Third-party Vendors Research Articles

Libraries and Diminished Patron Privacy During the COVID-19 Health Crisis

The COVID-19 health crisis has ushered in an era of great change in the way individuals and institutions function. With the contagious and deadly nature of COVID-19, libraries geared their efforts to increase access to and use of digital collections. With the introduction of stay-home orders, the option of adopting full virtual services became the go-to solution as a way of protecting library staff and users. Collaboration with third-party vendors that provide online library services heightened like never before. As libraries reopened at a later point in the global pandemic, library staff were asked to conduct health screenings for patrons entering the library and actively monitor whether patrons were socially distanced in the library. The drastic change to library operations due to the pandemic resulted in the increased collection of patrons’ personal information ranging from health information to location data coupled with library records. Much as librarians are traditionally and professionally committed to protecting their patrons’ privacy, undertaking activities like health screening in the absence of data transparency practices can potentially impact library users’ privacy. In this study, we investigated whether the 25 Association of Research Libraries (ARL) members with the largest number of titles held developed or modified their privacy policies in response to the increase in data collection during the COVID-19 health crisis. Privacy policies are living documents that should evolve with the times and thus should be updated or modified to reflect the current realities. We also examined whether pre-pandemic privacy policies, if any, of the surveyed 25 ARL member libraries are aligned with the privacy requirements outlined in the American Library Association (ALA) Privacy Toolkit (ALA 2014). Our results show that of the surveyed 25 ARL libraries, none of them developed a new library privacy policy or modified an existing one to reflect their data practices with specific regard to the new realities presented by the COVID-19 pandemic. The disregard for such adjustments to their privacy policies violated the principle of data transparency. Our results also show that, at the time of the survey, 4 of the surveyed 25 ARL members did not have library privacy policies.

Hurdles to Artificial Intelligence Deployment: Noise in Schemas and "Gold" Labels.

Despite frequent reports of imaging artificial intelligence (AI) that parallels human performance, clinicians often question the safety and robustness of AI products in practice. This work explores two underreported sources of noise that negatively affect imaging AI: (a) variation in labeling schema definitions and (b) noise in the labeling process. First, the overlap between the schemas of two publicly available datasets and a third-party vendor are compared, showing there is low agreement (<50%) between them. The authors also highlight the problem of label inconsistency, where different annotation schemas are selected for the same clinical prediction task; this results in inconsistent use of medical ontologies through intermingling or duplicate observations and diseases. Second, the individual radiologist annotations for the CheXpert test set are used to quantify noise in the labeling process. The analysis demonstrated that label noise varies by class, as agreement was high for pneumothorax and medical devices (percent agreement > 90%). Among low agreement classes (pneumonia, consolidation), the labels assigned as "ground truth" were unreliable, suggesting that the result of majority voting is highly dependent on which group of radiologists is assigned to annotation. Noise in labeling schemas and gold label annotations are pervasive in medical imaging classification and affect downstream clinical deployment. Possible solutions (eg, changes to task design, annotation methods, and model training) and their potential to improve trust in clinical AI are discussed. Keywords: Radiology AI, Dataset Creation, Noise in Datasets Supplemental material is available for this article. © RSNA, 2023 See also the commentary by Ursprung and Woitek in this issue.

Hardware Trojan Detection and Mitigation in NoC using Key authentication and Obfuscation Techniques

Today's Multiprocessor System-on-Chip (MPSoC) contains many cores and integrated circuits. Due to the current requirements of communication, we make use of Network-on-Chip (NoC) to obtain high throughput and low latency. NoC is a communication architecture used in the processor cores to transfer data from source to destination through several nodes. Since NoC deals with on-chip interconnection for data transmission, it will be a good prey for data leakage and other security attacks. One such way of attacking is done by a third-party vendor introducing Hardware Trojans (HTs) into routers of NoC architecture. This can cause packets to traverse in wrong paths, leak/extract information and cause Denial-of-Service (DoS) degrading the system performance. In this paper, a novel HT detection and mitigation approach using obfuscation and key-based authentication technique is proposed. The proposed technique prevents any illegal transitions between routers thereby protecting data from malicious activities, such as packet misrouting and information leakage. The proposed technique is evaluated on a 4x4 NoC architecture under synthetic traffic pattern and benchmarks, the hardware model is synthesized in Cadence Tool with 90nm technology. The introduced Hardware Trojan affects 8% of packets passing through infected router. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed technique prevents those 10-15% of packets infected from the HT effect. Our proposed work has negligible power and area overhead of 8.6% and 2% respectively.

