Is your organizational culture fit for business process management?

All processes are modeled, all process metrics defined, all process support systems are set up; yet still, processes are not running smoothly and departmental silos are more present than ever. Both practitioners and academics tell the same story. A successful business process management (BPM) implementation goes beyond using the right methods and putting the right systems in place. In fact, an important success factor for BPM is establishing the right organizational culture, that is, a culture that supports the achievement and maintenance of efficient and effective business processes.

How fit is your organizational culture for business process management?

While business transformations often primarily focus on technological and methodological solutions, there is consensus that having the right organizational culture is critical for the successful change of business processes.

1st International Workshop on Secure and Privacy-Aware Information Management in eHealth

Information security and privacy in the healthcare domain is a complex and challenging problem for computer scientists, social scientists, law experts and policy makers. Appropriate healthcare provision requires specialized knowledge, is information intensive and much patient information is of a particularly sensitive nature. Electronic health record systems provide opportunities for information sharing which may enhance healthcare services, for both individuals and populations. However, appropriate information management measures are essential for privacy preservation...

The security and privacy of usage policies and provenance logs in an Information Accountability Framework

The potential benefits of shared eHealth records systems are promising for the future of improved healthcare. However, the uptake of such systems is hindered by concerns over the security and privacy of patient information. The use of Information Accountability and so called Accountable-eHealth (AeH) systems has been proposed to balance the privacy concerns of patients with the information needs of healthcare professionals. However, a number of challenges remain before AeH systems can become a reality. Among these is the need to protect the information stored in the usage policies and provenance logs used by AeH systems to define appropriate use of information and hold users accountable for their actions. In this paper, we discuss the privacy and security issues surrounding these accountability mechanisms, define valid access to the information they contain, discuss solutions to protect them, and verify and model an implementation of the access requirements as part of an Information Accountability Framework.

Culture in Business Process Management: How cultural values determine BPM success

There is consensus among practitioners and academics that culture is a critical factor that is able to determine success or failure of BPM initiatives. Yet, culture is a topic that seems difficult to grasp and manage. This may be the reason for the overall lack of guidance on how to address this topic in practice. We have conducted in-depth research for more than three years to examine why and how culture is relevant to BPM. In this chapter, we introduce a framework that explains the role of culture in BPM. We also present the relevant cultural values that compose a BPM culture, and we introduce a tool to examine the supportiveness of organizational cultures for BPM. Our research results provide the basis for further empirical analyses on the topic and support practitioners in the management of culture as an important factor in BPM initiatives.

2nd International Workshop on Secure and Privacy-Aware Information Management in eHealth

Information security and privacy in the healthcare domain is a complex and challenging problem for computer scientists, social scientists, law experts and policy makers. Appropriate healthcare provision requires specialized knowledge, is information intensive and much patient information is of a particularly sensitive nature. Electronic health record systems provide opportunities for information sharing which may enhance healthcare services, for both individuals and populations. However, appropriate information management measures are essential for privacy preservation...

Conceptual information systems discussed through an IT-security tool

Conceptual Information Systems are based on a formalization of the concept of "concept" as it is discussed in traditional philosophical logic. This formalization supports a human-centered approach to the development of Information Systems. We discuss this approach by means of an implemented Conceptual Information System for supporting IT security management in companies and organizations.

Formal validation of automated policy refinement in the management of network security systems

Policy hierarchies and automated policy refinement are powerful approaches to simplify administration of security services in complex network environments. A crucial issue for the practical use of these approaches is to ensure the validity of the policy hierarchy, i.e. since the policy sets for the lower levels are automatically derived from the abstract policies (defined by the modeller), we must be sure that the derived policies uphold the high-level ones. This paper builds upon previous work on Model-based Management, particularly on the Diagram of Abstract Subsystems approach, and goes further to propose a formal validation approach for the policy hierarchies yielded by the automated policy refinement process. We establish general validation conditions for a multi-layered policy model, i.e. necessary and sufficient conditions that a policy hierarchy must satisfy so that the lower-level policy sets are valid refinements of the higher-level policies according to the criteria of consistency and completeness. Relying upon the validation conditions and upon axioms about the model representativeness, two theorems are proved to ensure compliance between the resulting system behaviour and the abstract policies that are modelled.

