Business Commons^™

Components Of An Effective Grant Proposal, Leonine Greaves

Symposium of Student Scholars

United Way of Greater Atlanta is seeking to start a homeless initiative in Cherokee County, Georgia. For the initiation of any program or service, it requires a stream of funding. In the case of nonprofit organizations, grant funding is a source of revenue to support those services and programs. Grant funding is acquired by submitting a grant proposal to a funder through an application process meeting their requirements. This project identifies key components that all grant proposals should possess when pursuing grant funding. These key components were found by searching and analyzing peer-reviewed scholarly literature that details the nature and …

Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification (Cmmc) Compliance For Dod Contractors, Sierra Burnett

Cybersecurity Undergraduate Research Showcase

The DoD is currently taking a supply-chain risk management strategy to foster cybersecurity. This unique strategy is often referred to as CMMC which stands for “Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification”. The approach requires that all the 300,000 DoD contractors acquire third-party authentication that may attain the requirements for the CMMC maturity level suitable to the work they desire to do for the DoD. CMMC typically examines the organization's capability to safeguard Federal Contract Information as well as CUI. It integrates various cybersecurity standards already in place and plots the best practices alongside processes to five maturity levels that range from the …

Emotional Analysis Of Learning Cybersecurity With Games Using Iot, Maria Valero, Md Jobair Hossain, Shahriar Sobhan

KSU Proceedings on Cybersecurity Education, Research and Practice

The constant rise of cyber-attacks poses an increasing demand for more qualified people with cybersecurity knowledge. Games have emerged as a well-fitted technology to engage users in learning processes. In this paper, we analyze the emotional parameters of people while learning cybersecurity through computer games. The data are gathered using a non-invasive Brain-Computer Interface (BCI) to study the signals directly from the users’ brains. We analyze six performance metrics (engagement, focus, excitement, stress, relaxation, and interest) of 12 users while playing computer games to measure the effectiveness of the games to attract the attention of the participants. Results show participants …

Resilience Vs. Prevention. Which Is The Better Cybersecurity Practice?, Frank Katz

KSU Proceedings on Cybersecurity Education, Research and Practice

Students in multiple cohorts of our 3000 level Fundamentals of Information Systems Security course were given a discussion question where they had to either agree or disagree with the premise that given all the constant threats to our systems, we should dedicate more of our efforts to quickly repairing the damage of an attack rather than dedicate more of our time and energies to preventing such attacks. They were required to give their reasoning and provide sources to back up their analysis of his comment.

This paper will describe and explain the concept of cyber resiliency. It will then evaluate …

Warshipping: Hacking The Mailroom, Jackson Szwast, Bryson Payne

KSU Proceedings on Cybersecurity Education, Research and Practice

Everyone knows what package shipping is, but not everyone knows what warshipping is. Corporate mailrooms are rarely considered as part of the cybersecurity attack surface of most organizations, but they offer physical access to millions of uninspected packages daily. UPS shipped 5.5 billion items last year, with their daily average being 21.9 million items and operating through 1,800 locations in 2020. FedEx shipped 6.5 million packages daily and operates 2,150 locations. The United States Postal Service delivered 143 billion pieces of mail in 2019. Increasingly the world’s consumers are relying on e-commerce, and during the recent COVID-19 pandemic, package deliveries …

Towards Assessing Password Workarounds And Perceived Risk To Data Breaches For Organizational Cybersecurity Risk Management Taxonomy, Michael J. Rooney, Yair Levy, Wei Li, Ajoy Kumar

KSU Proceedings on Cybersecurity Education, Research and Practice

Cybersecurity involves a broad range of techniques, including cyber-physical, managerial, and technical, while authentication provides a layer of protection for Information Systems (IS) against data breaches. The recent COVID-19 pandemic brought a tsunami of data breach incidents worldwide. Authentication serves as a mechanism for IS against unauthorized access utilizing various defense techniques, with the most popular and frequently used technique being passwords. However, the dramatic increase of user accounts over the past few decades has exposed the realization that technological measures alone cannot ensure high level of IS security; this leaves the end-users holding a critical role in protecting their …

Analyzing Robotics Software Vulnerabilities, Hossain Shahriar, Md Jobair Hossain Faruk, Shahriar Sobhan, Mohammad Nazim

KSU Proceedings on Cybersecurity Education, Research and Practice

Robots are widely used in our day-to-day life in various domains. For example, eldercare robots, such as CareO-Bots [1]are used to perform household tasks and provide mobility assistance [2]. Amazon uses manufacturing robots to accomplish manufacturing labor activities, such as welding and assembling equipment [2]. According to the International Data Corporation, spending on robotics is expected to reach USD 241.4 billion by the end of 2023 [4].

