypting it is homomorphic encryption. In this paper, we focus on improving the Paillier cryptosystem, first by using two protocols that allow the cloud to perform the multiplication of encrypted data and then comparing the two protocols in terms of key size and time.

MODELING INTRAORGAN VASCULATURE USING PROCEDURAL AND MATHEMATICAL SPACE TRANSFORMATIONS

Background. The electronic methods in medicine are getting more widespread. The COVID-19 pandemic forced remote IT technologies to develop. It is necessary to create medical e-learning systems, in particular, to study anatomy of human organ vasculatures.
 Purpose. To create universal and realistic 3d-model of intraorgan vasculatures based on the vasculature morphometry results.
 Materials and methods. Morphometric data of real vascular networks, geometric modeling in plane and in scape, procedural spatial transformation of the vasculature according to the law of a logarithmic spiral were used.
 Results. A two-staged sequence for construction a geometric 3d-model is proposed. The model is built of the units of vasculature, which are called bifurcations (dichotomies). At the first stage, mathematical 2d-model of a vascular network fragment is build based on morphometric data of the geometry of vasculature. It reflects the structure and quantitative characteristics of the vascular bifurcations (dichotomies). At the second stage, data about third special coordinate is added and a procedural 3d-model of the fragment is built. To increase the accuracy of the model, the ability to bend the vessels and to differ diameters of their starting and ending points have been added.
 Conclusion. The universal 3d-model of a tree-like structure is presented as a visualization of the intraorgan vasculature. These models can be used as visual teaching aids in online education environment. To increase the informative and educational value of the model, visual images of various pathologies of the vasculature can be added.

The IT Labor Market in Pandemic Conditions

In this ongoing project, we investigate how the COVID-19 epidemic affects the IT labor market, and, accordingly, how organizations choose to hire IT employees in the current situation. Using a quarterly dataset of 30,678 IT job postings from a large online employment website, we perform descriptive analysis and logistic regression to examine the relationships between pandemic severity and work arrangements (remote vs. on-site), work schedules (part-time vs. full time), and organizational sectors (commercial vs. government vs. non-profit). Our results reveal that the IT market in the summer quarter (June, July, and August) is better than in the previous period, for both part-time and remote job postings. Also, pandemic severity is positively associated with the incidence of on-site IT hires. For governments and non-profit organizations (NPOs) such as hospitals and schools, “frontline” IT support professionals were highly prized, whereas commercial employers, including tech giants, were more interested in growing a remote IT workforce. In our conclusions, we discuss the balance between the trajectory of diagnosed infections and the fluctuations of the labor market, specifically in the IT sector.

Remote working challenges and solutions: insights from SMEs in Bangladesh during the COVID-19 pandemic

The impact of global COVID-19 pandemic, both in health and economic terms is becoming clearer. This article critically explores the challenges in implementing remote working practices in small and medium enterprises (SMEs) and the solutions during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown in Bangladesh. Based on the qualitative approach, interviewing 14 participants from SME owners, consultants, government officials and professors, we found several challenges such as financial constraints, bureaucracy, lack of knowledge and interest, communication problem, high employee turnover and difficulty to find trustworthy employee implementing remote working practices. The study also advanced some solutions such as convincing the benefits of remote working practices, government rules, financial incentives, training and IT courses, remote (online) classes in universities, and in implementing remote working practices in the SMEs not only during COVID-19 pandemic but also for the long-term. These have several implications regarding SMEs performances and worker benefits.

Remote working challenges and solutions: insights from SMEs in Bangladesh during the COVID-19 pandemic

The impact of global COVID-19 pandemic, both in health and economic terms is becoming clearer. This article critically explores the challenges in implementing remote working practices in small and medium enterprises (SMEs) and the solutions during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown in Bangladesh. Based on the qualitative approach, interviewing 14 participants from SME owners, consultants, government officials and professors, we found several challenges such as financial constraints, bureaucracy, lack of knowledge and interest, communication problem, high employee turnover and difficulty to find trustworthy employee implementing remote working practices. The study also advanced some solutions such as convincing the benefits of remote working practices, government rules, financial incentives, training and IT courses and remote (online) classes in universities in implementing remote working practices in the SMEs not only during COVID-19 pandemic but also for the long-term. These have several implications regarding SMEs performances and workers benefits.