Perceptions and Uses of Telehealth in the Care of Older Adults.

Background: Clinicians identify challenges in using telehealth with older adults, yet they continue to use it at high rates. We conducted a nation-wide survey of US clinicians to assess the views and uses of telehealth for older adults (≥65 years old); as well as the perceived advantages and challenges of telehealth and use of age-friendly telehealth practices. Materials/Methods: We distributed an online survey (Wallin Opinion Research) to assess the use of telehealth and clinicians' views on advantages/challenges of telehealth in care of older adults. Respondents were eligible if they were active US clinicians with self-attestation of patient population ≥10% older adults. The survey was distributed through established professional networks. Eligible respondents received a gift card for participation, fulfilled by a third-party vendor. Survey participation was voluntary. Completion of the survey was considered consent to participate. The study was reviewed and determined exempt by the WCG's IRB Affairs Department. SPSS Version-26 was used for descriptive statistics. Results: Approximately 13,300 surveys were distributed and there were 7,246 (55%) respondents. Over half (56%) respondents were licensed independent practitioners. The majority of respondents practiced geriatric medicine (22%) or primary care (9.7%). The most common use was in hospitals (53%), long-term care facilities (47%), and outpatient (47%) settings. The majority of respondents (55%) selected "telehealth improves healthcare for older adults by enhancing engagement between stakeholders" as a top advantage. Fewer primary care clinicians (47%) reported sufficient support in the use of telehealth, as compared with clinicians in geriatrics (62%) or other specialties (60%). A majority (65%) of respondents reported use one or more age-friendly practice (40% often; 25% always). Only 5% of respondents reported that their telehealth program never utilized age-friendly practices. Discussion and Conclusion: Clinicians use telehealth in care of older adults, across clinical roles, sites, and purposes. Our survey results suggest perceived advantages of telehealth outweigh challenges, in care of older adults. This highlights an opportunity for guidance and resources to optimizing telehealth with older adults.

Practical Applications of eMortgage Adoption: Acceleration through the Pandemic

In <b><i>eMortgage Adoption: Acceleration through the Pandemic</i></b>, from the Spring 2022 issue of <b><i>The Journal of Structured Finance</i></b>, author <b>Mike Fratantoni</b> of the Mortgage Bankers Association explores the significant uptick in eMortgage adoption over the last few years. He outlines the legal and technological advances supporting this growth, including the passage of legislation like the federal ESIGN Act and the development of digital securitization methods. Fratantoni is quick to note, however, that multiple barriers discourage lenders from fully embracing the technology, such as initial costs to consumers versus profitability among early adopters, industry-specific practices like warehouse financing, and reliance on third-party vendors for transactions. Nevertheless, he draws on prior research on fintech adoption in comparable industries to plot the potential progression of eMortgage adoption and utilizes industry data to assess the impact of eMortgages on lender productivity. Fratantoni acknowledges the Covid-19 pandemic as one of the greatest motivators of eMortgage adoption, in part due to the necessity of nonphysical transactions and in part due to the swell of technology, like remote online notarization (RON), that supports eMortgage usage. He says that adoption will likely continue to increase for the foreseeable future due to competitive pressures, a desire to reduce cost, and the realities of operating in a post-Covid world. He urges investors to monitor how adoption will impact productivity in the years to come.

