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Today's database management systems implement sophisticated access control mechanisms to prevent unauthorized access and modifications. For instance, this is an important basic requirement for SOX (Sarbanes‐Oxley Act) compliance, whereby every past transaction has to be traceable at any time. However, malicious database administrators may still be able to bypass the security mechanisms in order to make hidden modifications to the database. This paper aims to address these issues.

In this paper the authors define a novel signature of a B⁺‐tree, a widely‐used storage structure in database management systems, and propose its utilization for supporting the logging in databases. This additional logging mechanism is especially useful in conjunction with forensic techniques that directly target the underlying tree‐structure of an index. Several techniques for applying this signature in the context of digital forensics on B⁺‐trees are proposed in the course of this paper. Furthermore, the authors' signature can be used to generate exact copies of an index for backup purposes, thereby enabling the owner to completely restore data, even on the structural level.

For database systems in enterprise environments, compliance to regulatory standards such as SOX (Sarbanes‐Oxley Act), whereby every past transaction has to be traceable at any time, is a fundamental requirement. Today's database management systems usually implement sophisticated access control mechanisms to prevent unauthorized access and modifications. Nonetheless malicious database administrators would be able to bypass the security mechanisms in order to make modifications to the database, while covering their tracks.

In this paper, the authors demonstrate how the tree structure of the underlying store engine can be used to enhance forensic logging mechanisms of the database. They define a novel signature for B⁺‐trees, which are used by the InnoDB storage engine. This signature stores the structure of database storage files and can help in reconstructing previous versions of the file for forensic purposes. Furthermore, the authors' signature can be used to generate exact copies of an index for backup purposes, thus enabling the owner to completely restore data, even on the structural level. The authors applied their concept to four real‐life scenarios in order to evaluate its effectiveness.

Analyze patterns of co-authorship in hospitality and tourism (H&T) research using bibliometric methods. The purpose of this paper is to answer three questions related to collaborative practices, the number of authors, the order of signatures and the role of the corresponding author.

The methodology is based on the bibliometric techniques of authorship analyzes published in leading H&T journals. Evaluative techniques provide longitudinal evidence of the evolution of some indicators of authors’ collaboration: the percentage of alphabetized authorships; the percentage of articles were the most relevant author signs in the first, middle or last position; and the position of the corresponding author in the by-line.

First, the collaborative nature of H&T research is confirmed; almost 80% of articles in the sample are co-authored. Second, over the past 30 years, the alphabetized signature model has been in decline in this field. Today, about 20% of articles indexed in JCR journals are signed alphabetically. Third, the first author’s placement is less consistent than that of the corresponding author.

This work provides relevant information on researchers’ authorship habits that may help evaluators assign credit and accountability and avoid malpractice in the authorial assignment.

This study explores the habits of researchers who collaborate to improve their productivity, impact and reputation. This is often linked to facilitating access to research funding and obtaining recognition from incentive systems. Yet, no research specifically examines trends in signature order or the corresponding author’s role in the H&T field.

Despite the presence of electronic medical records systems, traditional paper-based methods are often used in many countries to document data and eliminate medical record deficiencies. These methods waste patient and hospital resources. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the traditional deficiency management system and determine the requirements of an electronic deficiency management system in settings that currently use paper records alongside electronic hospital information systems.

This mixed-method study was performed in three phases. First, the traditional process of medical records deficiency management was qualitatively evaluated. Second, the accuracy of identifying deficiencies by the traditional and redesigned checklists was compared. Third, the requirements for an electronic deficiency management system were discussed in focus group sessions.

Problems in the traditional system include inadequate guidelines, incomplete procedures for evaluating sheets and subsequent delays in activities. Problems also included the omission of some vital data elements and a lack of feedback about the documentation deficiencies of each documenter. There was a significant difference between the mean number of deficiencies identified by traditional and redesigned checklists (p < 0.0001). The authors proposed an electronic deficiency management system based on redesigned checklists with improved functionalities such as discriminating deficiencies based on the documenter’s role, providing systematic feedback and generating automatic reports.

