Shareholder Structure of Major Technology Companies: A Graph Analytics Study during COVID-19 and Beyond

During financial crises or other unexpected events, investors often seek to include lower-risk assets in their portfolios. Some assets are more sensitive than others to such phenomena. In the equities markets, adjustments tend to be made to the shareholdings of companies that are associated with a higher level of uncertainty. In this work, we explore the evolution of shareholder structure of various well-known companies in the technology sector during the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond. We model, as graphs, shareholder ownership data about twenty US-listed companies between 2020 and 2022. We use freely available tools to explore the bipartite interactions and generate a wide range of topologies that facilitate the identification of how shareholding structures have evolved during the pandemic. In addition, we study the role that some nodes play in the network topology and the process of change that is observed. Our findings include that (1) most investors reduced the amount invested in technology stocks during the pandemic and that these investments tended to bounce back in the post-pandemic era;(2) Vanguard Group, Inc., is the most influential investor in the network;(3) Apple has the highest market capitalization of all technology stocks for all quarters in this study, Microsoft Corp has a significantly lower market capitalization, but a significantly higher number of investors;and (4) While investors for Apple and Microsoft tend to be from London and New York, companies such as Oracle have investors from a variety of locations. © 2022 Copyright for this paper by its authors. Use permitted under Creative Commons License Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0).

Cybercriminals Strike Where It Hurts Most: SARS-Cov-2 Pandemic and its Influence on Critical Infrastructure Ransomware Attacks

The critical infrastructure (CI) of a society are the sixteen entities that facilitate the smooth daily living of its residents. Due to the crucial functionalities, CI elements are the most favored targets of cybercriminals. The situation was further aggravated when the world battled the SARS-Cov-2 pandemic. Due to socio-economic distress and reduced resources, a much higher number of ransomware attacks on CI were reported in the year 2020. To further illuminate the influence of the pandemic on the ransomware trends, the authors divided the data of the reported incidents into two time-frames. The first time-frame spanned the years 2013 till 2019, and the second time-frame covered the pandemic duration of the years 2020 and 2021. The two time frames were analyzed through rich visualizations and it was found that the healthcare sector was targeted much more while it was already struggling. Moreover, new strains like Netwalker and existing strains that preyed on corporate networks were preferred in recent years. The economic distress and call for stricter laws against ransom payments resulted in lesser percentages of ransom payments, but system downtimes stretched to more than a month's time. Lastly, while cryptocurrency had gained popularity among criminals due to its anonymity potential, continuous research against its misuse has caused a decline in crypto ransom payments. © 2022 IEEE.

Secure Access Service Edge: A Multivocal Literature Review

Over the last decade, corporate networks have undergone significant changes and have been increasingly reliant on cloud-based services to run their businesses. The Covid-19 pandemic has expedited this pattern. In this scenario, there is a need to provide security to infrastructures in an advanced and integrated way. Gartner invented the term "Secure Access Service Edge (SASE)"to meet the above-mentioned goal. SASE is a single framework cloud-native architecture that integrates various network and security functions. SASE is seen as a new cybersecurity solution that impacted established vendors but has received little academic attention. Therefore, in this paper, we present a Multivocal Literature Review (MVLR) aiming to gather an illustration of SASE, including definition, key characteristics, reported benefits and challenges and, finally, critiques of this new term. SASE is adopting the benefits of cloud approaches adding security to the service, however, challenges remain in several setups, including legacy systems. © 2021 IEEE.

Analysis of the Dynamics of Internet Threats for Corporate Network Web Service

Analyzing web service logs is an important task to ensure the uninterruptible functioning and security for computer systems. When implementing complicated software systems, it is necessary to pay special attention to collecting, storing, processing, and analyzing logs of various services to identify existing and potential security problems. This paper describes an approach to analyzing the dynamics of web services functioning over two years and identifying security risks, as well as impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the use of Internet services. Recommendations are given to strengthen the protection of web services and reduce cybersecurity risks. © 2021 Copyright for this paper by its authors. Use permitted under Creative Commons License Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0).