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In the new digital age, enterprises are facing an increasing global competition. In this paper, we first examine how Information Technology (IT) can play an important role in giving significant competitive advantage in the modern enterprises. The business value of IT is examined, as well as the limitations and the trade-offs that its applicability faces. Next, we present the basic principles for a successful IT strategy, considering the development of a long-term IT renovation plan, the strategic alignment of IT with the business strategy, and the adoption of an integrated, distributed, and interoperable IT platform. Finally, we examine how a highly functional and efficient IT organization can be developed.

Our methodological approach was based to the answers of the following questions: 1. Does IT still matter? 2. What is the business value created by IT along with the corresponding limitations and trade-offs? 3. How could a successful IT Strategy be build up? 4. How could an effective? T planning aligned with the business strategy be build up? 5. How could a homogenized and distributed corporate IT platform be developed? and finally, 6. How could a high-performance IT-enabled enterprise be build up?

The enterprises in order to succeed in the new digital area need to: 1. synchronize their IT strategy with their business strategy, 2. formulate a long-term IT strategy, 3. adopt IT systems and solutions that are implemented with elasticity, interoperability, distribution, and service-orientation. 4. keep a strategic direction towards the creation of an exceptional organization based on IT.

This paper is original with respect to the integrated approach the overall problem is examined. There is a prototype combined investigation of all perspectives for an effective enforcement of IT in a way that causes acceleration in competitive advantage when conducting business.

The continuous development of mobile platforms provides the opportunity to integrate and improve existing applications or to introduce new features to make life better. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the use of mobile platforms in civilization (museums) and present the design and the implementation of a mobile application that satisfies various design criteria. Through this application the visitor can navigate and tour virtually in the museum through a smartphone. In addition, features have been included in the application that make it easier for a user to visit the museum. First, we present the operating parameters and the aesthetic presentation of the application, which delimits usability and ease of access through the interfaces of a smartphone. Then we highlight the cloud features that were exploited in the application. Then, an extended evaluation of the mobile application is presented, that proves its high applicability and user acceptability.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the way technology affects the provision of prehospital emergency care, upgrading the quality of services offered and significantly reducing the risk of premature termination of the patients.

The paper presents the development of the eEKAB, a pilot emergency medical information system that simulates the main services offered by the Greek National Instant Aid Centre (EKAB). The eEKAB was developed on an agile system methodology. From a technical perspective, the features and the technology were mainly chosen to provide reliable and user-friendly interfaces that will attract many users. eEKAB is based on three important pillars for offering health care to the patients: the “On-time Incident Reporting”, the “On-time Arrival at the Incident” and “Transfer to the Health Center”. According to the literature review, the emergency medical services (EMS) systems that combine all the features are very few.

It reduces the total time of the EMS procedures and it allows for an easier management of EMS, by providing a better allocation of human resources and a better geographical distribution of ambulances. The evaluation displayed that it is a very helpful application for the ambulance drivers as it reduces the ambulance response time to arrive in the patient's location and contributes significantly to the general performance of the prehospital medical care system. Also, the survey verified the importance of implementing eEKAB on a larger scale beyond the pilot usage. It is worth mentioning that the younger ambulance drivers had a more positive view for the purpose of the application.

The paper clearly identifies implications for further research. Regarding interoperability, the mobile app cooperates with the Operational Center of EKAB, while further collaboration could be achieved with other operational ambulance handling center, mainly, of the private sector. The system can evolve to include better communications among the EKAB departments. Particularly, the ambulance crew as well as the doctors should be informed with more incident features such as the emergency signal so that they know whether to open the siren, the patient's name, etc. The authors are currently working on implementing some features to provide effective medical health services to the patient in the ambulance.

eEKAB will have very significant implications in case of its enforcement, such as the reduction of the total time of EMS procedures with a corresponding reduction of the operating costs of an accident management system and an ambulance fleet handling system while in parallel informing in time the doctors/clinics. It will provide better distribution of ambulances as well as of total human resources. It will greatly assist ambulance drivers, while reducing ambulance response time to reach the patient's location. In other words, the authors will have a better performance of the whole prehospital care system.

Providing emergency care before the hospital is of great importance for upgrading the quality of health services provided at the accident site, thus significantly reducing the risk of premature death of patients. This in itself has a significant social implication.

The paper demonstrates a solid understanding in the field of the EMS systems and the corresponding medical services offered. It proposes the development of an effective, feasible and innovative EMS information system that will improve the existing emergency health care system in Greece (EKAB). An in depth literature review and presentation of the adopted new technologies and the respective architecture take place. An evaluation and statistical validation were conducted for proving the high applicability of eEKAB in case of real-life running.