Previous studies only examined the positive effect of audit and feedback methods to enhance the documentation of data elements in electronic and paper medical records. The authors propose an electronic deficiency management system for medical records to solve those problems. Health-care policymakers, hospital managers and health information systems developers can use the proposed system to manage deficiencies and improve medical records documentation.

Aims to address some of the problems that arise when signing digital documents that contain dynamic content.

Briefly introduces the problem of signing digital documents with dynamic content and discusses possible locations for signature functionality in a computer system. Outlines existing solutions to the problems and introduces a novel solution. Finally, discusses issues and unresolved problems.

The suggested solution requires all document handling applications to possess application awareness of the digital signature program in order to function properly. Every application must implement a COM interface and register itself in the Registry, in a locale specific to the digital signature program to sign the digital document.

Provides a new solution to the problem of digitally signing a digital document.

Dubai’s Electronic Transactions Law (“ETL”) is designed to stimulate E‐commerce in the emirate by improving the authenticity and integrity of electronic transactions. The ETL recognizes the legal validity of electronic documents and electronic signatures as acceptable substitutes for paper documents and ink signatures, respectively. Accordingly, electronic records may be used to comply with a statutory writing requirement, original document requirement and retention requirement, and an electronic signature attached to an electronic document may be used to comply with a statutory requirement for a paper‐and‐ink signature. If all parties are in agreement, a contract may be in electronic form and is just as legally enforceable as a written one. The ETL does not mandate Dubai’s governmental agencies to utilize electronic documents, but they may elect to do so. The ETL has created a compulsory system of licensing of Certification Authorities (“CA”). Their role is to ascertain the identity of a subscriber and to attest in an issued Certificate that the electronic signature used by that subscriber belongs to him. The ETL contains a list of computer crimes. The statute establishes a sound framework for E‐commerce, but it could be improved by adding consumer protections, more computer crimes, mandatory Egovernment, I.T. courts and long‐arm jurisdiction. The ETL’s exclusion of wills should be eliminated.

The objective of this paper is to investigate the legal and technical reasons why a declaration of will, denoted by a digital signature, can be cancelled and how this cancellation can be technically achieved.

Proposes a technical framework for establishing a signature revocation mechanism based on special data structures, the signature revocation tokens (SRT), and investigates the alternatives for disseminating the signature status information (SSI) to the relying parties.

A relying party has to take into consideration the possible existence of a signature revocation, in order to decide on the validity of a digital signature. A scheme based on a central public repository for the archival and distribution of signature revocation tokens exhibits significant advantages against other alternatives.

Identifies various intrinsic problems of the digital signature creation process that raise several questions on whether the signer performs a conscious and wilful act, although he/she is held liable for this action. The law faces the eventual right of the signer to claim a revocation of a previously made declaration of will, especially in cases of an error, fraud or duress.

The purpose of this paper is to propose a self‐immune automated signature generation (SISG) for polymorphic worms which is able to work well, even while being attacked by any types of malicious adversary and produces global‐suited signatures other than local‐suited signatures for its distributed architecture. Through experimentations, the method is thereafter evaluated.

The ideal worm signature exist in each copy of the corresponding worm, but never in other worm categories and normal network traffic. SISG compares each worm copy and extract the same components, then produces the worm signature from the components which must achieve low‐false positive and low‐false negative. SISG is immune from the most attacks by filtering the harmful noise made by malicious adversaries before signature generation.

NOP sled, worm body and descriptor are not good to be signature because they can be confused intricately by polymorphic engines. Protocol frames may not suit to be signature for the anti‐automated signature generation attacks. Exploit bytes is the essential part of an ideal worm signature and it can be extracted by SISG exactly.

The paper proposes a SISG for polymorphic worms which is able to work well even while being attacked by any types of malicious adversary and produces global‐suited signatures other than local‐suited signatures for its distributed architecture.

