Survival and Sensemaking: Organizational Resilience in a Wall Street Trading Room After 9/11

How do organizations cope with extreme uncertainty? The existing literature is divided on this issue: some argue that organizations deal best with uncertainty in the environment by reproducing it in the organization, whereas others contend that the orga nization should be protected from the environment. In this paper we study the case of a Wall Street investment bank that lost its entire office and trading technology in the terrorist attack of September 11 th. The traders survived, but were forced to relocate to a makeshift trading room in New Jersey. During the six months the traders spent outside New York City, they had to deal with fears and insecurities inside the company as well as outside it: anxiety about additional attacks, questions of professional identity, doubts about the future of the firm, and ambiguities about the future re-location of the trading room. The firm overcame these uncertainties by protecting the traders' identities and their ability to engage in sensemaking. The organization held together through a leadership style that managed ambiguities and created the conditions for new solutions to emerge.

Discrete devaluations and multiple equilibria in a first generation model of currency crises

The first generation models of currency crises have often been criticized because they predict that, in the absence of very large triggering shocks, currency attacks should be predictable and lead to small devaluations. This paper shows that these features of first generation models are not robust to the inclusion of private information. In particular, this paper analyzes a generalization of the Krugman-Flood-Garber (KFG) model, which relaxes the assumption that all consumers are perfectly informed about the level of fundamentals. In this environment, the KFG equilibrium of zero devaluation is only one of many possible equilibria. In all the other equilibria, the lack of perfect information delays the attack on the currency past the point at which the shadow exchange rate equals the peg, giving rise to unpredictable and discrete devaluations.

Resolving identities: Successive crises in a trading room after 9/11

How do organizations cope with extreme uncertainty? The existing literatureis divided on this issue: some argue that organizations deal best withuncertainty in the environment by reproducing it in the organization, whereasothers contend that the orga nization should be protected from theenvironment. In this paper we study the case of a Wall Street investment bankthat lost its entire office and trading technology in the terrorist attack ofSeptember 11 th. The traders survived, but were forced to relocate to amakeshift trading room in New Jersey. During the six months the traders spentoutside New York City, they had to deal with fears and insecurities insidethe company as well as outside it: anxiety about additional attacks,questions of professional identity, doubts about the future of the firm, andambiguities about the future re-location of the trading room. The firmovercame these uncertainties by protecting the traders identities and theirability to engage in sensemaking. The organization held together through aleadership style that managed ambiguities and created the conditions for newsolutions to emerge.

Riding the South Sea bubble

This paper presents a case study of a well-informed investor in the South Sea bubble. We argue that Hoare's Bank, a fledgling West End London banker, knew that a bubble was in progress and nonetheless invested in the stock; it was profitable to "ride the bubble." Using a unique dataset on daily trades, we show that this sophisticated investor was not constrained by institutional factors such as restrictions on short sales or agency problems. Instead, this study demonstrates that predictable investor sentiment can prevent attacks on a bubble; rational investors may only attack when some coordinating event promotes joint action.

Psychosocial analysis of the collective processes in the United States after September 11

This article studies alterations in the values, attitudes, and behaviors that emerged among U.S. citizens as a consequence of, and as a response to, the attacks of September 11, 2001. The study briefly examines the immediate reaction to the attack, before focusing on the collective reactions that characterized the behavior of the majority of the population between the events of 9/11 and the response to it in the form of intervention in Afghanistan. In studying this period an eight-phase sequential model (Botcharova, 2001) is used, where the initial phases center on the nation as the ingroup and the latter focus on the enemy who carried out the attack as the outgroup. The study is conducted from a psychosocial perspective and uses "social identity theory" (Tajfel & Turner, 1979, 1986) as the basic framework for interpreting and accounting for the collective reactions recorded. The main purpose of this paper is to show that the interpretation of these collective reactions is consistent with the postulates of social identity theory. The application of this theory provides a different and specific analysis of events. The study is based on data obtained from a variety of rigorous academic studies and opinion polls conducted in relation to the events of 9/11. In line with social identity theory, 9/11 had a marked impact on the importance attached by the majority of U.S. citizens to their identity as members of a nation. This in turn accentuated group differentiation and activated ingroup favoritism and outgroup discrimination (Tajfel & Turner, 1979, 1986). Ingroup favoritism strengthened group cohesion, feelings of solidarity, and identification with the most emblematic values of the U.S. nation, while outgroup discrimination induced U.S. citizens to conceive the enemy (al-Qaeda and its protectors) as the incarnation of evil, depersonalizing the group and venting their anger on it, and to give their backing to a military response, the eventual intervention in Afghanistan. Finally, and also in line with the postulates of social identity theory, as an alternative to the virtual bipolarization of the conflict (U.S. vs al-Qaeda), the activation of a higher level of identity in the ingroup is proposed, a group that includes the United States and the largest possible number of countries¿ including Islamic states¿in the search for a common, more legitimate and effective solution.

