Trusted Certified Auditor Using Cryptography for Secure Data Outsourcing and Privacy Preservation in Fog-Enabled VANETs

With the recent technological developments,massive vehicular ad hoc networks(VANETs)have been established,enabling numerous vehicles and their respective Road Side Unit(RSU)components to communicate with oneanother.The best way to enhance traffic flow for vehicles and traffic management departments is to share thedata they receive.There needs to be more protection for the VANET systems.An effective and safe methodof outsourcing is suggested,which reduces computation costs by achieving data security using a homomorphicmapping based on the conjugate operation of matrices.This research proposes a VANET-based data outsourcingsystem to fix the issues.To keep data outsourcing secure,the suggested model takes cryptography models intoaccount.Fog will keep the generated keys for the purpose of vehicle authentication.For controlling and overseeingthe outsourced data while preserving privacy,the suggested approach considers the Trusted Certified Auditor(TCA).Using the secret key,TCA can identify the genuine identity of VANETs when harmful messages aredetected.The proposed model develops a TCA-based unique static vehicle labeling system using cryptography(TCA-USVLC)for secure data outsourcing and privacy preservation in VANETs.The proposed model calculatesthe trust of vehicles in 16 ms for an average of 180 vehicles and achieves 98.6%accuracy for data encryption toprovide security.The proposedmodel achieved 98.5%accuracy in data outsourcing and 98.6%accuracy in privacypreservation in fog-enabled VANETs.Elliptical curve cryptography models can be applied in the future for betterencryption and decryption rates with lightweight cryptography operations.

Strategic Contracting for Software Upgrade Outsourcing in Industry 4.0

The advent of Industry 4.0 has compelled businesses to adopt digital approaches that combine software toenhance production efficiency. In this rapidly evolving market, software development is an ongoing process thatmust be tailored to meet the dynamic needs of enterprises. However, internal research and development can beprohibitively expensive, driving many enterprises to outsource software development and upgrades to externalservice providers. This paper presents a software upgrade outsourcing model for enterprises and service providersthat accounts for the impact of market fluctuations on software adaptability. To mitigate the risk of adverseselection due to asymmetric information about the service provider’s cost and asymmetric information aboutthe enterprise’s revenues, we propose pay-per-time and revenue-sharing contracts in two distinct informationasymmetry scenarios. These two contracts specify the time and transfer payments for software upgrades. Througha comparative analysis of the optimal solutions under the two contracts and centralized decision-making withfull-information, we examine the characteristics of the solutions under two information asymmetry scenarios andanalyze the incentive effects of the two contracts on the various stakeholders. Overall, our study offers valuableinsights for firms seeking to optimize their outsourcing strategies and maximize their returns on investment insoftware upgrades.

Research on the Status Quo and Countermeasures of Human Resource Management Outsourcing in China’s Pharmaceutical Enterprises

Objective To explore the current situation of human resource management outsourcing in China’s pharmaceutical enterprises,and to put forward some suggestions for enterprises and the government.Methods The current situation of human resource management outsourcing in China’s pharmaceutical enterprises was analyzed through the method of literature research.Results and Conclusion At present,the status of human resource management outsourcing in China’s pharmaceutical companies is that the level of human resource outsourcing companies is not high,and there are no relevant industry norms and laws.The information asymmetry between pharmaceutical enterprises and outsourcing companies results in adverse selection and moral hazard.Besides,the different culture of pharmaceutical enterprises and outsourcing companies leads to inefficient communication between enterprises and employee.To solve these problems,the government should promote and improve industry norms and laws to regulate the market.In addition,enterprises should clarify the motivation for outsourcing and make good decision on the outsourcing content.Meanwhile,enterprises should strengthen communication with employees to eliminate employees’concerns.

Offshore Software Maintenance Outsourcing Process Model Validation:A Case Study Approach

The successful execution and management of Offshore Software Maintenance Outsourcing(OSMO)can be very beneficial for OSMO vendors and the OSMO client.Although a lot of research on software outsourcing is going on,most of the existing literature on offshore outsourcing deals with the outsourcing of software development only.Several frameworks have been developed focusing on guiding software systemmanagers concerning offshore software outsourcing.However,none of these studies delivered comprehensive guidelines for managing the whole process of OSMO.There is a considerable lack of research working on managing OSMO from a vendor’s perspective.Therefore,to find the best practices for managing an OSMO process,it is necessary to further investigate such complex and multifaceted phenomena from the vendor’s perspective.This study validated the preliminary OSMO process model via a case study research approach.The results showed that the OSMO process model is applicable in an industrial setting with few changes.The industrial data collected during the case study enabled this paper to extend the preliminary OSMO process model.The refined version of the OSMO processmodel has four major phases including(i)Project Assessment,(ii)SLA(iii)Execution,and(iv)Risk.