Modelling Students' Satisfaction with Computer-Based Assessment (CBA) Environments in Higher Education: The Roles of CBA Center Service Satisfaction and Perceived Trust

It has been extensively researched how satisfied students are with the vast majority of goods and services offered by educational institutions of higher learning. However, there appears to be a paucity of research on students' satisfaction with the facilities and services of computer-based assessment (CBA) centers in higher education institutions, especially when the centers are equipped and staffed by third-party vendors. The CBA centers are public and private examination centers in developing countries that administer computer-based tests for higher education and other external organizations. Although satisfaction with the services and facilities is essential, it has been asserted that having the feeling of trust when using the CBA is even more critical to the students. Trust is essential for the success of any technological advancement, especially in the field of education. Any educational technology that lacks the stakeholders' trust, regardless of how effective it may be, is doomed to fail to be adopted on a large scale. However, limited studies have investigated how students' trust in the CBA affects their satisfaction. Therefore, this study aims to model and analyze the roles of CBA center service satisfaction and perceived trust in the CBA in attaining overall satisfaction by exploring their roles in influencing student satisfaction. A research framework based on the updated information system success model (ISSM) is validated using a survey incorporating system quality, service quality, question content, the cost-effectiveness of CBA services, CBA center service satisfaction, and perceived trust. A total of 459 survey responses collected from three higher education institutions in Nigeria were analyzed using structural equation modelling. As a result, the findings confirmed that students' satisfaction with services at the CBA centers is a mediator between service quality, system quality, and overall satisfaction with CBA. The correlation between CBA centre service satisfaction and overall CBA satisfaction was also found to be the strongest, indicating that student satisfaction with the services and facilities at the CBA centre is crucial. CBA center managers and institutions can utilize the findings from this study to successfully implement the CBA. In enhancing students‘ CBA satisfaction, higher education institutions should consider focusing on the necessary steps towards improving the conditions of the CBA centers in terms of infrastructure and services rendered. Meanwhile, to increase student satisfaction besides enhancing the system and service quality and cost-effectiveness, institutions should seriously consider promoting the CBA to the students by highlighting the personal impact of the CBA in terms of trust by improving the quality and features of the CBA.

The 3rd Age

The adoption of third-party vendor (3PV) tolling is growing in the US, with agencies exploring several different models and often using lessons learned from the more established European market. Lev Pinelis, principal and founder of Toll Insight, which earlier this year held a conference on this specific topic, looks at the key considerations for the 3PV approach

Complete Genome Sequence of an African Raw Honey Bacterial Isolate, Bacillus safensis Strain AHB11.

We present the complete genome sequence of Bacillus safensis strain AHB11, which was isolated from African raw honey from Kajo Keji, South Sudan, that had been purchased from a third-party vendor. The genome is composed of a 3,697,357-bp chromosome and a 7,105-bp plasmid, collectively encompassing 3,699 predicted protein-coding sequences and 110 RNA genes.

Exploring telerobotic cardiac catheter ablation in a rural community hospital: A pilot study

Telerobotic surgery could improve access to specialty procedures such as cardiac catheter ablation in rural and underserved regions in the United States and worldwide. Advancements in telecommunications, internet infrastructure, and surgical robotics are lowering the technical hurdles for this future healthcare delivery paradigm. Nonetheless, important questions remain regarding the safe implementation of telerobotic surgery in rural community hospital settings. The purpose of this study was to pilot test a system and methods to explore telerobotic cardiac catheter ablation in a rural community hospital setting. We assembled a portable preclinical telerobotic catheter ablation system from commercial-grade components using third-party vendors. We then carried out 4 telerobotic surgery simulations with an urban surgeon and a rural community hospital operating room (OR) team spanning a distance of more than 2000 miles. Two challenge scenarios were incorporated into the simulations, including loss of network connection and cardiac perforation with subsequent life-threatening tamponade physiology. An ethnographic analysis was then performed. Interviews and observations suggested that rural OR teams readily adapt to the telesurgery context. However, participant perceptions of team trust, communication, and emergency management were significantly altered by the remote location of the surgeon. In addition, most participants believed the OR team would have been better equipped for the challenges had they received formal training or had prior experience with the procedure being simulated. We demonstrate the utility and feasibility of a system and methods for studying specialty telerobotic surgery in a rural hospital OR setting.