However, malicious users can exploit security vulnerabilities in hardware and software components of robotics systems to conduct security attacks and cause malfunction, i.e., deviate robots from their expected behaviors. Security attacks on robots …

A Taxonomy Of Cyberattacks Against Critical Infrastructure, Miloslava Plachkinova, Ace Vo

KSU Proceedings on Cybersecurity Education, Research and Practice

The current study proposes a taxonomy to organize existing knowledge on cybercrimes against critical infrastructure such as power plants, water treatment facilities, dams, and nuclear facilities. Routine Activity Theory is used to inform a three-dimensional taxonomy with the following dimensions: hacker motivation (likely offender), cyber, physical, and cyber-physical components of any cyber-physical system (suitable target), and security (capable guardian). The focus of the study is to develop and evaluate the classification tool using Design Science Research (DSR) methodology. Publicly available data was used to evaluate the utility and usability of the proposed artifact by exploring three possible scenarios – Stuxnet, …

International Conference Management, Business And Economics, University For Business And Technology - Ubt

UBT International Conference

UBT Annual International Conference is the 9th international interdisciplinary peer reviewed conference which publishes works of the scientists as well as practitioners in the area where UBT is active in Education, Research and Development. The UBT aims to implement an integrated strategy to establish itself as an internationally competitive, research-intensive university, committed to the transfer of knowledge and the provision of a world-class education to the most talented students from all background. The main perspective of the conference is to connect the scientists and practitioners from different disciplines in the same place and make them be aware of the recent …

Relationship Between Inflation And Unemployment: The Case Study Of Former Yugoslav Countries, Florin Aliu, Albulena Jahja, Ermal Lubishtani

UBT International Conference

Unemployment remains a constant concern for national governments and often causes social unrest. This study addresses the relationship between inflation and unemployment known as Phillips Curve, for the seven countries that emerged from former Yugoslavia. This phenomenon is investigated with annual data covering the period from 2003 to 2020. According to the OLS outcomes, there is a negative tradeoff within unemployment and inflation for Slovenia, Croatia, and Montenegro, which stands in line with the Phillips curve paradigm. In the case of Kosovo, North Macedonia, Serbia, and Bosnia, OLS findings indicate a positive relationship between inflation and unemployment. VAR results show …

Laplacian's Statistical Management Of Heat Transmission, Shaqir Elezaj, Egzona Elezaj

UBT International Conference

Laplacian’s is an operator which plays a very important role in various scientific branches. It is an operator which is defined as the nabla square operator. Its role is very important also in relation to the various analyzes of the operational fields that have to do here with heat transfer. Its role is especially considered in relation to the analysis of potential fields, here related to the phenomenon of heat transfer.

The Machine Learning Algorithms To The Market Return, Ran You

UBT International Conference

The financial market and stock market have experienced great changes during the past decades, which lead to lots of excellent

new methods about how to calculate and predict the return of the mar- ket and stocks.

Currently, a common practice of stock investors is to implement the Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM) and calculate excess returns with the difference between the real value and the theoretical value of stocks. Among Capital Asset Pricing Models, the Fama-French factors model is used frequently. In this paper, we applied several machine learning algorithms in the stock market to find out whether they are …

Phillips Curve In Self-Management Socialism Of Yugoslavia, Florin Aliu, Isa Mulaj, Ruzhdi Matoshi

UBT International Conference

Inflation and unemployment were two of the main issues that plagued the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY) from 1965 to her disintegration. Economic history has taught us that uncontrolled inflation is a characteristic of the countries with a lack of democracy, but SFRY was more economically liberal and decentralized than any other communist country. Using the World Bank annual data from 1965 to 1990 for unemployment and inflation, the OLS (Ordinary Least Squares) findings demonstrate that unemployment is significant and positively affects the inflation rate, which stands against the theoretical paradigms known as the Phillips curve. The impulse response …

Impact Of Macroeconomic Factors On Non- Performing Loans (Npl) In The Banking Sector In Kosovo, Enver Daci

UBT International Conference

Over the last few years, more precisely, since the end of the global financial crisis, academic circles have increased their interest in the NLP and the empirical bibliography provides valuable information on the factors that influence them. According to studies conducted on non-performing loans, various analysts have tried to correlate the level of non-performing loans directly to two categories of factors: (1) macroeconomic factors and (2) banking or banking specific factors.