Project Assessment in Offshore Software Maintenance Outsourcing Using Deep Extreme Learning Machines

Software maintenance is the process of fixing,modifying,and improving software deliverables after they are delivered to the client.Clients can benefit from offshore software maintenance outsourcing(OSMO)in different ways,including time savings,cost savings,and improving the software quality and value.One of the hardest challenges for the OSMO vendor is to choose a suitable project among several clients’projects.The goal of the current study is to recommend a machine learning-based decision support system that OSMO vendors can utilize to forecast or assess the project of OSMO clients.The projects belong to OSMO vendors,having offices in developing countries while providing services to developed countries.In the current study,Extreme Learning Machine’s(ELM’s)variant called Deep Extreme Learning Machines(DELMs)is used.A novel dataset consisting of 195 projects data is proposed to train the model and to evaluate the overall efficiency of the proposed model.The proposed DELM’s based model evaluations achieved 90.017%training accuracy having a value with 1.412×10^(-3) Root Mean Square Error(RMSE)and 85.772%testing accuracy with 1.569×10^(-3) RMSE with five DELMs hidden layers.The results express that the suggested model has gained a notable recognition rate in comparison to any previous studies.The current study also concludes DELMs as the most applicable and useful technique for OSMO client’s project assessment.

On Incentive and Coordination Mechanism of Service Outsourcing Based on Principal-Agent Theory and Blockchain Technology

To address the issue of information asymmetry between the two parties and moral hazard among service providers in the process of service outsourcing,this paper builds the Stackelberg game model based on the principal-agent framework,examines the dynamic game situation before the contract being signed,and develops four information models.The analysis reveals a Pareto improvement in the game’s Nash equilibrium when comparing the four models from the standpoint of the supply chain.In the complete information scenario,the service level of the service provider,the customer company’s incentive effectiveness,and the supply chain system’s ultimate profit are all maximized.Furthermore,a coordinating mechanism for disposable profit is built in this study.The paper then suggests a blockchain-based architecture for the service outsourcing process supervision and a distributed incentive mechanism under the coordination mechanism in response to the inadequacy of the principal-agent theory to address the information asymmetry problem and the moral hazard problem.The experiment’s end findings demonstrate that both parties can benefit from the coordination mechanism,and the application of blockchain technology can resolve these issues and effectively encourage service providers.

Can harvest outsourcing services reduce field harvest losses of rice in China?

The purpose of this study is to quantify the rice harvest losses in China and to evaluate the impacts of machinery and harvest outsourcing services on these losses,given the background of high-speed mechanization and outsourcing services.Data were collected from a national survey conducted in 2016 by the research team in conjunction with the Research Center for the Rural Economy of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs of China.A non-parametric method was used to test whether combine harvesting and outsourcing services could significantly reduce harvest losses.Next,quantile regression was used to estimate the real effects of machinery and outsourcing services on harvest losses.The analysis yielded four main study outcomes.First,the harvest loss rate of rice in China was 3.65%.Second,mechanical reaping and winnowing caused greater losses than manual methods,while the opposite was true of field transportation.Third,combine harvesting increased the losses.Fourth,the effects of an outsourcing service on losses differed among the different harvesting methods.Outsourcing services increased losses in segmented harvesting but they reduced losses in combine harvesting.

Efficient Secure Data Provenance Scheme in Multimedia Outsourcing and Sharing

To cope with privacy leakage caused by multimedia outsourcing and sharing,data provenance is used to analyze leaked multimedia and provide reactive accountability.Existing schemes of multimedia provenance are based on watermarking protocols.In an outsourcing scenario,existing schemes face two severe challenges:1)when data leakage occurs,there exists a probability that data provenance results can be repudiated,in which case data provenance tracking fails;and 2)when outsourced data are shared,data encryption transfer causes key management burden outside the schemes,and privacy leakage threatens users.In this paper,we propose a novel data provenance scheme with an improved LUT-based fingerprinting protocol,which integrates an asymmetric watermarking protocol,robust watermark algorithm and homomorphic encryption and digital signatures to achieve full non-repudiation provenance.We build an in-scheme stream cipher to protect outsourced multimedia data from privacy leakage and complicated key management.Our scheme is also lightweight and easy to deploy.Extensive security and performance analysis compares our scheme with the state of the art.The results show that our scheme has not only better provenance security and data confidentiality but also higher efficiency for multimedia outsourcing,sharing and provenance.

Service outsourcing:A new way to shrink regional gaps

International outsourcing is an important way to realize intra-product division of labor. China's industrial upgrade and policy efforts directed at outsourcing are not entirely endogenous but have a dependent path prone to be captured and locked at the low end of the global value chain by developed countries at the chain's high end. In light of the stage and reality of China's economic development, we should not only upgrade manufacturing outsourcing but also grasp service outsourcing opportunities. We should implement a strategy of coordinated development of manufacturing and service outsourcing rather than hastily transforming China from a "factory of the world" into an "office of the world." Balancing services with manufacturing and linking the global value chain with the domestic value chain is the best tool to address the problem of China's uneven regional development and establish a multi-tiered modern industrial system.