Challenges and Solutions during the COVID Pandemic for Patient Retention and Physician Engagement in the Phase 3 ATLAS Study of Apalutamide Added to Androgen Deprivation Therapy (ADT) in High-Risk Localized or Locally Advanced Prostate Cancer (HRLPC)

<h3>Purpose/Objective(s)</h3> The phase 3 ATLAS study (NCT02531516) is investigating if treatment intensification with apalutamide (APA) to neoadjuvant and adjuvant treatment with gonadotropin-releasing hormone agonist (GnRHa) and external beam radiation therapy (EBRT) improves metastasis-free survival (MFS) in high-risk patients (pts). To determine MFS improvement, long-term patient retention and physician engagement are critical. Here, we describe initiatives used for pt and physician participation, noting specific challenges related to pt retention during the COVID-19 pandemic, while maintaining trial integrity. <h3>Materials/Methods</h3> Eligible HRLPC pts (Gleason score [GS] ≥ 8 or 7; if GS 7, prostate-specific antigen ≥ 20 ng/mL; stage ≥ cT2c; ECOG PS 0/1; Charlson Comorbidity Index ≤ 3) stratified to GS, pelvic nodal status, use of brachytherapy boost, and region were randomized 1:1 to APA or placebo (PBO) plus GnRHa for 30 (28 d) treatment cycles. Treatment was applied neoadjuvant/concurrent to EBRT with APA 240 mg/d vs bicalutamide 50 mg/d for 4 cycles; 26 cycles are completed adjuvantly post EBRT with APA 240 mg/d vs PBO. To maximize pt retention to MFS primary end point, especially considering impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, retention initiatives that can be chosen by sites per local regulation are: reimbursing travel expenses, arranging travel for appointments, visiting nurse appointments for treatment management, using local labs and onsite radiology to reduce travel, using third-party vendors to maintain contact information, and regular pt newsletters. To support consistent physician engagement, initiatives include materials on pt retention, site newsletters, teleconferences on reducing pt engagement barriers, and training on study updates. <h3>Results</h3> Pts (N = 1503) were randomized at 266 sites in 24 countries (North America, Latin America, Europe, Asia). The study is ongoing. For patient retention, most sites (95%) are participating in travel reimbursement, coordination with local labs and onsite radiology, and pt newsletters; other program participation is varied. For physician engagement, all sites are receiving materials to retain pts and site newsletters. As of January 2022, 96% of patients remaining eligible for follow-up have been retained on the study. With the retention initiatives implemented, the overall dropout rate can be maintained below the expected and statistically acceptable limits. <h3>Conclusion</h3> Despite the COVID-19 pandemic, very low dropout rates have been observed. These initiatives have resulted in high levels of patient retention and physician engagement post treatment and aid in understanding how to enhance long-term clinical trial outcomes.

Complete Genome Sequence of Bacillus safensis Strain AHB2, Isolated from African Raw Honey from Kajo Keji, South Sudan.

We report the complete genome sequence of Bacillus safensis strain AHB2, isolated from African raw honey originating in Kajo Keji, South Sudan, and purchased from a third-party vendor. The genome consists of 3,785,324 bp encompassing 3,774 predicted protein-coding sequences and 183 RNA genes.

Overcoming Data Gaps in Sales Analysis

In the rapidly evolving global marketplace, businesses face the critical challenge of navigating through extensive sales data to derive actionable insights. This paper explores the complexities of aligning and analyzing sales data from various third-party vendors across different geographies, highlighting the significant impact of data misalignment and gaps on strategic decision-making.

The pros and cons of having a third-party vendor manage your business continuity programme

Whether starting from scratch or inheriting a business continuity programme that has struggled to meet management expectations, how does one choose the best path forward? When is the right time to leverage external resources, and how does one do so effectively? When should one look to outsource certain parts of the programme, and when does it make sense to rely completely on third-party vendors? This paper discusses the key information to know before making such decisions, providing readers with the tools they need to evaluate vendors properly before entering into a contract, thus helping organisations hire the ‘extra help’ they need.