Remote Search of IT System in Polish Legislation and Its Importance in Fight Against Cybercrime

The issues of remote access by law enforcement authorities to data in remote IT systems are extremely difficult and controversial. The literature stresses that such activities threaten the right to privacy of the parties involved in the proceedings and the right to a fair trial. However, on the other hand, the dynamic development of new technologies and the need to combat cybercrime effectively require that law enforcement and judicial authorities make use of adequate legal and technical solutions. One such a solution may be a remote search of an IT system, which exists in many European countries, including Belgium, Romania and Germany. In the case of Poland, a search of an IT system as a procedural activity is only allowed in respect of a system in which the person concerned is a dispatcher or user. The Polish legislator has not implemented procedural provisions enabling remote searches via the Internet. In case of the necessity of a system remote search, it will be necessary to conduct a parallel search. Another way of obtaining remote access to data and IT systems may be new methods of covert surveillance, which have been introduced into the Police Act. The new regulations generate a lot of interest among Polish police officers, but at the same time they provoke a lot of discussion. The diversity of the existing approach leads to the development of a uniform interpretation of the introduced regulations, which has been adopted as the subject of this study.

Are Managers Making the Right Choice?

Smart work has been credited with providing flexible supply capabilities to meet customer demands in service businesses operations. Effective operations of smart work need huge investment of technologies implementations. The authors use Delphi techniques and survey method to identify implementation factors of importance of home-based work which is a representative type of smart work. Seven technologies were identified to be important (Knowledge Management, Real-time monitoring, Remote IT assist, Online testing, Online training, Workforce management, Agent performance management technologies). Different from general expectations, control-based technologies were found not to have positive effects, but support-based technologies to have positive effects to the performance. Smart work technologies in service business affect employees' job satisfaction, and further retention of remote agents. Careful planning of how to implement technologies for smart work is needed in service business in order to identify the best working environment design.

Level of Assurance Management Automation for Dynamic Identity Federations based on Vectors of Trust

AbstractAccessing remote IT services through identity federations (IFs) is based on solid technical protocols such as the Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML) and OpenID Connect. However, reliable delegated user authentication and authorization also pose organizational challenges regarding the quality management of user data. Level of Assurance (LoA) concepts have been adapted and applied to IFs, but their inhomogeneous proliferation bears the risk of aggravating instead of simplifying the manual work steps. This is increased by the providing IT services for multiple or dynamically set up IFs. This article presents a novel LoA management approach that has been designed for a high degree of automation, adopts the approach for the dynamic metadata exchange by GÉANT-TrustBroker and exemplifies its usage.

Guest Editorial Special Section on Emerging Advances in Logistics Systems: Integrating Remote Sensing, IT, and Autonomy

The logistics systems that sustain today’s global supply chains and transportation systems must provide resource-efficient, sustainable, safe, equitable, and timely delivery of goods and services for the benefit of the economy and society. The increasing availability of fast, cheap sensing technologies that can capture real-time data on the location of items and the states of the systems in which they are operating, as well as the rapid and often unpredictable changes in environmental and market conditions, provides opportunities for innovative arbitrage of information, speed, and flexibility. Automation Science and Engineering (ASE) has the potential to enhance the performance of logistics systems by providing novel, integrated hardware, and software solutions that alter the economics of different segments of the logistics chain, by improving throughput and reducing resource requirements and environmental impact. At the same time, the development of novel technologies, such as regenerative medicine and renewable energy are placing totally new demands on logistics systems, requiring the movement of living section in the former case and energy in the latter. The increasingly complex networks of service providers and supply chain partners that logistics systems must serve create complex systems of systems where the decisions of any individual agent may have significant unforeseen consequences for the larger network, requiring a broader perspective on these sections than that of individual stages in the logistics network.

Upstream surveillance - Scanning for zoonoses in wildlife

a rapid situation analysis was carried out to characterize existing disease surveillance systems in animal and public health sectors in Burundi, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Tanzania and it was found that therewas no formal, routine collaboration between the two sectors. It was further observed that in the two sectors, disease surveillance and reporting starts with the lowest level where officials residing within community are engaged. The new system designed combines the use of participatory and OH approaches with district-based passive(DPS) and community-based active (CAS) surveillance system components promoted to participate in detection of disease events at source. The CAS system is based on use of community-based health reporters (CHRs) to search for and report disease events occurring in animal and human populations in the study areas. Mobile technologies are being employed as the technology enablers. We selected two sites, Ngorongoro (an ecosystem with maximum human-wildlife and domestic animal interactions) and Kagera River Basin (a cross-border ecosystem with twodistricts across theborderbetweenBurundi andTanzania) to test performance of the system.We have piloted and introduced android mobile phones running the EpiCollect and Open data kit (ODK) applications to aid geo-spatial and clinical data capture and transmission from the field to the remote IT servers at the research hubs for storage, analysis, feedback and reporting. Phase I results have proved that the participatory disease surveillance approach in combination with use of mobile technologies are capable of improving early detection and response to disease events particularly in remote hard-to-reach areas. A total of 387 disease events were reported by CHRs between 2011 and 2013. In some cases, reports of disease events submitted by CHRs triggered immediate response from official system making use of them in public health relevant. Phase II of thiswork focuses on integrated disease surveillance combining voice recording, hand-writing recognition,mobile spatial and participatory epidemiology revolutionalizing collection and reporting of disease event data. We also plan to set up a one health disease surveillance resource center that will strengthen regional capacities in designing ‘fit-for-purpose’ technologies to support disease surveillance and response and develop appropriate technology transfer platform to expedite use of mobile phone technologies in disease surveillance.