Consequences in the banking industry as a result of non-performing loans may be large if no preventive steps are taken. Non-performing loans negatively affect the performance and stability of …

From Circular Economy To Business-Level Circularity: A Descriptive Case Study, Xhimi Hysa, Ambra Mallunxa

UBT International Conference

The need to manage waste and foster environmental sustainability has opened a call to transform the current linear economic model into a circular one. Circular Economy (CE) is continuously growing as a backbone economic model in both developed and developing countries. Still, in Albania the scholarly considerations about the topic are missing or at best have been neglected. Using Albania as a research setting, this study aims to provide a macro and micro perspective of the circular economy and the way it applies to business level. The theoretical framework includes advantages and criticism to circular economy, circular business models, and …

Net Interest Margin [Nim] In Turkish Financial Sector, Halit Targan Unal, Neslihan Ozdemir

UBT International Conference

Recently, movements in the financial markets have demonstrated that management of net interest margin (NIM) is important for the well functioning of the financial sector in general and banking sector in particular. In this regard, net interest margin (NIM) accepted as the main indicator of financing balance and profitability of the banking sector and hence its stability and improved capacity for financing of sustainable real economic growth. According to literature, asset, liability and equity structure, non-interest income such as fees & commission, market concentration and efficiency, quality of management and some economic variables have been considered as factors affecting the …

Impact Of Prices During Diaspora Flow (2017-2021), Ardian Uka, Drilon Bejtullahi

UBT International Conference

In overall when we want to analyze the price movement, we need to compare a goods and services basket for two or more periods in order to catch the price movement. In addition, when we interpret the results we obtained, it depicts which goods or services are more sensitive in relevant days or months. Some goods may differentiate in price during some months in a year, in months when the demand for such goods may rise, or when the overall consume is relatively the same. To determine the goods and services basket would normally consider to be subjective for many …

“Level Of Customer Satisfaction For 4g Service In The Region Of Prishtina, Republic Of Kosovo”, Teuta Veseli, Elion Ramadani

UBT International Conference

In the telecommunications industry, mobile communication plays a major role, given that in recent decades this communication has developed rapidly in parallel and user demand has increased. The 4G platform is about a more advanced and efficient global network, where its users through their mobile phones have access to their data anytime and anywhere. The purpose of this paper is to study and analyze the level of satisfaction of customers using the 4G platform in the Region of Prishtina, Republic of Kosovo. Research on this topic is relatively new in this region and our study relies on secondary as well …

Application Of The Self-Checkout System In Kosovo, Hamëz Rama, Fjolla Leka

UBT International Conference

Kosovo is a new state which passed the period under occupation, under a system where the market economy did not dominate, to pass to the period of war, liberation, emergency system. During this process, Kosovo has marked concrete steps in the application and use of innovations and information technology in order to reduce costs, increase efficiency and effectiveness at work and reduce the customers waiting in front of cash registers in major markets in Kosovo. The Self-checkout system will facilitate the procedure of long waits during payments in the trade chains; it will also make consumers feel more advanced and …

Empiric Study Of International Academic Mobility In Kosovo And Its Impact On Development, Lirigzona Morina, Galia Marinova

UBT International Conference

The background of the research presented in the paper lies in the divergence between the observations of international student mobility in the context of the internationalization of higher educations by the EU and universities on one hand and international students’ motivations for study abroad in general. The research is based on four main case studies of Universities in Kosovo, Bulgaria, Sweden, and Poland including here also other exchange students from different continents such as Fiji, India, South Africa, etc. A survey with some questions is designed and 272 responses from students on Erasmus+ mobilities are collected in 2020 and analyzed. …

Global Issues In Project Management, Besnik Skenderi, Diamanta Skenderi

UBT International Conference

As a result of globalization, overproduction, short life cycle of products, competition and uncertain domestic markets, businesses are extending their operations in international scale (Santoso & Loosemore, 2013; Grisham, 2011)

Projects are implemented with the goal to introduce changes and to deliver unique products based on customer requirements, (Grisham, 2011; Kerzner, 2009), however as a result of free movement and shared market (like European Union), innovations on technology (e-business, teleworking), outsourcing and new product development, projects are implemented within international scale and people and materials for international projects are now sourced globally (Grisham, 2011).

Furthermore, project managers are dealing with …

Monetary Policy In The Eurozone, Arbiana Govori

UBT International Conference

The main goal of the ECB monetary policy is to keep prices stable and the inflation rate below or close to 2% in the medium term. The legal basis for the single monetary policy is set out in the Treaty on European Union, the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union, and the Statute of the ECB and the ESCB. The monetary policy strategy of the Eurozone countries is also associated with the stability of the balance of payments

To achieve its main objective, the ECB uses a set of monetary policy instruments as well as various procedures. The …

Strategic Decision Making “Game Theory” Case Study: “Viva Fresh Store And Etc Market”, Ardian Uka, Veton Krasniqi

UBT International Conference

Abstract

The decision making is a process which affects and includes people with vision, but to make this process more effective we have studied from the prospective of the Game Theory as an option to simplify the decision making process.