Reinforcing the security of corporate information resources:a critical review of the role of the acceptable use policy

Increasingly users are seen as the weak link in the chain, when it comes to the security of corporate information. Should the users of computer systems act in any inappropriate or insecure manner, then they may put their employers in danger of financial losses, information degradation or litigation, and themselves in danger of dismissal or prosecution. This is a particularly important concern for knowledge-intensive organisations, such as universities, as the effective conduct of their core teaching and research activities is becoming ever more reliant on the availability, integrity and accuracy of computer-based information resources. One increasingly important mechanism for reducing the occurrence of inappropriate behaviours, and in so doing, protecting corporate information, is through the formulation and application of a formal ‘acceptable use policy (AUP). Whilst the AUP has attracted some academic interest, it has tended to be prescriptive and overly focussed on the role of the Internet, and there is relatively little empirical material that explicitly addresses the purpose, positioning or content of real acceptable use policies. The broad aim of the study, reported in this paper, is to fill this gap in the literature by critically examining the structure and composition of a sample of authentic policies – taken from the higher education sector – rather than simply making general prescriptions about what they ought to contain. There are two important conclusions to be drawn from this study: (1) the primary role of the AUP appears to be as a mechanism for dealing with unacceptable behaviour, rather than proactively promoting desirable and effective security behaviours, and (2) the wide variation found in the coverage and positioning of the reviewed policies is unlikely to be fostering a coherent approach to security management, across the higher education sector.

SKMA - A Key Management Architecture for SCADA Systems

Supervisory Control And Data Acquisition (SCADA) systems are widely used in the management of critical infrastructure such as electricity and water distrubution systems. Currently there is little understanding of how to best protect SCADA systems from malicious attacks. We review the constraints and requirements for SCADA security and propose a suitable architecture (SKMA) for secure SCADA communications. The architecture includes a proposed key management protocol (SKMP). We compare the architecture with a previous proposal from Sandia Labs.

SELinux policy management framework for HIS

Health Information Systems (HIS) make extensive use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT). The use of ICT aids in improving the quality and efficiency of healthcare services by making healthcare information available at the point of care (Goldstein, Groen, Ponkshe, and Wine, 2007). The increasing availability of healthcare data presents security and privacy issues which have not yet been fully addressed (Liu, Caelli, May, and Croll, 2008a). Healthcare organisations have to comply with the security and privacy requirements stated in laws, regulations and ethical standards, while managing healthcare information. Protecting the security and privacy of healthcare information is a very complex task (Liu, May, Caelli and Croll, 2008b). In order to simplify the complexity of providing security and privacy in HIS, appropriate information security services and mechanisms have to be implemented. Solutions at the application layer have already been implemented in HIS such as those existing in healthcare web services (Weaver et al., 2003). In addition, Discretionary Access Control (DAC) is the most commonly implemented access control model to restrict access to resources at the OS layer (Liu, Caelli, May, Croll and Henricksen, 2007a). Nevertheless, the combination of application security mechanisms and DAC at the OS layer has been stated to be insufficient in satisfying security requirements in computer systems (Loscocco et al., 1998). This thesis investigates the feasibility of implementing Security Enhanced Linux (SELinux) to enforce a Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) policy to help protect resources at the Operating System (OS) layer. SELinux provides Mandatory Access Control (MAC) mechanisms at the OS layer. These mechanisms can contain the damage from compromised applications and restrict access to resources according to the security policy implemented. The main contribution of this research is to provide a modern framework to implement and manage SELinux in HIS. The proposed framework introduces SELinux Profiles to restrict access permissions over the system resources to authorised users. The feasibility of using SELinux profiles in HIS was demonstrated through the creation of a prototype, which was submitted to various attack scenarios. The prototype was also subjected to testing during emergency scenarios, where changes to the security policies had to be made on the spot. Attack scenarios were based on vulnerabilities common at the application layer. SELinux demonstrated that it could effectively contain attacks at the application layer and provide adequate flexibility during emergency situations. However, even with the use of current tools, the development of SELinux policies can be very complex. Further research has to be made in order to simplify the management of SELinux policies and access permissions. In addition, SELinux related technologies, such as the Policy Management Server by Tresys Technologies, need to be researched in order to provide solutions at different layers of protection.

PhD forum : multiple camera management using wide base-line matching

Manual calibration of large and dynamic networks of cameras is labour intensive and time consuming. This is a strong motivator for the development of automatic calibration methods. Automatic calibration relies on the ability to find correspondences between multiple views of the same scene. If the cameras are sparsely placed, this can be a very difficult task. This PhD project focuses on the further development of uncalibrated wide baseline matching techniques.