Participatory surveillance of zoonotic disease: Putting the public back in public health

The Southern African Centre for Disease Surveillance (SACIDS) in collaboration with the East African Integrated Disease Surveillance Network (EAIDSNet) has designed and piloted One Health (OH) disease surveillance system in East and Southern Africa. Initially, a rapid situation analysis was carried out to characterize existing disease surveillance systems in animal and public health sectors in Burundi, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Tanzania and it was found that there was no formal, routine collaboration between the two sectors. It was further observed that in the two sectors, disease surveillance and reporting starts with the lowest level where officials residing within community are engaged. The new system designed combines the use of participatory and OH approaches with district-based passive- (DPS) and community-based active (CAS) surveillance system components promoted to participate in detection of disease events at source. The CAS system is based on use of community-based health reporters (CHRs) to search for and report disease events occurring in animal and human populations in the study areas. Mobile technologies are being employed as the technology enablers. We selected two sites, Ngorongoro (an ecosystem with maximum human-wildlife and domestic animal interactions) and Kagera River Basin (a cross-border ecosystem with two districts across the border between Burundi and Tanzania) to test performance of the system. We have piloted and introduced android mobile phones running the EpiCollect and Open data kit (ODK) applications to aid geo-spatial and clinical data capture and transmission from the field to the remote IT servers at the research hubs for storage, analysis, feedback and reporting. Phase I results have proved that the participatory disease surveillance approach in combination with use of mobile technologies are capable of improving early detection and response to disease events particularly in remote hard-to-reach areas. A total of 387 disease events were reported by CHRs between 2011 and 2013. In some cases, reports of disease events submitted by CHRs triggered immediate response from official system making use of them in public health relevant. Phase II of this work focuses on integrated disease surveillance combining voice recording, hand-writing recognition, mobile spatial and participatory epidemiology revolutionalizing collection and reporting of disease event data. We also plan to set up a one health disease surveillance resource center that will strengthen regional capacities in designing ‘fit-for-purpose’ technologies to support disease surveillance and response and develop appropriate technology transfer platform to expedite use of mobile phone technologies in disease surveillance. This work was funded by the Rockefeller Foundation Grant (2009 DSN 305) and the IDRC Grant No: [107030-001] to Sokoine University of Agriculture for its Southern African Centre for Infectious Disease Surveillance (SACIDS)www.sacids.org

병렬 이벤트 기반 원격 IT 융합 개발

본 논문에서는 첨단 통신 기술을 포함한 IT 기술을 전통산업과 융합한 병렬 이벤트 기반 원격 IT 융합 사례들을 개발하였다. IT 융합 사례들은 다수의 장치와 사용자가 동시에 시스템에서 제공되는 서비스를 이용하거나 이벤트를 발생시킨다. 따라서 다양한 장치들로부터 동시에 발생되는 이벤트를 처리하기 위해 병렬 처리 기법이 필요하다. 이에 본 논문에서는 스레드를 생성하여 병렬 처리가 가능하도록 개발하였으며, 또한 장치와 원격 정보 송수신을 위해 무선 통신 및 전력선 통신과의 연결을 할 수 있는 기술을 개발하였다. 그리고 장치 및 장치와 사용자 포털에서 발생하는 이벤트들을 논리적으로 모델링하기 위해 XML을 이용하여 객체 지향 모델링 기법으로 모델링하였다. 특히 결과들을 효과적으로 보여주기 위해 다양한 시각적인 사용자 인터페이스, 즉 그래프, 테이블 및 그래프와 테이블을 혼합한 방식을 이용하여 실시간으로 볼 수 있도록 개발하였다. This paper describes parallel event-driven remote IT convergence applications which are a combination of traditional industry and IT Technology including advanced communication. In IT convergence system, events can occur currently from many sensors of devices or users. And IT convergence system must have a parallel processing method. In this paper, the parallel processing method was implemented using a thread and we developed a connection method between a device and a mode of communication which is a wireless communication or a power line communication. In addition to that, we developed object modeling, device, user and event modeling, based on XML (eXtensible Markup Language) using object-oriented modeling method. To efficiently show results in real time, systems provide various graphic user interfaces such as a bar graph, a table, and a combination of the two.