Security information management systems (SIMs) have been providing a unified distributed platform for the efficient management of security information produced by corresponding mechanisms within an organization. However, these systems currently lack the capability of producing and enforcing response policies, mainly due to their limited incident response (IR) functionality. This paper explores the nature of SIMs while proposing a set of requirements that could be satisfied by SIMs for the efficient and effective handling of security incidents.

These requirements are presented in a high‐level architectural concept and include policy visualization, system intelligence to enable automated policy management, as well as, data mining elements for inspection, evaluation and enhancements of IR policies.

A primitive mechanism that could guarantee the freshness and accuracy of state information that SIMs provide in order to launch solid response alarms and actions for a specific incident or a series of incidents is proposed, along with a role based access control administrative model (ARBAC) based on a corporate model for IR. Basic forensic and trace‐back concepts that should be integrated into SIMs in order to provide the rich picture of the IR puzzle are also examined.

The support of policy compliance and validation tools to SIMs is also addressed.

The aforementioned properties could greatly assist in automating the IR capability within an organization.

The paper proposes looking at the automation of the incident response (IR) process, through formal, systematic and standardized methods for collection, normalization and correlation of security data (i.e. vulnerability, exploit and intrusion detection information).

The paper proposes the incident response intelligence system (IRIS) that models the context of discovered vulnerabilities, calculates their significance, finds and analyzes potential exploit code and defines the necessary intrusion detection signatures that combat possible attacks, using standardized techniques. It presents the IRIS architecture and operations, as well as the implementation issues.

The paper presents detailed evaluation results obtained from real‐world application scenarios, including a survey of the users' experience, to highlight IRIS contribution in the area of IR.

The paper introduces the IRIS, a system that provides detailed security information during the entire lifecycle of a security incident, facilitates decision support through the provision of possible attack and response paths, while deciding on the significance and magnitude of an attack with a standardized method.

The purpose of this paper is to introduce a new tool which detects, prevents and records common web attacks that mainly result in web applications information leaking using pattern recognition. It is a cross‐platform application, namely, it is not OS‐dependent or web server dependent. It offers a flexible attacks search engine, which scans http requests and responses during a webpage serving without affecting the web server performance.

The paper starts with a study of the most known web vulnerabilities and the way they can be exploited. Then, it focuses on those web attacks based on input validation, which are the ones the new tool detects through pattern recognition. This tool acts as a proxy server having a simple GUI for administration purposes. Patterns can be detected in both http requests and responses in an extensible and manageable way.

The new tool was compared to dotDefender, a commercial web application firewall, and ModSecurity, a widely used open source application firewall, using over 200 attack patterns. The new tool had satisfying results for every attack category examined having a high percentage of success. Results for stored XSS could not be achieved since the other tools are not able to search and detect them in http responses. The fact that the new tool is very extensible, it makes it possible for future work to be done.

This paper introduces a new web server plug‐in, which has some advanced web application firewall features with a flexible attacks search engine which scans http requests and responses. By scanning http responses, attacks such as stored XSS can be detected, a feature that cannot be found on other web application firewalls.

The purpose of this paper is to present the SociaLib system, which is a collaborative digital library system. The system uses Drupal content management system to implement Web 2.0 functionalities and facilitate collaboration and cooperation between its users. It offers a variety of functions, like wikis, forums and it is also accessible from microbrowsers.

The paper starts with a reference to collaboration in Digital Libraries and states related work. Then, it introduces the SociaLib system, including implementation and functionalities. There is also an example of how such a system can be used in a real-world situation. Ideas for future work are also included.

The system was evaluated using a usability questionnaire on a subject of 50 people. The results were promising, showing user acceptance and satisfaction.

This paper offer collaborative solutions to Digital Library users, helping them communicate and cooperate with colleagues on their research. The system uses Web 2.0 functions that enable the user to be more productive and also work mobile if he wishes.

This paper aims to review the latest management developments across the globe and pinpoint practical implications from cutting-edge research and case studies.

This briefing is prepared by an independent writer who adds their own impartial comments and places the articles in context.

Digital technologies can increase business value and deliver a competitive advantage. Organizations can exploit the potential more fully by creating an appropriate IT strategy, aligning it with the business strategy and ensuring that systems and solutions are flexible and interoperable.

The briefing saves busy executives and researchers’ hours of reading time by selecting only the very best, most pertinent information and presenting it in a condensed and easy-to-digest format.