ALBERT

Description / Table of Contents: Computer Vision Metrics provides an extensive survey and analysis of over 100 current and historical feature description and machine vision methods, with a detailed taxonomy for local, regional and global features. This book provides necessary background to develop intuition about why interest point detectors and feature descriptors actually work, how they are designed, with observations about tuning the methods for achieving robustness and invariance targets for specific applications. The survey is broader than it is deep, with over 540 references provided to dig deeper. The taxonomy includes search methods, spectra components, descriptor representation, shape, distance functions, accuracy, efficiency, robustness and invariance attributes, and more. Rather than providing ‘how-to’ source code examples and shortcuts, this book provides a counterpoint discussion to the many fine opencv community source code resources available for hands-on practitioners

Description / Table of Contents: Apress is proud to announce that Rethinking the Internet of Things was a 2014 Jolt Award Finalist, the highest honor for a programming book. And the amazing part is that there is no code in the book. Over the next decade, most devices connected to the Internet will not be used by people in the familiar way that personal computers, tablets and smart phones are. Billions of interconnected devices will be monitoring the environment, transportation systems, factories, farms, forests, utilities, soil and weather conditions, oceans and resources. Many of these sensors and actuators will be networked into autonomous sets, with much of the information being exchanged machine-to-machine directly and without human involvement. Machine-to-machine communications are typically terse. Most sensors and actuators will report or act upon small pieces of information - "chirps". Burdening these devices with current network protocol stacks is inefficient, unnecessary and unduly increases their cost of ownership. This must change. The architecture of the Internet of Things must evolve now by incorporating simpler protocols toward at the edges of the network, or remain forever inefficient. Rethinking the Internet of Things describes reasons why we must rethink current approaches to the Internet of Things. Appropriate architectures that will coexist with existing networking protocols are described in detail. An architecture comprised of integrator functions, propagator nodes, and end devices, along with their interactions, is explored

