Daniel Bachlechner

Harvesting Wiki Consensus: Using Wikipedia Entries as Vocabulary for Knowledge Management

Vocabularies that provide unique identifiers for conceptual elements of a domain can improve precision and recall in knowledge-management applications. Although creating and maintaining such vocabularies is generally hard, wiki users easily manage to develop comprehensive, informal definitions of terms, each one identified by a URI. Here, the authors show that the URIs of Wikipedia entries are reliable identifiers for conceptual entities. They also demonstrate how Wikipedia entries can be used for annotating Web resources and knowledge assets and give precise estimates of the amount of Wikipedia URIs in terms of the popular Proton ontologys top-level concepts.

OntoWiki: community-driven ontology engineering and ontology usage based on Wikis

Ontologies are consensual representations of a domain of discourse and the backbone of the future Semantic Web. Currently, however, only a fraction of Web users can take part in the process of building ontologies. In this paper, we show that standard Wiki technology can be used as an ontology development platform, reducing entry barriers for the participation of users in the creation and maintenance of ontologies, and describe our first OntoWiki prototype.

Challenges in Cross-Organizational Security Management

Many organizations hoping for cost savings and higher flexibility consider consuming services from service providers or combining such services with services offered organization-internally. Organizations, however, often renounce from the expected advantages due to security and compliance concerns. The key challenges leading to these security and compliance concerns in cross-organizational settings have not yet been discussed elaborately in scholarly literature. However, a thorough understanding of the underlying challenges is necessary in order to find ways to compensate them and, in consequence, tap into the full potential of the cloud computing model. This paper discusses challenges gathered by means of guideline-based interviews. The identified challenges comprise managing heterogeneity, auditing clouds, coordinating the parties involved in cross-organizational settings, managing their relationships, coping with the lack of security awareness, and localizing and migrating data. Potential research avenues are discussed for each challenge.

To Invest or Not to Invest? Assessing the Economic Viability of a Policy and Security Configuration Management Tool

The threat of information security (IS) breaches is omnipresent. Large organizations such as Sony or Lockheed Martin were recently attacked and lost confidential customer information. Besides targeted attacks, virus and malware infections, lost or stolen laptops and mobile devices, or the abuse of the organizational IT through employees, to name but a few, also put the security of assets in jeopardy. To defend against IS threats, organizations invest in IS countermeasures preventing, or, at least, reducing the probability and the impact of IS breaches. As IS budgets are constrained and the number of assets to be protected is large, IS investments need to be deliberately evaluated. Several approaches for the evaluation of IS investments are presented in the literature. In this chapter, we identify, compare, and evaluate such approaches using the example of a policy and security configuration management tool. Such a tool is expected to reduce the costs of organizational policy and security configuration management and to increase the trustworthiness of organizations. It was found that none of the analyzed approaches can be used without reservation for the assessment of the economic viability of the policy and security configuration management tool used as an example. We see, however, considerable potential for new approaches combining different elements of existing approaches.

Toward a Semantic Web service technology roadmap

Semantic Web services pledge the automation of core Web service tasks such as discovery, selection, composition, and execution. They are supposed to enable seamless interoperation between systems, whereby human intervention is kept at a minimum. Nevertheless, semantic Web services have not yet been adopted by the industry. Within the scope of this work, we discuss the correspondence of the viewpoints of experts from academia and industry with respect to current challenges and the latest achievements in the field of Semantic Web service research. Our primary objective is to identify technology locks between industrial needs and research activities. Additionally, we take a first step toward the production of a technology roadmap with respect to Semantic Web services. The discourse is based on the findings of a comprehensive Delphi study which was conducted in early 2007. In order to also assess Semantic Web services in an organizational context, we occasionally focus on the technologypsilas application as basis of integration architectures.

Adapting Integration Architectures Based on Semantic Web Services to Industrial Needs

Semantic Web services pledge the automation of core Web service tasks such as discovery, selection and execution. The use of Semantic Web services facilitates the integration and adaption of information systems considerably. However, such integration architectures have not yet been adopted by the industry. Within the scope of this work, we discuss the capabilities of integration architectures based on Semantic Web services as well as environmental factors that potentially drive or restrict their use. Our objective is to take a first step toward closing the gap between research trends and industrial needs. To that end, particular importance was attached to differences in the viewpoints of practitioners and researchers. The discourse is based on the findings of a SWOT analysis that was conducted in 2007.