Protecting Tele-Lab – attack vectors and countermeasures for a remote virtual IT security lab

The rapid burst of Internet usage and the corresponding growth of security risks and online attacks for the everyday user or the enterprise employee have emerged the terms Awareness Creation and Information Security Culture. Nevertheless, security education widely has remained an academic issue. Teaching system or network security on the basis of practical experience inherits a great challenge for the teaching environment, which is traditionally solved using a computer laboratory at a university campus. The Tele-Lab project offers a system for hands-on IT security training within a remote virtual lab environment ‐ over the web, accessible by everyone. Such a system is inherently exposed to various security threats, since it has to provide full access to virtual machines running attack tools for potentially malicious users. The paper at hand introduces usage, management and operation of Tele-Lab as well as its architecture. Furthermore, this work focuses on possible attacks, the challenges when securing such a system, and shows how to set up an infrastructure that ensures the main security objectives identified as authentication, authorisation and availability.

Measurement and Improvement of Information Security Culture

Remote IT based operations of offshore oil and gas installations are increasing in the North Sea. The motivation for remote operation is increased income, cost reductions and more efficient support. The technology used to support operations is changing from proprietary closed systems to standardised IT systems built on PC’s and MS Windows connected to both internal networks and the Internet. In addition the operations and management of the oil and gas fields are increasingly being performed by a network of firms that functions as a virtual organization. The network organizations and the increased vulnerabilities create the need for improved information security. Our hypothesis is that an important contribution to improved information security (IS) is improved IS culture and improved communication during operations and incident handling. IS culture should be explicitly focused, and actions should be taken to improve IS culture from a purely rule based culture to an ideal learning culture. We have suggested a method called CheckIT consisting of a questionnaire and a process to improve IS culture based on group discussions. The questionnaire consists of questions and suggested answers based on denial based culture, rule based culture and the ideal learning culture, to enable the participants to explore their culture and identify areas to be improved.

Comparative Case Study of Two Biomedical Research Collaboratories

BackgroundWorking together efficiently and effectively presents a significant challenge in large-scale, complex, interdisciplinary research projects. Collaboratories are a nascent method to help meet this challenge. However, formal collaboratories in biomedical research centers are the exception rather than the rule.ObjectiveThe main purpose of this paper is to compare and describe two collaboratories that used off-the-shelf tools and relatively modest resources to support the scientific activity of two biomedical research centers. The two centers were the Great Lakes Regional Center for AIDS Research (HIV/AIDS Center) and the New York University Oral Cancer Research for Adolescent and Adult Health Promotion Center (Oral Cancer Center).MethodsIn each collaboratory, we used semistructured interviews, surveys, and contextual inquiry to assess user needs and define the technology requirements. We evaluated and selected commercial software applications by comparing their feature sets with requirements and then pilot-testing the applications. Local and remote support staff cooperated in the implementation and end user training for the collaborative tools. Collaboratory staff evaluated each implementation by analyzing utilization data, administering user surveys, and functioning as participant observers.ResultsThe HIV/AIDS Center primarily required real-time interaction for developing projects and attracting new participants to the center; the Oral Cancer Center, on the other hand, mainly needed tools to support distributed and asynchronous work in small research groups. The HIV/AIDS Center’s collaboratory included a center-wide website that also served as the launch point for collaboratory applications, such as NetMeeting, Timbuktu Conference, PlaceWare Auditorium, and iVisit. The collaboratory of the Oral Cancer Center used Groove and Genesys Web conferencing. The HIV/AIDS Center was successful in attracting new scientists to HIV/AIDS research, and members used the collaboratory for developing and implementing new research studies. The Oral Cancer Center successfully supported highly distributed and asynchronous research, and the collaboratory facilitated real-time interaction for analyzing data and preparing publications.ConclusionsThe two collaboratory implementations demonstrated the feasibility of supporting biomedical research centers using off-the-shelf commercial tools, but they also identified several barriers to successful collaboration. These barriers included computing platform incompatibilities, network infrastructure complexity, variable availability of local versus remote IT support, low computer and collaborative software literacy, and insufficient maturity of available collaborative software. Factors enabling collaboratory use included collaboration incentives through funding mechanism, a collaborative versus competitive relationship of researchers, leadership by example, and tools well matched to tasks and technical progress. Integrating electronic collaborative tools into routine scientific practice can be successful but requires further research on the technical, social, and behavioral factors influencing the adoption and use of collaboratories.