Description / Table of Contents: Managing Risk and Information Security: Protect to Enable, an ApressOpen title, describes the changing risk environment and why a fresh approach to information security is needed. Because almost every aspect of an enterprise is now dependent on technology, the focus of IT security must shift from locking down assets to enabling the business while managing and surviving risk. This compact book discusses business risk from a broader perspective, including privacy and regulatory considerations. It describes the increasing number of threats and vulnerabilities, but also offers strategies for developing solutions. These include discussions of how enterprises can take advantage of new and emerging technologies—such as social media and the huge proliferation of Internet-enabled devices—while minimizing risk. With ApressOpen, content is freely available through multiple online distribution channels and electronic formats with the goal of disseminating professionally edited and technically reviewed content to the worldwide community. Here are some of the responses from reviewers of this exceptional work: "Managing Risk and Information Security is a perceptive, balanced, and often thought-provoking exploration of evolving information risk and security challenges within a business context.  Harkins clearly connects the needed, but often-overlooked linkage and dialog between the business and technical worlds and offers actionable strategies.   The book contains eye-opening security insights that are easily understood, even by the curious layman." Fred Wettling, Bechtel Fellow, IS&T Ethics & Compliance Officer, Bechtel "As disruptive technology innovations and escalating cyber threats continue to create enormous information security challenges, Managing Risk and Information Security: Protect to Enable provides a much-needed perspective. This book compels information security professionals to think differently about concepts of risk management in order to be more effective. The specific and practical guidance offers a fast-track formula for developing information security strategies which are lock-step with business priorities." Laura Robinson, Principal, Robinson Insight Chair, Security for Business Innovation Council (SBIC) Program Director, Executive Security Action Forum (ESAF) "The mandate of the information security function is being completely rewritten. Unfortunately most heads of security haven’t picked up on the change, impeding their companies’ agility and ability to innovate. This book makes the case for why security needs to change, and shows how to get started. It will be regarded as marking the turning point in information security for years to come." Dr. Jeremy Bergsman, Practice Manager, CEB     "The world we are responsible to protect is changing dramatically and at an accelerating pace. Technology is pervasive in virtually every aspect of our lives. Clouds, virtualization and mobile are redefining computing – and they are just the beginning of what is to come. Your security perimeter is defined by wherever your information and people happen to be. We are attacked by professional adversaries who are better funded than we will ever be. We in the information security profession must change as dramatically as the environment we protect. We need new skills and new strategies to do our jobs effectively. We literally need to change the way we think.   Written by one of the best in the business, Managing Risk and Information Security challenges traditional security theory with clear examples of the need for change. It also provides expert advice on how to dramatically increase the success of your security strategy and methods – from dealing with the misperception of risk to how to become a Z-shaped CISO.   Managing Risk and Information Security is the ultimate treatise on how to deliver effective security to the world we live in for the next 10 years. It is absolute must reading for anyone in our profession – and should be on the desk of every CISO in the world."   Dave Cullinane, CISSP CEO Security Starfish, LLC "In this overview, Malcolm Harkins delivers an insightful survey of the trends, threats, and tactics shaping information risk and security. From regulatory compliance to psychology to the changing threat context, this work provides a compelling introduction to an important topic and trains helpful attention on the effects of changing technology and management practices." Dr. Mariano-Florentino Cuéllar Professor, Stanford Law School Co-Director, Stanford Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC), Stanford University     "Malcolm Harkins gets it. In his new book Malcolm outlines the major forces changing the information security risk landscape from a big picture perspective, and then goes on to offer effective methods of managing that risk from a practitioner's viewpoint. The combination makes this book unique and a must read for anyone interested in IT risk." Dennis Devlin AVP, Information Security and Compliance, The George Washington University    "Managing Risk and Information Security is the first-to-read, must-read book on information security for C-Suite executives.  It is accessible, understandable and actionable. No sky-is-falling scare tactics, no techno-babble – just straight talk about a critically important subject. There is no better primer on the economics, ergonomics and psycho-behaviourals of security than this." Thornton May, Futurist, Executive Director & Dean, IT Leadership Academy     "Managing Risk and Information Security is a wake-up call for information security executives and a ray of light for business leaders.  It equips organizations with the knowledge required to transform their security programs from a "culture of no" to one focused on agility, value and competitiveness. Unlike other publications, Malcolm provides clear and immediately applicable solutions to optimally balance the frequently opposing needs of risk reduction and business growth. This book should be required reading for anyone currently serving in, or seeking to achieve, the role of Chief Information Security Officer." Jamil Farshchi, Senior Business Leader of Strategic Planning and Initiatives, VISA     "For too many years, business and security – either real or imagined – were at odds. In Managing Risk and Information Security: Protect to Enable, you get what you expect – real life practical ways to break logjams, have security actually enable business, and marries security architecture and business architecture. Why this book?  It's written by a practitioner, and not just any practitioner, one of the leading minds in Security today." John Stewart, Chief Security Officer, Cisco     "This book is an invaluable guide to help security professionals address risk in new ways in this alarmingly fast changing environment. Packed with examples which makes it a pleasure to read, the book captures practical ways a forward thinking CISO can turn information security into a competitive advantage for their business.    This book provides a new framework for managing risk in an entertaining and thought provoking way. This will change the way security professionals work with their business leaders, and help get products to market faster.   The 6 irrefutable laws of information security should be on a stone plaque on the desk of every security professional." Steven Proctor, VP, Audit & Risk Management, Flextronics

Description / Table of Contents: The InfoSec Handbook offers the reader an organized layout of information that is easily read and understood. Allowing beginners to enter the field and understand the key concepts and ideas, while still keeping the experienced readers updated on topics and concepts. It is intended mainly for beginners to the field of information security, written in a way that makes it easy for them to understand the detailed content of the book. The book offers a practical and simple view of the security practices while still offering somewhat technical and detailed information relating to security. It helps the reader build a strong foundation of information, allowing them to move forward from the book with a larger knowledge base. Security is a constantly growing concern that everyone must deal with. Whether it’s an average computer user or a highly skilled computer user, they are always confronted with different security risks. These risks range in danger and should always be dealt with accordingly. Unfortunately, not everyone is aware of the dangers or how to prevent them and this is where most of the issues arise in information technology (IT). When computer users do not take security into account many issues can arise from that like system compromises or loss of data and information. This is an obvious issue that is present with all computer users. This book is intended to educate the average and experienced user of what kinds of different security practices and standards exist. It will also cover how to manage security software and updates in order to be as protected as possible from all of the threats that they face