Psychosocial analysis of the collective processes in the United States after September 11

This article studies alterations in the values, attitudes, and behaviors that emerged among U.S. citizens as a consequence of, and as a response to, the attacks of September 11, 2001. The study briefly examines the immediate reaction to the attack, before focusing on the collective reactions that characterized the behavior of the majority of the population between the events of 9/11 and the response to it in the form of intervention in Afghanistan. In studying this period an eight-phase sequential model (Botcharova, 2001) is used, where the initial phases center on the nation as the ingroup and the latter focus on the enemy who carried out the attack as the outgroup. The study is conducted from a psychosocial perspective and uses "social identity theory" (Tajfel & Turner, 1979, 1986) as the basic framework for interpreting and accounting for the collective reactions recorded. The main purpose of this paper is to show that the interpretation of these collective reactions is consistent with the postulates of social identity theory. The application of this theory provides a different and specific analysis of events. The study is based on data obtained from a variety of rigorous academic studies and opinion polls conducted in relation to the events of 9/11. In line with social identity theory, 9/11 had a marked impact on the importance attached by the majority of U.S. citizens to their identity as members of a nation. This in turn accentuated group differentiation and activated ingroup favoritism and outgroup discrimination (Tajfel & Turner, 1979, 1986). Ingroup favoritism strengthened group cohesion, feelings of solidarity, and identification with the most emblematic values of the U.S. nation, while outgroup discrimination induced U.S. citizens to conceive the enemy (al-Qaeda and its protectors) as the incarnation of evil, depersonalizing the group and venting their anger on it, and to give their backing to a military response, the eventual intervention in Afghanistan. Finally, and also in line with the postulates of social identity theory, as an alternative to the virtual bipolarization of the conflict (U.S. vs al-Qaeda), the activation of a higher level of identity in the ingroup is proposed, a group that includes the United States and the largest possible number of countries¿ including Islamic states¿in the search for a common, more legitimate and effective solution.

Journalistic practice in risk and crisis situations: Significant examples from Spain

In a democratic society, the media are central to the communication of risks and uncertainties to the public. This article presents 10 proposals for improving media coverage in social risk situations. The article focuses on the production logic of the media and its consequences for society. The proposals and the conclusions of this research are supported by an analysis of three Spanish cases: the risk implied by the Tarragona chemical complex (one of the biggest in Europe); the terrorist attacks on 11 March 2004 in Madrid; and the Carmel tunnel disaster in Barcelona on January 2005. The authors are participating in a research project on public perception of risk funded by the Spanish Education Ministry on public perception of risk (2004–2007 and 2007–2010).

Efficient self-synchronised blind audio watermarking system based on time domain and FFT amplitude modification

Many audio watermarking schemes divide the audio signal into several blocks such that part of the watermark is embedded into each of them. One of the key issues in these block-oriented watermarking schemes is to preserve the synchronisation, i.e. to recover the exact position of each block in the mark recovery process. In this paper, a novel time domain synchronisation technique is presented together with a new blind watermarking scheme which works in the Discrete Fourier Transform (DFT or FFT) domain. The combined scheme provides excellent imperceptibility results whilst achieving robustness against typical attacks. Furthermore, the execution of the scheme is fast enough to be used in real-time applications. The excellent transparency of the embedding algorithm makes it particularly useful for professional applications, such as the embedding of monitoring information in broadcast signals. The scheme is also compared with some recent results of the literature.

Robust Detection of Incumbents in Cognitive Radio Networks Using Groups

Cognitive radio is a wireless technology aimed at improvingthe efficiency use of the radio-electric spectrum, thus facilitating a reductionin the load on the free frequency bands. Cognitive radio networkscan scan the spectrum and adapt their parameters to operate in the unoccupiedbands. To avoid interfering with licensed users operating on a givenchannel, the networks need to be highly sensitive, which is achieved byusing cooperative sensing methods. Current cooperative sensing methodsare not robust enough against occasional or continuous attacks. This articleoutlines a Group Fusion method that takes into account the behavior ofusers over the short and long term. On fusing the data, the method is basedon giving more weight to user groups that are more unanimous in their decisions.Simulations have been performed in a dynamic environment withinterferences. Results prove that when attackers are present (both reiterativeor sporadic), the proposed Group Fusion method has superior sensingcapability than other methods.