Contributions ofThe Journal of Fixed Incometo Fixed-Income Analytics

In the summer of 1991, the first issue of <i>The Journal of Fixed Income</i> was published. More than 900 articles have been published in the journal since then, educating market participants with an understanding of the many complex fixed-income products developed over the 30 years that followed as well as introducing analytical concepts for fixed-income portfolio management that are used today by practitioners and are included in the analytics packages provided by third-party vendors. In this article, the author describes 72 articles that demonstrate the importance of the journal in advancing fixed-income analytics as well as in providing portfolio managers with insights to enhance portfolio returns by demonstrating the drivers of returns and where individuals can capitalize on opportunities in the market.

Intrusion Detection and Prevention Using Honeypot Network for Cloud Security

Abstract: The rapid increase in the number of users, there is a rise in issues related to hardware failure, web hosting, space and memory allocation of data, which is directly or indirectly leading to the loss of data. With the objective of providing services that are reliable, fast and low in cost, we turn to cloud-computing practices. With a tremendous development in this technology, there is ever increasing chance of its security being compromised by malicious users. A way to divert malicious traffic away from systems is by using Honeypot. It is a colossal strategy that has shown signs of improvement in security of systems. Keeping in mind the various legal issues one may face while deploying Honeypot on third-party cloud vendor servers, the concept of Honeypot is implemented in a file-sharing application which is deployed on cloud server. This paper discusses the detection attacks in a cloud-based environment as well as the use of Honeypot for its security, thereby proposing a new technique to do the same.

Hardware-Trojan Detection Based on the Structural Features of Trojan Circuits Using Random Forests

Recently, with the spread of Internet of Things (IoT) devices, embedded hardware devices have been used in a variety of everyday electrical items. Due to the increased demand for embedded hardware devices, some of the IC design and manufacturing steps have been outsourced to third-party vendors. Since malicious third-party vendors may insert malicious circuits, called hardware Trojans, into their products, developing an effective hardware-Trojan detection method is strongly required. In this paper, we propose 25 hardware-Trojan features focusing on the structure of trigger circuits for machine-learning-based hardware-Trojan detection. Combining the proposed features into 11 existing hardware-Trojan features, we totally utilize 36 hardware-Trojan features for classification. Then we classify the nets in an unknown netlist into a set of normal nets and Trojan nets based on a random-forest classifier. The experimental results demonstrate that the average true positive rate (TPR) becomes 64.2% and the average true negative rate (TNR) becomes 100.0%. They improve the average TPR by 14.8 points while keeping the average TNR compared to existing state-of-the-art methods. In particular, the proposed method successfully finds out Trojan nets in several benchmark circuits, which are not found by the existing method.

Digital Watermarking for Detecting Malicious Intellectual Property Cores in NoC Architectures

System-on-chip (SoC) developers utilize intellectual property (IP) cores from third-party vendors due to increasing design complexity, cost, as well as time-to-market constraints. A typical SoC consists of a wide variety of IP cores [such as processor, memory, controller, and field-programmable gate array (FPGA)] that interact using a network-on-chip (NoC). This global trend of designing SoCs using third-party IPs raises serious concerns about security vulnerabilities. Since NoC facilitates communication between all IPs in an SoC, NoC is the ideal place for any hardware Trojans to hide and launch a plethora of attacks. Due to the resource-constrained nature of SoCs, developing security solutions against such attacks is a major challenge. In particular, in an eavesdropping attack, a Trojan-infected router copies packets transferred through the NoC and reroutes the duplicated packets to an accompanying malicious application running on another IP in an attempt to extract confidential information. While authenticated encryption can thwart such attacks, it incurs unacceptable overhead in resource-constrained SoCs. In this article, we propose a lightweight alternative defense based on digital watermarking techniques. We develop theoretical models to provide security guarantees. Experiments using realistic SoC models and diverse applications demonstrate that our approach can significantly outperform state-of-the-art methods.

