Information privacy refers to the desire of individuals to control or have some influence over data about themselves. Advances in information technology have raised concerns about information privacy and its impacts, and have motivated Information Systems researchers to explore information privacy issues, including technical solutions to address these concerns. In this paper, we inform researchers about the current state of information privacy research in IS through a critical analysis of the IS literature that considers information privacy as a key construct. The review of the literature reveals that information privacy is a multilevel concept, but rarely studied as such. We also find that information privacy research has been heavily reliant on studentbased and USA-centric samples, which results in findings of limited generalizability. Information privacy research focuses on explaining and predicting theoretical contributions, with few studies in journal articles focusing on design and action contributions. We recommend that future research should consider different levels of analysis as well as multilevel effects of information privacy. We illustrate this with a multilevel framework for information privacy concerns. We call for research on information privacy to use a broader diversity of sampling populations, and for more design and action information privacy research to be published in journal articles that can result in IT artifacts for protection or control of information privacy.

http://ftp.misq.org/skin/frontend/default/misq/pdf/appendices/2011/BelangerCrosslerAppendices.pdf

Privacy in the digital age: a review of information privacy research in information systems

DAG-based attack and defense modeling: don’t miss the forest for the attack trees

Given the increasing dependence of our societies on networked information systems, the overall security of these systems should be measured and improved. Existing security metrics have generally focused on measuring individual vulnerabilities without considering their combined effects. Our previous work tackle this issue by exploring the causal relationships between vulnerabilities encoded in an attack graph. However, the evolving nature of vulnerabilities and networks has largely been ignored. In this paper, we propose a Dynamic Bayesian Networks (DBNs)-based model to incorporate temporal factors, such as the availability of exploit codes or patches. Starting from the model, we study two concrete cases to demonstrate the potential applications. This novel model provides a theoretical foundation and a practical framework for continuously measuring network security in a dynamic environment.

/pdf/measuring-network-security-using-dynamic-bayesian-network-4cizqhoxcw.pdf

Measuring network security using dynamic bayesian network

This paper presents the current state of the art on attack and defense modeling approaches that are based on directed acyclic graphs (DAGs). DAGs allow for a hierarchical decomposition of complex scenarios into simple, easily understandable and quantifiable actions. Methods based on threat trees and Bayesian networks are two well-known approaches to security modeling. However there exist more than 30 DAG-based methodologies, each having different features and goals. The objective of this survey is to present a complete overview of graphical attack and defense modeling techniques based on DAGs. This consists of summarizing the existing methodologies, comparing their features and proposing a taxonomy of the described formalisms. This article also supports the selection of an adequate modeling technique depending on user requirements.

DAG-Based Attack and Defense Modeling: Don't Miss the Forest for the Attack Trees

Given the increasing dependence of our societies on information systems, the overall security of these systems should be measured and improved. Existing work generally focuses on measuring individual vulnerabilities instead of measuring their combined effects. Recent research has explored the application of attack graphs and probabilistic security metrics to address this challenge. However, such work usually assumes metrics of individual vulnerabilities to be independently distributed and combines them in an arbitrary manner. They cannot address more realistic cases, such as exploiting one vulnerability makes another vulnerability easier to exploit. In this paper, we propose to model probability metrics based on attack graphs as a special Bayesian Network. This approach provides a sound theoretical foundation to such metrics. It can also provide the capabilities of using conditional probabilities to address the general cases of interdependency between vulnerabilities.

/pdf/measuring-network-security-using-bayesian-network-based-l2fv2qxrcj.pdf

Measuring Network Security Using Bayesian Network-Based Attack Graphs

Concerns for personal information privacy could be produced during information collection, transmission and handling. In information handling, privacy could be compromised from both inside and outside of organizations. Within an organization, private data are generally protected by organizations' privacy policies and the corresponding platforms for privacy practices. However, private data could still be misused intentionally or unintentionally by individuals who have legitimate accesses to them. In general, activities of a database operator form a stochastic process, and at different time, privacy intrusion behavior may show different features. In particular, one's past activities can help determine the natures of his/her current practices. In this paper, we propose to use dynamic Bayesian networks to model such temporal environments and detect any privacy intrusions happened within them.

Privacy intrusion detection using dynamic Bayesian networks

In information retrieval, we are interested in the information that is not only relevant but also novel. In this paper, we study how to boost novelty for biomedical information retrieval through probabilistic latent semantic analysis. We conduct the study based on TREC Genomics Track data. In TREC Genomics Track, each topic is considered to have an arbitrary number of aspects, and the novelty of a piece of information retrieved, called a passage, is assessed based on the amount of new aspects it contains. In particular, the aspect performance of a ranked list is rewarded by the number of new aspects reached at each rank and penalized by the amount of irrelevant passages that are rated higher than the novel ones. Therefore, to improve aspect performance, we should reach as many aspects as possible and as early as possible. In this paper, we make a preliminary study on how probabilistic latent semantic analysis can help capture different aspects of a ranked list, and improve its performance by re-ranking. Experiments indicate that the proposed approach can greatly improve the aspect-level performance over baseline algorithm Okapi BM25.

Boosting novelty for biomedical information retrieval through probabilistic latent semantic analysis

Dynamic multiagent probabilistic inference

Type 2 diabetes is growing worldwide due to population growth, increased rates of obesity, unhealthy diet, and physical inactivity. Risk assessment methods can effectively evaluate the risk of diabetes, and a healthy lifestyle can significantly reduce risk or prevent complications of type 2 diabetes. However, risk assessment alone has not significantly improved poor adherence to recommended medical interventions and lifestyle changes. This paper focuses on the challenge of nonadherence and posits that improving adherence requires tailoring interventions that explicitly consider the social determinants of health.

/pdf/conceptualizing-type-2-diabetes-and-its-management-34kmbltmwm.pdf

Conceptualizing type 2 diabetes and its management.

Multiply sectioned Bayesian networks (MSBNs) extend Bayesian networks (BNs) to graphical models that provide a coherent framework for probabilistic inference in cooperative multiagent distributed interpretation systems. Observation plays an important role in the inference with graphical models. Since observation of each observable variable has a cost, it would be helpful if we can find the most relevant variables to observe. In a probabilistic model, a Markov boundary of a variable provides a minimal set of variables that shields the variable from the influence of all other variables. However, the concept cannot be used directly for observation. First, it is generally intractable to verify conditional independencies in a probabilistic model. Second, the Markov boundary members may not be observable. Third, it is defined only for a single variable. Finally, it is not unique. By revising the concept to address these issues, we introduce the concept of observable Markov boundary of a set of nodes defined on d-separation of graphical models. The observable Markov boundary captures all relevant variables to observe for probabilistic inference with graphical models. In an MSBN, the observable Markov boundary of a set of nodes may span across all Bayesian subnets. We present an algorithm for cooperative computation of the observable Markov boundary of a set of nodes in an MSBN without revealing subnet structures.

Xiangdong An

Papers

Privacy intrusion detection using dynamic Bayesian networks

Boosting novelty for biomedical information retrieval through probabilistic latent semantic analysis

Dynamic multiagent probabilistic inference

Conceptualizing type 2 diabetes and its management.

Revising Markov boundary for multiagent probabilistic inference