Security is arguably one of the most critical architectural components of any web-based application written in the 21st century. In an era where malware, criminals, and rogue employees are always present and actively testing software for exploits, smart and comprehensive use of security is a key element to any project for which you'll be responsible. This book is written to follow a pattern o…
Many of us test web applications on either a daily or regular basis. We may be following a script of interactions (“click here, type XYZ, click Submit, check for OK message…”) or we might be writing frameworks that invoke batteries of automated tests against our web applications. Most of us are somewhere in between. Regardless of how we test, we need to get security testing into what we…
The first edition of this book appeared eight years ago. Since then the banking industry experienced a lot of change and challenges. The most recent financial crisis which started around May 2007 and lasted in its core period until early 2009 gave rise to a lot of scepticism about whether credit risk models are appropriate to capture the true nature of risks inherent in credit portfolios in gen…
It's Friday night, and you are at a party outside the city with old friends. After a few beers it looks like this is going to be a great party, when suddenly your phone rings. A customer can't access some critical server that absolutely has to be available as soon as possible. You try to ssh in the server, only to discover that customer is right—it can't be accessed. As driving after those fe…
The principles underlying modern approaches to securing information and systems that process information are well documented and well understood by practitioners. Modern techniques and technologies for implementing these principles are also well documented, and it is hard to find an area of information security that has not been the subject of a book or at least an article. However, most of the…
I am deeply grateful to Ravi Kanbur, who initiated the Q-Squared initiative, and invited me to join on. The momentum in favour of mixed method analysis of poverty over the past decade has been highly influenced by Ravi’s efforts. In the absence of such, this book would not exist. I am also extremely appreciative of the support provided by the International Development Research Centre (IDRC),…
In this monograph, we analyse thin tubular structures, so-called “graph-like spaces”, and their natural limits, when the radius of a graph-like space tends to zero. The limit space is typically a metric graph, i.e. a graph, where each edge is associated a length, and therefore, the space turns into a one-dimensional manifold with singularities at the vertices. On both, the graph-like spaces…
Traditional security mechanisms restrict access to authorized users only, in order to protect resources from malicious users. However, in many con- texts, we must protect ourselves from those who offer resources, so that the problem is in fact reversed. This improper usage cannot be addressed by traditional security mechanisms, and the issues relate more to trustworthiness than security. Trus…
How do you define success? For some, success is a high-paying job, promotions, and financial security. For others, success is finding a rewarding balance between work and personal time. Regardless of how you define success or what your personal goals are, we wrote this text with one purpose: To help you succeed not only in today’s competitive business world, but also in your personal life. A…
The topic of variable selection in high-dimensional spaces (often with hundreds or thousands of dimensions) has attracted considerable attention in data mining re- search in previous years, and it is common in many real problems. In a nutshell, feature selection is a process that chooses an optimal subset of features according to a certain criterion. The selection of the criterion must be done…
Algorithm is used to define the notion of decidability. It is a set of rules that precisely defines a sequence of operations. This is essential for computers to process information. Computer programs contain algorithms that detail specific instructions a computer should perform to carry out a specified task. The traditional computer program performs specific instructions sequentially, and use…
By now pretty much everybody in the web world has heard of responsive web design (often referred to as RWD), but a surprising number don’t have a good understanding of what it is . In this chapter, you’ll learn the basics of what it means for a website to be responsive . After that, we’ll go through a little of the history of web design, so you can understand where the idea of responsi…
For all types of businesses, there is an increasing trend towards the utilization of data, as well as information that can be gathered from data. Big Data or Data Scientist are the new terms that emerged from recent developments in the field of data and information science, just to mention a couple examples. The assurance of data quality has become an integral part of information management pr…