Digital Commons Network^™

Private Coverage, Public Risk: The Role Of Cyber Insurance In National Security Governance, Deborah L. Johnson

Faculty Publications

This Article explores the growing yet underexamined role of the commercial cyber insurance market in shaping the United States' approach to cybersecurity readiness. It argues that, as cyber threats against U.S. critical infrastructure and essential services increase, commercial cyber insurance has quietly come to function as a de facto governance tool in national cybersecurity. In hospitals, water and energy systems, and other public-facing sectors, policy language, underwriting questionnaires, and post-breach claims practices help define what counts as "reasonable" security, influence how organizations plan for and respond to incidents, and affect the pace and scope of recovery after an attack. Yet …

Abuse Of Contract: A Proposal For A New Cause Of Action, Miriam A. Cherry

Faculty Publications

With the growth of online commerce and the platform economy, many companies are including provisions in their online terms and conditions that extend far beyond what reasonable consumers would expect. Some terms and conditions purport to bind customers to separate contracts in future transactions that have little to do with the first contract. Other boilerplate purports to cover family members of the customer who created an account. Some retailers have argued that people shopping in their brick-and-mortar stores are subject to terms and conditions because those shoppers had at some point previously created an online account. For example, Disney argued …

Generative Identity Theft: Criminalizing Deepfakes Using The Right Of Publicity, Dustin Marlan

Faculty Publications

The right of publicity grants individuals control over the commercial use of their identity, particularly name, image, and likeness. Currently, publicity laws are a fragmented patchwork of state statutes and case law, leading to frequent calls for reform, including the establishment of a federal right of publicity. This issue has gained renewed urgency amid the rise of generative artificial intelligence and deepfake technologies. In response, Congress has introduced multiple bipartisan proposals—most prominently, the Senate’s No FAKES Act and the House’s No AI FRAUD Act—that seek to create federal protections against unauthorized digital replicas of likeness, voice, and other aspects of …

Contagion. Ftx, A Sector's Crisis & Crypto's Silent Victims, Lev E. Breydo

Faculty Publications

Late 2022 was crypto’s Minsky moment, characterized by wholesale sector collapse and over a dozen major bankruptcies, including FTX’s implosion. For millions of investors, it was the worst of all worlds, combining the frenetic contagion of 2008 with consumer protections most reminiscent of the Panic of 1907.

While the industry’s challenges are often attributed to the nature of crypto itself, the true root cause reflects a fundamental category error. This Article’s comprehensive market taxonomy identifies as the sector’s nexus of risk entities it terms “Crypto Platforms,” like FTX. Crypto Platforms are essentially financial institutions – a cauldron of externalities subject …

Detecting Anomalies In Time Series Using Kernel Density Approaches, Robin Frehner, Kesheng Wu, Alexander Sim, Jinoh Kim

Faculty Publications

This paper introduces a novel anomaly detection approach tailored for time series data with exclusive reliance on normal events during training. Our key innovation lies in the application of kernel-density estimation (KDE) to scrutinize reconstruction errors, providing an empirically derived probability distribution for normal events post-reconstruction. This non-parametric density estimation technique offers a nuanced understanding of anomaly detection, differentiating it from prevalent threshold-based mechanisms in existing methodologies. In post-training, events are encoded, decoded, and evaluated against the estimated density, providing a comprehensive notion of normality. In addition, we propose a data augmentation strategy involving variational autoencoder-generated events and a smoothing …

Data Augmentation Enhances Plant-Genomic-Enabled Predictions, Osval A. Montesinos-López, Mario Alberto Solis-Camacho, Leonardo Crespo-Herrera, Carolina Saint Pierre, Gloria Isabel Huerta Prado, Sofia Ramos-Pulido, Khalid Al-Nowibet, Roberto Fritsche-Neto, Guillermo Gerard, Abelardo Montesinos-López, José Crossa

Faculty Publications

Genomic selection (GS) is revolutionizing plant breeding. However, its practical implementation is still challenging, since there are many factors that affect its accuracy. For this reason, this research explores data augmentation with the goal of improving its accuracy. Deep neural networks with data augmentation (DA) generate synthetic data from the original training set to increase the training set and to improve the prediction performance of any statistical or machine learning algorithm. There is much empirical evidence of their success in many computer vision applications. Due to this, DA was explored in the context of GS using 14 real datasets. We …

