Jamaludin Ibrahim

eHalal4All Program—Promoting Halal Rural Products and Services Globally by Harnessing the Network-of-Mosques (NoM) Capabilities

The population of Muslims globally is estimated to be more than 1.6 billion. The recent religious awakening of Muslims and their realization of the importance of compliance with Shari’ah laws in business dealings have enabled them to achieve their economic and well-being goals. This conceptual paper proposes eHalal4All Program, which is proposed to be adopted as one of the 1AZAM Malaysian government-sponsored programs and implemented as a proof-of-concept in raising the economic and social status of rural communities in Sabah, Malaysia. This program has the potential to enhance well-being by providing these rural communities with new skills, machinery, eHalal4All Portal, network of entrepreneurs, and network-of-mosques (NoM) in generating new sources of income. This program is executed based on the deployment of the Quadruple Helix Model (QHM), namely the Government, Academia, Industry, and Citizen. Literature reviews and nine (9) blocks of Business Model Canvas (BMC) framework are used as methodology for this paper. As the extent of rural poverty in Malaysia is expected to be reduced and societal well-being to be enhanced through eHalal4All Program, an added benefit is the minimization of the rural–urban migration process, thus demonstrating the contribution of NoM in realizing partly the meaning of “Rahmatan li’l-Alamin”.

Persuasive Technology Contributions Toward Enhance Information Security Awareness in an Organization

Persuasion is part and parcel of human interaction. The human persuaders in society have been always exit, masters of rhetoric skilled of changing our minds, or at least our behaviors. Leaders, mothers, salesmen, and teachers are clear examples of persuaders. Persuaders often turn to technology and digital media to amplify their persuasive ends. Besides, our lives and how we lead them influenced by technologies and digital media, but for the most part, their effects on our attitudes and behaviors have been incidental, even accidental. Although, nowadays, the use of computers to sell products and services considered as the most frequent application of persuasive technology. In this short paper, based on an extensive review of literatures, we aim to give a brief introduction to persuasive technology, and how it can play a role and contribute to enhance and deliver the best practice of IT. Some challenges of persuasive technology have been discussed. At the end, some recommendations and steps should be taken place to empower IT professional practices have been listed.

Designing business models options for “University of the Future”

A number of key studies have argued universities are in need of new business models in order to stay relevant and sustainable. Drivers of change such as technology, financial support, industry trends and socio-economic ecosystems are dictating higher education sector to re-examine its existing business model and value proposition. The changes are dynamic and complex. It is very difficult to analyse complex problem without proper business modeling tools. Business Model Canvas (BMC) and Value Proposition Design (VPD) are recent tools being used by industry to design, evaluate alternative business models and value propositions. The tools allows us to design business models that create value for the business and value propositions that create value for the customers, thus enabling the creation of sustainable road maps. In this paper we explore the use of BMC as business modeling tool to analyse and design sustainable business models for the University of the Future. Depending on the targeted customer segments and value proposition design, we found design options for the University of the Future. In our opinion this will help university business planners and relevant stakeholders to design sustainable and competitive business model.

Disaster preparedness in universities

Although the awareness of disasters has increased among some parts of society, the concept of disaster preparedness and response has not been sufficiently explored in universities. The aim of this paper is to assess the perceptions of students and staff regarding disaster preparedness as well as to examine whether universities are prepared for disasters or not. In addition, this article provides a brief overview of major disasters that happened to universities in the past years in order to analyse the implications of disasters to universities. Furthermore, the stakeholders involved in disaster management are mentioned here followed by a general plan and recommendations for universities to be considered in their roles toward building a resistant university.

Risk management at universities: illegal residents in hostels & fire cases

Every organization/institution is exposed to some kinds of risks that can affect them in many ways. Risks like fire, theft, damage of assets, illegal intruders etc. can affect them strategically, financially and operationally. It can also damage their reputations. Educational institutions like Universities are also exposed to these risks. This research, through some real-life cases, studies on different types of risks that the Universities are exposed to. Malaysian universities were taken under consideration. The research focuses on the measures that these universities are taking in order to safeguard the several parties exposed to these risks. The paper also puts forward some recommendations that can mitigate these risks.

Mitigating privacy issues on Facebook by implementing information security awareness with islamic perspectives

This paper highlights the broad range of information security awareness by providing an awareness guideline to address human vulnerabilities in social networking site. It explains the security challenges in social networking sites. These social networking sites pose great challenges on how to protect human privacy. Therefore, this paper will briefly discuss of the implementation of information security awareness in order to address privacy issues with social networking site i.e. Facebook. This paper will begin with the importance of information security to protect information assets by maintaining the confidentiality, integrity, and availability (CIA). It also focuses on the major privacy issues challenges on Facebook. The privacy issues can be mitigated with the information security awareness. This paper discusses privacy issues and security awareness from Islamic point of view to help minimize privacy issues on Facebook.

Risk management in parallel projects: Analysis, best practices and implications to DBrain (gDBrain) research project

The increased stiffness in competition has dramatically increased the risk occurrence in project delivery. As the number of projects grows, enterprises or project managers have to eventually run simultaneous projects. Risk management in such cases becomes extremely necessary as failure of one project may lead to the near failure of all the parallel projects running under the same supervision. Therefore, it becomes necessary to understand the best practices for risk management in a parallel project operation environment. Though the issue is of high importance, yet not much has been discussed. This study was carried out in an enterprise environment whereby professionals of this field with high experience were interviewed and requested to share their experiences. The research results bear witness to the fact that risk is inevitable and leaves a strong negative impact on all the projects operating in parallel. As such there is a high need to understand the strategies and best practices that are being applied in this field to avoid heavy losses. We seek to apply lessons learned to managing the DBrain research project which has multiple collaborators working in parallel.

Critical information security challenges: An appraisal

Information is one of the most crucial assets of current day organizations. However, managing this information has become a never ending challenge. Adequate security and privacy are of great essence for information systems containing valuable data and information. Leakage of such information can facilitate large-scale identity theft and successful impersonation of a victim lets the identity thief commit fraud. Identity theft occurs when someone uses another individuals personal information to pose as that individual. This study highlights the importance of information security management in organizations and identifies various critical security challenges that often lead to information leakage within the organizations. Qualitative method of research has been employed for data collection and analysis. The results obtained are categorized into eleven critical security challenges in order of the number of cases reported for each of them.

IT security consultancy in Malaysia: hindrances and impacts

The dramatic progress in information technology has been followed by a remarkable increase in information security risks. Therefore, companies and organizations especially in developed countries have resorted to security consultant firms to secure their information systems and to help them build an effective security strategy. However, the situation is somewhat different in developing countries. Companies and organizations in developing countries tend to rely on their internal staff to handle the security issues instead of hiring IT security consultants. The purpose of this study is to examine the factors that hinder Malaysian companies and organizations from hiring information security consultants. Moreover, the study aims to investigate the implications and information security risks that these companies and organizations face. Questionnaires are administered and interviews were conducted amongst Ten Malaysian Companies and organizations from different sectors. The results of this study revealed that 70% of the companies and organizations do not have security consultants compared to 30% of the companies and organizations which hired security consultant firms to handle the critical information security issues.