Description / Table of Contents: Digital Video Concepts, Methods, and Metrics: Quality, Compression, Performance, and Power Trade-off Analysis is a concise reference for professionals in a wide range of applications and vocations. It focuses on giving the reader mastery over the concepts, methods and metrics of digital video coding, so that readers have sufficient understanding to choose and tune coding parameters for optimum results that would suit their particular needs for quality, compression, speed and power. The practical aspects are many: Uploading video to the Internet is only the beginning of a trend where a consumer controls video quality and speed by trading off various other factors. Open source and proprietary applications such as video e-mail, private party content generation, editing and archiving, and cloud asset management would give further control to the end-user. Digital video is frequently compressed and coded for easier storage and transmission. This process involves visual quality loss due to typical data compression techniques and requires use of high performance computing systems. A careful balance between the amount of compression, the visual quality loss and the coding speed is necessary to keep the total system cost down, while delivering a good user experience for various video applications. At the same time, power consumption optimizations are also essential to get the job done on inexpensive consumer platforms. Trade-offs can be made among these factors, and relevant considerations are particularly important in resource-constrained low power devices. To better understand the trade-offs this book discusses a comprehensive set of engineering principles, strategies, methods and metrics. It also exposes readers to approaches on how to differentiate and rank video coding solutions

Description / Table of Contents: Written for the IT professional and business owner, this book provides the business and technical insight necessary to migrate your business to the cloud using Microsoft Office 365. This is a practical look at cloud migration and the use of different technologies to support that migration. Numerous examples of cloud migration with technical migration details are included. Cloud technology is a tremendous opportunity for an organization to reduce IT costs, and to improve productivity with increased access, simpler administration and improved services. Those businesses that embrace the advantages of the cloud will receive huge rewards in productivity and lower total cost of ownership over those businesses that choose to ignore it. The challenge for those charged with implementing Microsoft Office 365 is to leverage these advantages with the minimal disruption of their organization. This book provides practical help in moving your business to the Cloud and covers the planning, migration and the follow on management of the Office 365 Cloud services

Description / Table of Contents: GUI Design for Android Apps is the perfect—and concise—introduction for mobile app developers and designers. Through easy-to-follow tutorials, code samples, and case studies, the book shows the must-know principles for user-interface design for Android apps running on the Intel platform, including smartphones, tablets and embedded devices. This book is jointly developed for individual learning by Intel Software College and China Shanghai JiaoTong University, and is excerpted from Android Application Development for the Intel® Platform

Description / Table of Contents: Irrespective of whether we use economic or societal metrics, the Internet is one of the most important technical infrastructures in existence today. It will be a catalyst for much of our innovation and prosperity in the future. A competitive Europe will require Internet connectivity and services beyond the capabilities offered by current technologies. Future Internet research is therefore a must.  This book is published in full compliance with the Open Access publishing initiative; it is based on the research carried out within the Future Internet Assembly (FIA). It contains a sample of representative results from the recent FIA meetings spanning a broad range of topics, all being of crucial importance for the future Internet.  The book includes 32 contributions and has been structured into the following sections, each of which is preceded by a short introduction: Foundations: architectural issues; socio-economic issues; security and trust; and experiments and experimental design. Future Internet Areas: networks, services, and content; and applications

Description / Table of Contents: Modern knowledge discovery methods enable users to discover complex patterns of various types in large information repositories. However, the underlying assumption has always been that the data to which the methods are applied originates from one domain.   The focus of this book, and the BISON project from which the contributions originate, is a network-based integration of various types of data repositories and the development of new ways to analyse and explore the resulting gigantic information networks. Instead of seeking well-defined global or local patterns, the aim was to find domain-bridging associations. These are particularly interesting if they are sparse and have not been encountered before.   The 32 contributions presented in this state-of-the-art survey, together with a detailed introduction to the book, are organized in topical sections on bisociation; representation and network creation; network analysis; exploration; and applications and evaluation.  

Description / Table of Contents: Irrespective of whether we use economic or societal metrics, the Internet is one of the most important technical infrastructures in existence today. It will serve as a catalyst for much of our innovation and prosperity in the future. A competitive Europe will require Internet connectivity and services beyond the capabilities offered by current technologies. Future Internet research is therefore a must. The Future Internet Assembly (FIA) is a successful and unique bi-annual conference that brings together participants of over 150 projects from several distinct but interrelated areas in the EU Framework Programme 7. The 20 full papers included in this volume were selected from 40 submissions, and are preceded by a vision paper describing the FIA Roadmap. The papers have been organized into topical sections on the foundations of Future Internet, the applications of Future Internet, Smart Cities, and Future Internet infrastructures