The Mediating Effect Of Financial Literacy On Blockchain Technology Application And Financial Risk: Insight From Ghanaian Professionals Toward Policy Recommendations, Maxwell Okpoti Mensah, Williams Kwasi Peprah [email protected]

Faculty Publications

This study explores the mediating effect of financial literacy on the relationship between blockchain technology application and financial risk among financial institution professionals in Ghana. Utilizing a correlational research design, data were collected from a sample of 336 professionals through a self-constructed Likert-scale questionnaire. The analysis was conducted using path analysis and mediation techniques. The findings reveal that financial literacy had a significant partial mediating effect between blockchain technology application and financial risk, accounting for 26.0% of the total effect. The direct negative effect of blockchain technology applications on financial risk also remained significant, highlighting the independent contribution of blockchain …

Balancing Loyalties: A Behavioral Study On How The Quality Of Supervisor-Subordinate Relationships Affects Whistleblowing Intentions, Jace B. Garrett, Douglas F. Prawitt, Kyle Sopp

Faculty Publications

While high-quality relationships among employees yield many benefits to organizations, they may have unintended consequences for whistleblowing. In a first experiment, we investigate whether high-quality employee-supervisor relationships reduce employees’ willingness to report supervisor wrongdoing through an internal hotline. We also investigate whether the quality of such relationships mitigates the effect of evidence strength on reporting intention. In a second experiment, we test the robustness of the effects of relationship quality and evidence strength on employees’ willingness to report wrongdoing identified in our first experiment, but to an external auditor. We also examine two factors that may mitigate the negative effect …

Privacy Qui Tam, Peter Ormerod

Faculty Publications

Privacy law keeps getting stronger, but surveillance-based businesses have proven immune to these new legal regimes. The disconnect between privacy law in theory and in practice is a multifaceted problem, and one critical component is enforcement.

Today, most privacy laws are enforced by governmental regulators—the Federal Trade Commission, the nascent California Privacy Protection Agency, and state attorneys general. An enduring impasse for proposed privacy laws is whether to supplement public enforcement by using a private right of action to authorize individuals to enforce the law.

Both of these conventional enforcement schemes have significant shortcomings. Public enforcement has proven inadequate because …

Using Open-Source Software For Business, Urban, And Other Applications Of Deep Neural Networks, Machine Learning, And Data Analytics Tools, Richard S. Segall, Vidhya Sankarasubbu

Faculty Publications

This article provides an overview with examples of what Neural Networks (NN), Machine Learning (ML), and Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Data Analytics are, and with their applications in business, urban and biomedical situations. The characteristics of 29 types of neural networks are provided including their distinctive graphical illustrations. A survey of current open-source software (OSS) for neural networks, neural network software available for free trial download for limited time use, open-source software (OSS) for Machine Learning (ML), and open-source software (OSS) for Data Analytics tools are provided. Characteristics of Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies for Machine Learning available as open-source are …

The Settlement Norm In Audit Legal Disputes: Insights From Prominent Attorneys*, Eldar Maksymov, Jeffrey Pickerd, D. Jordan Lowe, Mark E. Peecher, Andrew Reffett

Faculty Publications

Prior research indicates that most audit legal disputes settle. There is, however, little evidence of the factors that drive the settlement norm and its exceptions in audit legal disputes. To better understand these factors, we rely on theory related to how professionals manage risks and, as a result, how professions defend jurisdictional claims. We use this theoretical lens to help motivate four research questions that we probe by interviewing 27 prominent attorneys experienced in audit litigation. Consistent with our lens, our interview data indicate that attorneys manage their risks, including the risk of reputational loss, by settling based on their …

Reviving The Intracorporate Communications No-Publication Rule: A Strategy To Encourage Effective Investigation Of Internal Misconduct, Doris Deltosto Brogan

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Consumer Protection After A Global Financial Crisis, Melissa B. Jacoby

Faculty Publications

Like other major events, the Global Financial Crisis generated a large and diffuse body of academic analysis. As part of a broader call for operationalizing the study of crises as policy shocks and resulting responses, which inevitably derail from elegant theories, we examine how regulatory protagonists approached consumer protection after the GFC, guided by six elements that should be considered in any policy shock context. After reviewing the introduction and philosophy of the Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection, created as part of the Dodd–Frank Act of 2010, we consider four examples of how consumer protection unfolded in the crises’ aftermath …