The game theory is a structural mathematic to calculate options and opportunities before individuals or institutions takes decisions. Game theory, analyzes subject’s opportunities but at the same time analyzes the responses of the opponent, furthermore there is no game with a single player that’s why we have to think also in opponent perspective.

At the beginning of last century many …

Impact Of Macroeconomic Indicators On Non-Performing Loans In The Balkan Countries, Agnesa Krasniqi

UBT International Conference

Non-performing loans can be the result of a lack of sound lending policies, as well as a lack of sound credit judgment by management when approving loans. In addition to the bank's internal factors, the macroeconomic environment of a country can also affect the NPL. The NPL can be affected by the GDP of that country, then unemployment, inflation, etc. The purpose of this research is to extract the impact of macroeconomic indicators such as GDP, unemployment and inflation on non-performing loans of each country in the Balkan Peninsula.

The research was conducted through multivariate regression, whereas dependent variable we …

The Effect Of Country-Of-Origin On The Customers’ Perception Of Product: A Literature Review, Nora Sadiku Dushi, Gonxhe Beqiri, Aferina Skeja

UBT International Conference

Customer purchasing is considered a very complex process because it is influenced by many intrinsic and extrinsic cues. The extrinsic cue of country-of-origin (COO) also known as a “Made in” label is found to have a significant role in customers' purchasing decisions. The country-of-origin growing popularity is in a large part attributed to the world trade globalization that enabled the free movement of goods between different countries providing the opportunity for buyers to have access to the numerous products produced in different parts of the world. It has been noted that the “Made in” label comes into play especially when …

The Effect Of Remuneration On Quality Management In Public Institutions In Kosovo, Enver Daci

UBT International Conference

In recent years, Kosovo has set the foundation for quality infrastructure in its journey towards European integration. Although it lags behind in comparison to its neighbors in terms of quality infrastructure, it has eliminated some of the existing barriers to legal infrastructure. Creating a quality system abide by the requirements of the EN ISO 9001 standard is easier to constantly install and monitor health care standards according to the definition of work guidelines for good hospitaly practices in particular and internationally recognized areas.

Continuous quality improvement and application of the requirements of the Quality Management System in the public system …

Types Of Financial And Economic Crisis, Burhan Rexhepi

UBT International Conference

Financial crises have caused much debate among different economists. They have attempted to explore any possibility of detecting and preventing crises before they cause the damages that will require way more time and energy to repair the situation and bring the economies back on the right track of sustainable development. The purpose of this study is to analyze different types of financial crises that have affected the economies of the world in order to draw lessons from their experiences. Analysis of this study is divided into four types of financial crises: Banking crisis, speculative bubbles and the market failures, international …

He Comparison Of Students’ Assessment In Kosovo High Schools Through Online Test And Hardcopy, Fëllënza Beka Bajrami, Nexhat Bajrami, Elmire Nikçi Rexha

UBT International Conference

The use of information technology in every field of life is marking an exponental growth as well as in education.

Digitalization plays an important role in education, where it had a major impact on the time of COVID-19 pandemic due to school closure measures.

The main purpose of this research is to use Information Technology for online assessment of students in the subject of Information Technology, and then to analyze how they affect medical high school. The other purpose of this research is also to extract information or data from practice, which serve to prove the use of online assessment …

Quality Of Financial Information And Accounting Considerations During The Covid-19 Pandemic, Maria Markova, Georgi Hristov

UBT International Conference

The COVID-19 pandemic has posed numerous difficulties before business entities and thus before accounting professionals. The paper summarizes the main issues financial reporting faces during the pandemic with respect to the quality of the financial information provided by the financial statements of the entities. The main quality characteristics of useful financial information are brought to light in the context of the impediments posed by the COVID-19 crisis.

Different aspects of financial reporting are discussed: the implications on the going concern principle; the effects on accounting judgements and estimates; events after the reporting period. The paper provides real-life examples for the …

Being A Stem Woman In Kosovo, Aferina Skeja, Nora Sadiku Dushi, Gülay Keskin

UBT International Conference

Although it is difficult to accept, even in this time of civilization that we live in, women across the world face various difficulties as individuals. Male dominance in most fields makes it impossible to avoid gender discrimination. Gender discrimination all over the world is a huge drawback for women in almost every field. This phenomenon is even more prominent in business life and especially in STEM fields (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics). In this globalized world, Kosovar women may not be an exception. Therefore, this research aims to examine whether women who work or have worked in STEM fields in Kosovo …