Achieving reliable and anti-collusive outsourcing computation and verification based on blockchain in 5G-enabled IoT

Widespread applications of 5G technology have prompted the outsourcing of computation dominated by the Internet of Things(IoT)cloud to improve transmission efficiency,which has created a novel paradigm for improving the speed of common connected objects in IoT.However,although it makes it easier for ubiquitous resource-constrained equipment that outsources computing tasks to achieve high-speed transmission services,security concerns,such as a lack of reliability and collusion attacks,still exist in the outsourcing computation.In this paper,we propose a reliable,anti-collusion outsourcing computation and verification protocol,which uses distributed storage solutions in response to the issue of centralized storage,leverages homomorphic encryption to deal with outsourcing computation and ensures data privacy.Moreover,we embed outsourcing computation results and a novel polynomial factorization algorithm into the smart contract of Ethereum,which not only enables the verification of the outsourcing result without a trusted third party but also resists collusion attacks.The results of the theoretical analysis and experimental performance evaluation demonstrate that the proposed protocol is secure,reliable,and more effective compared with state-of-the-art approaches.

A potential game-based outsourcing computation framework for multiple calculators

Outsourcing computation enables a computationally weak client to outsource the computation of a function f to a more powerful but untrusted server.The traditional outsourcing computation model forbids communication between players,but it has little effect.Based on the game theory,this paper establishes an outsourcing computation model which is more in line with the actual scene.Firstly,we construct a structural mapping relationship between security outsourcing computation and the optimization problem.Secondly,by designing the individual potential function and the global potential function,the individual goal is consistent with the global goal to ensure the correctness of the calculation results.Finally,in the information exchange environment between calculators,we construct a Zero-determinant strategy to ensure that the calculator chooses the strategy according to the predetermined target.

Scheduling and Outsourcing with Multiple Customers

In this paper, we study a new scheduling and outsourcing model with multiple customers in which jobs can be processed by either in-house machine or outsourcing machine.All processed jobs have to be delivered in batches to their respective customers and each shipment incurs a delivery cost as well as a fixed amount of time. We discuss three commonly used objective functions, analyze their complexity and solve them by dynamic programming algorithms.

Management and Control of Outsourcing in Dispersed Network Manufacturing Systems

The trend of economic globalisation and advances in i nformation technology has led to the emergence of dispersed manufacturing system s as a form of the virtual organisation. New manufacturing strategy pays more at tention to the management of the total value chain and therefore puts emphasis o n outsourcing. In fact, outsourcing is an efficient way of utilizing available r esources and has become one key aspect of the manufacturing strategy. Improved d ecision and organization on outsourcing will result in cost production and short er lead-times. However, most concepts and practice of traditional outsourcing do not adapt to t he changing environment and meet increasing performance requirements. On the oth er hand, virtual organisations might display instability between pure outsourcin g and establishing alliance. Balance and trade-off between independent agents a nd creating alliance are thus required. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to develop a model to support decision-making, management and control on outsou rcing in a dispersed network manufacturing system and to discuss several key iss ues that are relevant to the relationship between the agents of the network. Dev elopment of the model will deploy Applied System Theory and will be built on fou ndations of earlier research on industrial management such the theories of Outso urcing, Order Entry Points, Design of Organisations and Logistic Control. The is sues that will be addressed in this paper are: · The selection of suppliers and co-makers; · Communication between suppliers and clients; · The mechanisms for profit-sharing between agents; · The product data management to integrate the knowledge of the different agent s into product design. Industrial companies will benefit from this research by the practical methods an d implementation extending their business models beyond concepts for outsourcing and alliances. Additionally, the exploration will lead to proactive contributio n of manufacturing during engineering, which would improve management and contro l of dispersed manufacturing systems.

Why Your IT Outsourcing RFP Is Holding You Back

If you’re looking for transformation or innovation from an outsourcing engagement, you might want to ditch the traditional request-for-proposal (RFP) process. That’s right—that decades-old, time-tested process used to gather bids from potential providers may be doing your IT outsourcing relationships a disservice, according to Tom Young, partner with outsourcing consultancy ISG. "RFPs by their very nature

The Present Situation of IT Outsourcing and Countermeasure

With the market competition intensifies, enterprises focusing on core business has become the most important rules of survival. Therefore, more and more enterprises adopt outsourcing as critical business initiatives due to its effectively reduce costs, enhancing the core competitiveness of enterprises and other characteristics. Duroc, a famous American management scholars had predicted: “In ten to fifteen years within any business background to support not only to do the work of creating turnover should be outsourced.” Do what you do best (your core competency) and outsource the rest. It has become an irreversible trend. In this paper, we will introduce the business value of IT outsourcing, discuss IT outsourcing industry’s strengths and weaknesses, finally we will provide corresponding countermeasures based on the discussion.