Regulating The “Too Big To Jail” Financial Institutions, Jerry W. Markham

Faculty Publications

This article addresses the “too big to jail” regulatory model in which large banks pay hundreds of billions of dollars to settle multiple and duplicative regulatory charges brought by a horde of state, federal, and even foreign regulators. The banks pay those massive settlements in order to keep their banking charters and to obtain immunity from prosecution for senior executives. In turn, regulators benefit from the headlines these fines generate. Much criticism has been directed at these settlements because the banks are allowed to continue business as usual and no senior executives are jailed. Other critics contend that these settlements …

Corporate Compliance That Advances Racial Diversity And Justice And Why Business Deregulation Does Not Matter, Cheryl L. Wade

Faculty Publications

This Essay considers the problem of racial harassment and discrimination in the aftermath of the recent and more thorough discussion about gender inequality. It begins by explaining the inadequacies of the SEC Board Diversity Rules and Section 342. It then describes the reasons why, despite these inadequacies, more regulation relating to discrimination and diversity is not needed. Finally, it discusses how to improve U.S. businesses’ compliance with existing antidiscrimination law.

The Chief And The Church: Reflections From A Business Educator, Annetta M. Gibson

Faculty Publications

In this article I distinguish between “Church” with “C” and “church” with small “c.” Recently, a committee composed of several Seventh-day Adventist church employees—some from the General Conference and some from academia—was reviewing various agenda items when the chair noted that the General Conference had hired an individual to serve as “CIO”—Chief Information Officer. Questions were immediately raised: Why is the Church using business titles such as “Chief Financial Officer”? Why the emphasis on “Chief”? Aren’t we becoming more like a business when we use business titles and terms?

Damp Squib: The Disappointing Denouement Of The Sentencing Commission's Economic Crime Project (And What They Should Do Now), Frank O. Bowman Iii

Faculty Publications

The consolidated fraud and theft guideline, U.S.S.G. S2B1.I, has been a subject of sustained comment and critique since its adoption in 2001. Some of the critiques are technical and relate to issues such as the importance of "loss" in economic crime sentencing and the proper definition of concepts like "intended loss" and "sophisticated means." However, for the last decade or so, the dominant complaint has been that 22 Bi.i prescribes sentences that, particularly for many defendants in cases involving high loss amounts, are far too long.

Is The Price Right? An Empirical Study Of Fee-Setting In Securities Class Actions, Michael A. Perino, Lynn A. Baker, Charles Silver

Faculty Publications

Every year, fee awards enable millions of people to obtain access to justice and strengthen the deterrent effect of the law by motivating lawyers to handle class actions. But little research exists on why judges award the amounts they do or whether they size fee awards correctly. The process remains a black box. Through a detailed study of 431 securities class actions that settled in federal district courts from 2007 through 2012, this Article presents the first empirical study to peer inside that black box. In contrast to prior analyses, this study relies on the actual court filings in each …

Online Integrity: Student Authentication In An Online Course, Susan Evans Jennings, M. Gail Weatherly, S. Ann Wilson

Faculty Publications

Distance education has been around for over 100 years and has progressed from print based or correspondence study to radio, television, audio or video recordings, and on to video conferencing and computer mediated instruction (Wang and Gearhart, 2006). In 2000, Dooley and Murphy stated that delivery via the Internet was relatively new and challenging for higher education institutions. Most would agree that even though delivery via the Internet might no longer be considered “relatively new,” it can still be considered challenging.

Issues Raised By Studying Defond And Zhang: What Should Audit Researchers Do?, John Donovan

Faculty Publications

We view audit-quality choice as one among many that managers make to maximize firm value. We question whether audit-quality differences among publicly traded companies are of significant interest to investors, clients, and auditors and ask for research on this topic.  Relatedly, we ask for research on whether auditors and their clients show behavior consistent with regulated audit quality exceeding the audit quality level demanded absent regulation. We propose that researchers incorporate the competitive advantages of auditors and the institutional features of the audit process into the definition of audit quality. We propose that audit quality research test for externalities and …

Insider Threat Detection Using Virtual Machine Introspection, M. Crawford, Gilbert L. Peterson, Robert F. Mills, Michael R. Grimaila

Faculty Publications

This paper presents a methodology for signaling potentially malicious insider behavior using virtual machine introspection (VMI). VMI provides a novel means to detect potential malicious insiders because the introspection tools remain transparent and inaccessible to the guest and are extremely difficult to subvert. This research develops a four step methodology for development and validation of malicious insider threat alerting using VMI. A malicious attacker taxonomy is used to decompose each scenario to aid identification of observables for monitoring for potentially malicious actions. The effectiveness of the identified observables is validated using two data sets. Results of the research show the …