A robust audio watermarking scheme based on MPEG 1 Layer 3 Compression

This paper describes an audio watermarking scheme based on lossy compression. The main idea is taken from an image watermarking approach where the JPEG compression algorithm is used to determine where and how the mark should be placed. Similarly, in the audio scheme suggested in this paper, an MPEG 1 Layer 3 algorithm is chosen for compression to determine the position of the mark bits and, thus, the psychoacoustic masking of the MPEG 1 Layer 3compression is implicitly used. This methodology provides with a high robustness degree against compression attacks. The suggested scheme is also shown to succeed against most of the StirMark benchmark attacks for audio.

ZigBee/ZigBee PRO security assessment based on compromised cryptographic keys

Sensor networks have many applications in monitoring and controlling of environmental properties such as sound, acceleration, vibration and temperature. Due to limitedresources in computation capability, memory and energy, they are vulnerable to many kinds of attacks. The ZigBee specification based on the 802.15.4 standard, defines a set of layers specifically suited to sensor networks. These layers support secure messaging using symmetric cryptographic. This paper presents two different ways for grabbing the cryptographic key in ZigBee: remote attack and physical attack. It also surveys and categorizes some additional attacks which can be performed on ZigBee networks: eavesdropping, spoofing, replay and DoS attacks at different layers. From this analysis, it is shown that some vulnerabilities still in the existing security schema in ZigBee technology.

Detección Robusta por Grupos de Señales Primarias

La radio cognitiva es una tecnología inalámbrica propuesta para usar eficientemente los recursos del espectro radioeléctrico permitiendo así reducir la carga existente en las bandas de frecuencia de uso libre.Las redes de radio cognitiva son capaces de escanear el espectro y adaptar sus parámetros para operar en las bandas no ocupadas. Para evitar interferir con usuarios con licencia que operan en un determinado canal, la sensibilidad de las redes tiene que ser muy alta. Ello se consigue con métodos de detección cooperativos. Los métodos de detección cooperativa actuales tienen una carencia de robustez ya sea frente a ataques puntuales o continuos.En este artículo presentamos un método de fusión por grupos que tiene presente el comportamiento de los usuarios a corto y largo plazo. Al realizar la fusión de los datos, el método se basa en dar mayor peso a los grupos de usuarios con mayor unanimidad en sus decisiones.Los resultados de las simulaciones prueban que en presencia de atacantes el método de fusión por grupos propuesto consigue una detección superior a otros métodos, cumpliendo los requisitos de sensibilidad mínimos de las redes de radio cognitiva incluso con un 12 de usuarios reiteradamente maliciosos o un 10 de atacantes puntuales.

A Secure Mobile-based Authentication System

Financial information is extremely sensitive. Hence, electronic banking must provide a robust system to authenticate its customers and let them access their data remotely. On the other hand, such system must be usable, affordable, and portable.We propose a challengeresponse based one-time password (OTP) scheme that uses symmetriccryptography in combination with a hardware security module. The proposed protocol safeguards passwords from keyloggers and phishing attacks.Besides, this solution provides convenient mobility for users who want to bank online anytime and anywhere, not just from their owntrusted computers.

Secure Dynamic MANET On-demand (SEDYMO) Routing Protocol

This paper describes the state of the art of secure ad hoc routing protocols and presents SEDYMO, a mechanism to secure a dynamic multihop ad hoc routing protocol. The proposed solution defeats internal and external attacks usinga trustworthiness model based on a distributed certification authority. Digital signatures and hash chains are used to ensure the correctness of the protocol. The protocol is compared with other alternatives in terms of security strength, energy efficiency and time delay. Both computational and transmission costs are considered and it is shown that the secure protocol overhead is not a critical factor compared to the high network interface cost.

On an IDS Model for Mobile Ad Hoc Networks

Manet security has a lot of open issues. Due to its character-istics, this kind of network needs preventive and corrective protection. Inthis paper, we focus on corrective protection proposing an anomaly IDSmodel for Manet. The design and development of the IDS are consideredin our 3 main stages: normal behavior construction, anomaly detectionand model update. A parametrical mixture model is used for behav-ior modeling from reference data. The associated Bayesian classi¯cationleads to the detection algorithm. MIB variables are used to provide IDSneeded information. Experiments of DoS and scanner attacks validatingthe model are presented as well.