Independent directors are important corporate decision participants and makers. Based on the Chinese cultural background, this paper interprets the listing order of independent directors as independent directors’ status, exploring their influence on the corporate research and development (R&D) behavior.

This paper studies A-share listed firms in China from 2008 to 2018 as the sample. The main method is ordinary least square (OLS) regression. We also use other methods to deal with endogenous problems, such as the firm fixed effect method, change model method, two-stage instrumental variable method, and Heckman two-stage method.

(1) Higher independent directors’ status attribute to more effective exertion of supervision and consultation function, and positively enhance the corporate R&D investment. The increase of the independent director’ status by one standard deviation will increase the R&D investment by 4.6%. (2) The above effect is more influential in firms with stronger traditional culture atmosphere, higher information opacity and higher performance volatility. (3) High-status independent directors promote R&D investment by improving the scientificity of R&D evaluation and reducing information asymmetry. (4) The enhancing effect of independent director’ status on R&D investment is positively associated with the firm’s patent output and market value.

This paper contributes to understanding the relationship between the independent directors’ status and their duty execution from an embedded cultural background perspective. The findings of the study enlighten the improvement of corporate governance efficiency and the healthy development of the capital market.

Suggests that for electronic commerce to thrive among parties who have never met each other, trust must become a commodity item. Certification authorities (CAs) are the standard mechanism by which online entities can identify one another. The policies and practices followed by a CA are just as important as the basic security of the electronic commerce network. This recognition is now standard, and “trust models” are emerging wherein diverse online business partners can trust one another, through the mutual recognition of their respective CAs. Overviews security and trust in electronic commerce. Discusses the role of certificates, with particular reference to the Australian Public Key Authentication Framework. Presents a vision for electronic commerce, premissed on electronic trust as a commodity.

Commonly used rent indices are based on average developments or expert opinions. Such indices often suffer from compositional biases or low data coverage. The purpose of this paper is to overcome these challenges using the authors' approach.

The authors construct a quality-adjusted rent index for the office market in Oslo using detailed data from 14,171 rental contracts.

The authors show that compositional biases can have a large impact on rental price developments. By adding building-fixed effects to a standard hedonic regression model, the authors show that the explanatory power increases considerably. Furthermore, indices excluding location-specific information, or which include less granular location controls than at the building level, portray quite a different picture of rent developments than indices that do take this into account. The authors also exploit information on contract signature date and find that a more timely detection of turning points can be achieved by using the signature date instead of the more typically used start date of the lease.

The study is confined to Norwegian data, and an avenue for future research would be to explore if similar results are obtained for other countries. A weakness with the paper is that authors' do not observe quality changes over time, such as renovation. Controlling for time-varying and unit-specific attributes in hedonic models for the commercial real estate (CRE) market would be useful to purge indices further for compositional effects and unobserved heterogeneity. While the authors do control for building-fixed effects, there are additional variations within a building (floor, view, sunlight, etc.) that the authors do not capture. Studies that could control for this would certainly be welcome, both in order to estimate the value of such amenities and to see how it affects estimated rent developments. Another promising avenue for future research is to link data on rental contracts in the CRE market with firm-specific information in order to explore how firm profitability and liquidity may affect rental contracts.

The authors show that the hedonic index yields a sharper fall in rents after the global financial crisis and more muted developments in the period between 2013 and 2015 than the average rent index. The results show that rents have followed their estimated equilibrium closely and have re-adjusted quickly in periods of deviation. From a financial stability perspective, the risk of a sharp fall in rents is reduced because rents often are in line with their fundamentals.

The authors find that a more timely detection of turning points can be achieved by using information on the signature date. This is an important finding. The financial system is heavily exposed toward CRE, and timely detection of turning points is critical for policymakers.

The financial system is heavily exposed toward the commercial real estate market and timely detection of turning points is of major importance to policymakers. Finally, the authors use our quality-adjusted rent index as the dependent variable in an error correction model. The authors find that employment and stock of offices are important explanatory variables. Moreover, the results show that rents have followed their estimated equilibrium path.