A Multidisciplinary Approach to Water Management and Legionella Prevention

<h3>Background</h3> Legionella and other waterborne pathogens are of great concern for healthcare systems. The Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) issued a memorandum requiring a reduction of Legionella and other opportunistic waterborne pathogens in healthcare facility water systems. A Water Management Team (WMT) was implemented in 2019 in a newly constructed 55-bed acute care facility due to lack of a formal program and to proactively prevent infection in the patient population. <h3>Methods</h3> An acute care facility collaborated with a third-party vendor to initiate a water management program (WMP). Key stakeholders collaborated and performed verification and validation strategies including environmental water sampling, water flushing, and active surveillance in high-risk areas. The first round of testing showed viable Legionella growth in multiple samples. The site implemented several actions to eliminate the viable Legionella without success. It was found that the Ultra-Violet light system that was installed on cold water prior to supplying the hot water loop was dropping chlorine levels from the city very low. A chlorine injection system was installed, and regularly scheduled water sampling was completed. The WMT collaborated to bring concerns and issues to key areas and departments as well as executive leadership to facilitate discussion and decision-making regarding the safety and operation of all potable water systems. <h3>Results</h3> Following the last intervention, the environmental water sampling showed no growth for viable Legionella. There were no reported hospital-acquired Legionella cases reported during this time frame. <h3>Conclusions</h3> A multidisciplinary WMP reduced the site's risk for healthcare associated Legionella as evidenced by results of water surveillance and supported by infection control surveillance. A WMP is a fundamental component to meet CMS mandates and address Legionella prevention.

An Electronic Data Capture Tool for Data Collection During Public Health Emergencies: Development and Usability Study.

BackgroundThe Discovery Critical Care Research Network Program for Resilience and Emergency Preparedness (Discovery PREP) partnered with a third-party technology vendor to design and implement an electronic data capture tool that addressed multisite data collection challenges during public health emergencies (PHE) in the United States. The basis of the work was to design an electronic data capture tool and to prospectively gather data on usability from bedside clinicians during national health system stress queries and influenza observational studies.ObjectiveThe aim of this paper is to describe the lessons learned in the design and implementation of a novel electronic data capture tool with the goal of significantly increasing the nation’s capability to manage real-time data collection and analysis during PHE.MethodsA multiyear and multiphase design approach was taken to create an electronic data capture tool, which was used to pilot rapid data capture during a simulated PHE. Following the pilot, the study team retrospectively assessed the feasibility of automating the data captured by the electronic data capture tool directly from the electronic health record. In addition to user feedback during semistructured interviews, the System Usability Scale (SUS) questionnaire was used as a basis to evaluate the usability and performance of the electronic data capture tool.ResultsParticipants included Discovery PREP physicians, their local administrators, and data collectors from tertiary-level academic medical centers at 5 different institutions. User feedback indicated that the designed system had an intuitive user interface and could be used to automate study communication tasks making for more efficient management of multisite studies. SUS questionnaire results classified the system as highly usable (SUS score 82.5/100). Automation of 17 (61%) of the 28 variables in the influenza observational study was deemed feasible during the exploration of automated versus manual data abstraction. The creation and use of the Project Meridian electronic data capture tool identified 6 key design requirements for multisite data collection, including the need for the following: (1) scalability irrespective of the type of participant; (2) a common data set across sites; (3) automated back end administrative capability (eg, reminders and a self-service status board); (4) multimedia communication pathways (eg, email and SMS text messaging); (5) interoperability and integration with local site information technology infrastructure; and (6) natural language processing to extract nondiscrete data elements.ConclusionsThe use of the electronic data capture tool in multiple multisite Discovery PREP clinical studies proved the feasibility of using the novel, cloud-based platform in practice. The lessons learned from this effort can be used to inform the improvement of ongoing global multisite data collection efforts during the COVID-19 pandemic and transform current manual data abstraction approaches into reliable, real time, and automated information exchange. Future research is needed to expand the ability to perform automated multisite data extraction during a PHE and beyond.

Building Resilient Data Ingestion Pipelines for Third-Party Vendor Data Integration

In this report, the author provides a review of the design and operation of the resilient data ingestion architecture with a particular emphasis on the issues associated with third-party data vendor integration. As more and more companies have made information a principal factor in their business strategies, it has become equally imperative to obtain external data in a coherent manner. This paper describes ways of handling Enhanced Data Ingestion Reliability Efficiency and Adaptability and other challenges such as Data quality Error Handling and Scalability.