Virtual Directory Research Articles

In Case You Haven't Heard…

While therapists appear to prefer virtual sessions over in‐person meetings, a significant proportion admit to being distracted while delivering care, according to a small survey of 600 therapists. A third admitted to providing lower‐quality care to clients during online sessions. Overall, 39% admitted to checking emails and social media while providing virtual care, and 16% reported substance use before or during sessions, MedPage Today reported May 11. OnlineTherapy.com, a virtual directory for teletherapists and counselors, conducted and published the survey. Therapists generally like online care: nearly half said they prefer virtual sessions over in‐person meetings. Video sessions provide therapists with a uniquely intimate look into their clients' daily lives, making it easier for them to assess their mental health. Nevertheless, in addition to the struggle to remain focused for therapists themselves, 56% of those surveyed said their clients are more easily distracted during virtual sessions, and 48% reported technological issues as a major hindrance to their practice.

Google hacking 101

Google provides penetration testers and hackers alike with a surprisingly powerful tool. It relentlessly indexes error messages, files in unprotected directories, log files and a plethora of other information useful to anyone wanting to probe the security weaknesses of a site. But specially crafted searches – the technique of Google hacking – will find all sites with known vulnerabilities, making Google a virtual directory of attackable sites. A weakness in your site will attract hackers who might otherwise never have heard of you. It's like advertising your weak points. Steve Mansfield-Devine examines the basic techniques of Google hacking – the so-called Google dorks – as well as simple countermeasures. If you're looking for weak security points in a website, forget NMAP, Nessus and all those tools of the pen-tester's trade. Your first stop should be something much more basic: Google.

A User Controlled Approach for Securing Sensitive Information in Directory Services

Enterprise directory services are commonly used in enterprise systems to store object information relating to employees, computers, contacts, etc. These stores can act as information providers or sources for authentication and access control de- cisions, and could potentially contain sensitive information. An insider attack, partic- ularly if carried out using administrative privileges, could compromise large amounts of directory information. We present two solutions for protecting directory services information from insider attacks. The first is a centralized approach utilizing a cus- tomized virtual directory server. The second is a distributed approach using existing key management infrastructure and a new component called a Personal Virtual Direc- tory Service. We explain how these solutions interact with existing directory services and client applications. We also show how impact to existing users, client applications, and directory services are minimized, and how we prevent insider attacks from revealing protected data. We compare and contrast both solutions, including potential tradeoffs, administrative overhead, and enterprise systems impact. Additionally, our solution is supported by implementation results showing the impact to client performance and directory storage capacity.

S-VFS: Searchable Virtual File System for an Intelligent Ubiquitous Storage

With advances in ubiquitous environments, user demand for easy data-lookup is growing rapidly. Not only users but intelligent ubiquitous applications also require data-lookup services for a ubiquitous computing framework. This paper proposes a backward-compatible, searchable virtual file system (S-VFS) for easy data-lookup. We add search functionality to the VFS, the de facto standard abstraction layer over the file system. Users can find a file by its attributes without remembering the full path. S-VFS maintains the attributes and the indexing structures in a normal file per partition. It processes queries and returns the results in a form of a virtual directory. S-VFS is the modified VFS, but uses legacy file systems without any modification. Since S-VFS supports full backward compatibility, users can even browse hierarchically with the legacy path name. We implement S-VFS in Linux kernel 2.6.7-21. Experiments with randomly generated queries demonstrate outstanding lookup performance with a small overhead for indexing.

A Framework for Internet-Based Interaction of Humans, Robots, and Responsive Environments Using Agent Technology

In this paper, a systematic framework for Internet-based interaction of humans, robots, and environments is proposed by using agent technology. The framework is validated by proposing the concept of slave agents, a virtual directory facilitator (VDF) to control the slave agents, and a responsive multiagent environment. It creates a robot control system in which humans, robots, and environments can interact without much prior knowledge. Finally, a number of experiments have been conducted successfully by adopting JadeLeap middleware and Foundation for Intelligent Physical Agents (FIPA) standard under the environment composed of a personal digital assistant (PDA), a home service robot-intelligent, sweeping security assistant companion (ISSAC), and a video camera network. Experimental results show that the proposed framework increases the availability of whole system, decreases the time for Internet connection of robots and user devices such as PDAs, and provides the responsiveness of environments.

Research on the security of national geospatial data clearinghouse based on ASP

On the basis of the authors' experiences of setting up an NGDC Web site, this paper attempts to present some significant aspects about the security of NGDC based on ASP. They include data storing, database maintenance, new technical support and so on. Firstly, this paper discusses how to provide the security of data which is saved in the hosts of NGDC. The security model of “Networks-DB Server-DB-DB Object” is also presented. In Windows NT Server, Internet Information Server (i. e., IIS) is in charge of transferring message and the management of Web sites. ASP is also based on IIS. The advantages of virtual directory technique provided by IIS are emphasized.

Creating a virtual materials and resources index for health education using the World Wide Web.

The Internet represents the principal system for distributing information worldwide, offering health educators a powerful communications medium. This article describes an assignment that teaches students how to use the World Wide Web (WWW). The first part provides an overview of the Internet, its principal services. browser software, and Netscape Navigator. The second part describes the assignment, complete with instructional objectives, computer facilities used to implement the strategy, and a summary of classroom and laboratory activities. The third part describes procedures for teaching students how to use the WWW. Students learn how to explore the WWW and to develop a customized virtual directory of health materials and resources using Netscape Navigator Bookmark tools. Recommendations on how the approach can be modified are offered.

Semantic file systems

A semantic file system is an information storage system that provides flexible associative access to the system's contents by automatically extracting attributes from files with file type specific transducers . Associative access is provided by a conservative extension to existing tree-structured file system protocols, and by protocols that are designed specifically for content based access. Compatiblity with existing file system protocols is provided by introducing the concept of a virtual directory . Virtual directory names are interpreted as queries, and thus provide flexible associative access to files and directories in a manner compatible with existing software. Rapid attribute-based access to file system contents is implemented by automatic extraction and indexing of key properties of file system objects. The automatic indexing of files and directories is called "semantic" because user programmable transducers use information about the semantics of updated file system objects to extract the properties for indexing. Experimental results from a semantic file system implementation support the thesis that semantic file systems present a more effective storage abstraction than do traditional tree structured file systems for information sharing and command level programming.