Healthy Aging And Older Asian Indian Immigrants: A Key Informant Survey Of Seven Ethnic Community Centers In Santa Clara County, Sadhna Diwan, Sharvari Dixit

Faculty Publications

This study is an examination of the present status of healthy aging programs and services provided to older Asian Indian (AI) immigrants in Santa Clara County. The primary goals of the study were to develop a profile of programs being offered to AI seniors at various ethnic community organizations; and to determine the met and unmet needs for programs and services that promote healthy aging in the AI senior population. A key informant survey was conducted with leaders of seven different organizations in Santa Clara County known to currently provide some services to AI seniors. These seven organizations are estimated …

Crimes, Widgets, And Plea Bargaining: An Analysis Of Charge Content, Pleas, And Trials, Kyle Graham

Faculty Publications

This article considers how the composition and gravamen of a charged crime can affect the parties’ willingness and ability to engage in plea bargaining. Most of the prevailing descriptions of plea bargaining ignore or discount the importance of charge content in plea negotiations. In fact, one leading commentator has likened crimes to widgets insofar as plea bargaining is concerned. In developing its counter-thesis, this article reviews seven years of federal conviction data, focusing on those crimes that produce the most and fewest trials relative to how often they are alleged; the most and fewest acquittals at trial; and the most …

Thirteen Ways Of Looking At Buck V. Bell: Thoughts Occasioned By Paul Lombardo's "Three Generations, No Imbeciles", Michelle Oberman

Faculty Publications

Paul Lombardo's recent book, Three Generations, No Imbeciles: Eugenics, the Supreme Court and Buck v. Bell, chronicles the history of state-sponsored sterilization over the course of the 20th century. As a historical endeavor, it is rich and rewarding, permitting the reader a broad understanding of the social, cultural and legal context for the case that inspired Oliver Wendell Holmes' famous quotation, "Three generations of imbeciles are enough." Lombardo's work masterfully ties the eugenics movement of the early 20th century to the broader policies informing the government's role in regulating reproduction .

Lombardo's book, which I originally picked up solely …

Tao Of Downfall: The Failures Of High-Profile Entrepreneurs In The Chinese Economic Reform, Wenxian Zhang, Ilan Alon

Faculty Publications

Through historical reviews and case studies, this research seeks to understand why some initially successful entrepreneurs failed in the economic boom of past decades. Among various factors contributed to their downfalls are a unique political and business environment, fragile financial systems, traditional cultural influences and personal characteristics. Notwithstanding that these factors should be further tested through empirical studies, those high-profile entrepreneurs are oblivious but essential actors in the grand theatre of China's economic transformation and their failures have contributed to the swift development of the Chinese entrepreneurship over the last 30 years.

Book Review: Index To Legal Citations And Abbreviations, 3rd Ed., Duncan E. Alford

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Online Payment Gateways Used To Facilitate E-Commerce Transactions And Improve Risk Management, Paul Benjamin Lowry, Taylor Michael Wells, Greg Moody, Sean Lamarc Humpherys, Degan Kettles

Faculty Publications

As online transactions continue to increase and become a significant part of the global economy, the ability to accept payments online becomes more important for businesses. This paper evaluates the literature and provides current information for IS researchers and instructors focusing on electronic commerce. In this paper, we explore the components of e-credit providers (conventional, person-to-person, and third-party) and explain how each system processes a single transaction. We then analyze several market leaders in each segment and summarize the strengths and weaknesses of each company. We provide guidelines for selecting an e-credit provider and highlight the options that apply best …

A Patient-Centered Approach To Health Care Fraud Recovery, Joan H. Krause

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

The Federal Government Lawyer's Duty To Breach Confidentiality, James E. Moliterno

Faculty Publications

The lawyer's duty of confidentiality springs from the lawyer-client relationship and its parameters are determined by the nature of that relationship. The federal government lawyer's client is like no other. The uniqueness of representing the United States calls for a unique approach to the duty of confidentiality. Unlike the private individual client, the government as a client does not speak with a single, unmistakable voice. Unlike the private entity client, the federal government has a paramount interest in the public good, including the public's right to know about government (the entity's conduct), especially its misconduct. The result is a client …

Historical Quirks, Political Opportunism, And The Anti-Loan Provision Of The Sarbanes-Oxley Act, Jayne W. Barnard

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.