Privacy-Preserving Genetic Algorithm Outsourcing in Cloud Computing

Genetic Algorithm(GA)has been widely used to solve various optimization problems.As the solving process of GA requires large storage and computing resources,it is well motivated to outsource the solving process of GA to the cloud server.However,the algorithm user would never want his data to be disclosed to cloud server.Thus,it is necessary for the user to encrypt the data before transmitting them to the server.But the user will encounter a new problem.The arithmetic operations we are familiar with cannot work directly in the ciphertext domain.In this paper,a privacy-preserving outsourced genetic algorithm is proposed.The user’s data are protected by homomorphic encryption algorithm which can support the operations in the encrypted domain.GA is elaborately adapted to search the optimal result over the encrypted data.The security analysis and experiment results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed scheme.

Outsourcing the Unsigncryption of Compact Attribute-Based Signcryption for General Circuits

In the driven of big data, social computing and information security is undergoing rapid development and beginning to cross. This paper describes a key-policy attribute-based signcryption scheme which has less computation costs than existing similar schemes by utilizing secure outsourcing of scientific computation in cloud computing and eliminates overhead for users, the ciphertext is short, compact, the correctness of transformation algorithm is verifiable. The decrease of ciphertext is 17 %. Additionally, new scheme remits the key escrow problem and is proven selective security in the standard model, it could be verified publicly, applied in mobile devices.

Cooperation and Contract Design in Project Management with Outsourcing

We study a project management problem where the prime contractor needs to outsource tasks to subcontractors with the required resources.Successful execution of the project requires proper coordination among the subcontractors,as well as contract design by the prime contractor to incentivize the subcontractors.By modeling the subcontractors’coordination problem as a cooperative game,we develop a profit sharing scheme to facilitate the subcontractors’cooperation.We consider two contract designs for the prime contractor:a uniform contract across all subcontractors,and a nonuniform one that customizes incentives for each subcontractor.We propose efficient algorithms to solve the implicit optimization problems for optimal contract parameters.Computational experiments show that the pooling effect of subcontractors’cooperation mitigates the negative impact of poor estimates about the crashing cost and resource availability.We observe three unexpected results through the randomized computation experiments:(i)the subcontractors’profits may decrease if they provide false information;(ii)it is safer for the prime contractor to overestimate subcontractors’crashing costs than underestimate them;and(iii)uniform contracts deliver more project profit for the subcontractors in the coalitions.

Can whole steps of grain production be outsourced? Empirical analysis based on the three provinces of Jiangsu,Jilin,and Sichuan in China

Certain outsourcing services for agricultural management in China,such as pest control in grain production,have experienced prolonged sluggishness,contrasting with the relatively high level of outsourcing services observed in harvesting,land preparation,and sowing.This study examines the feasibility of implementing whole-step outsourcing in grain production by conducting a case study of rice and maize production in Jiangsu,Jilin,and Sichuan provinces in China.The provision of outsourcing services hinges on two essential conditions:technological advancements fostering specialized production and economies of scale,coupled with a market size sufficient to realize the aforementioned potential economies of scale.The results showed that outsourcing pest control or harvesting services had varying economies of scale.The outsourcing services in pest control were less common than in harvesting services,and their marginal growth space of the economies of scale with technological change was also smaller.Determined by the operational characteristics of pest control itself,the market scale of its professional services is small.Therefore,achieving the whole-step outsourcing of grain production necessitates not only technological innovation but also effective policy interventions to overcome the constraints of market scale.Such interventions include(1)optimizing crop layouts between planning regions and reducing land fragmentation and(2)supplying timely and effective inter-regional agricultural information for service providers aided by information technology.

TWO-STAGE PRODUCTION SCHEDULING WITH AN OPTION OF OUTSOURCING FROM A REMOTE SUPPLIER

This paper studies a two-stage production system with n job orders where each job needs two sequential operations. In addition to the two in-house production facilities, the manufacturer has another option of outsourcing some stage-one operations to a remote outside supplier. The jobs with their stage-one operations outsourced are subject to a batch transportation delay from the outside supplier before their respective stage-two operations can be started in-house. The problem is to design an integrated schedule that considers both the in-house production and the outsourcing with the aim of optimally balancing the outsourcing cost and the makespan. The problem is NP-hard. We have developed an optimal algorithm and a heuristic algorithm to solve the problem, and conducted computational experiments to validate our model and algorithms. Our modeling and algorithm framework can be extended to handle other more general cases such as when the outside supplier has a production facility with a different processing efficiency and when there are many outside suppliers on a spot market.