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The popularity of mobile devices and the evolving nature of the services and information they can delivery make them increasingly desirable targets for misuse. The ability to provide effective authentication of the user becomes imperative if protection against misuse of personally and financially sensitive information is to be provided. This paper discusses the application of biometrics to a mobile device in a transparent and continuous fashion and the subsequent advantages and disadvantages that are in contention with various biometric techniques.

An investigation was conducted to evaluate the feasibility of utilising signature recognition, to verify users based upon written words and not signatures, thereby enabling transparent handwriting verification. Participants were required to write a number of common words, such as “hello” “sorry” and “thank you”. The ability to correctly verify against their own template and to reject impostors was then established.

Totally, 20 users participated in the study and an average FAR and FRR of 0 and 1.2 per cent, respectively, were experienced across eight common words.

The initial study has proven very successful, however, further investigations need to be established with a larger population of users and a wider vocabulary of words.

This study has verified the feasibility of applying an existing signature recognition technique to transparent handwriting verification.

Society is critically dependent on an adequate supply of hospital doctors to ensure optimal health care. Voluntary turnover amongst hospital doctors is, however, an increasing problem for hospitals. The aim of this study was to systematically review the extant academic literature to obtain a comprehensive understanding of the current knowledge base on hospital doctor turnover and retention. In addition to this, we synthesise the most common methodological approaches used before then offering an agenda to guide future research.

Adopting the PRISMA methodology, we conducted a systematic literature search of four databases, namely CINAHL, MEDLINE, PsycINFO and Web of Science.

We identified 51 papers that empirically examined hospital doctor turnover and retention. Most of these papers were quantitative, cross-sectional studies focussed on meso-level predictors of doctor turnover.

Selection criteria concentrated on doctors who worked in hospitals, which limited knowledge of one area of the healthcare environment. The review could disregard relevant articles, such as those that discuss the turnover and retention of doctors in other specialities, including general practitioners. Additionally, being limited to peer-reviewed published journals eliminates grey literature such as dissertations, reports and case studies, which may bring impactful results.

Globally, hospital doctor turnover is a prevalent issue that is influenced by a variety of factors. However, a lack of focus on doctors who remain in their job hinders a comprehensive understanding of the issue. Conducting “stay interviews” with doctors could provide valuable insight into what motivates them to remain and what could be done to enhance their work conditions. In addition, hospital management and recruiters should consider aspects of job embeddedness that occur outside of the workplace, such as facilitating connections outside of work. By resolving these concerns, hospitals can retain physicians more effectively and enhance their overall retention efforts.

Focussing on the reasons why employees remain with an organisation can have significant social repercussions. When organisations invest in gaining an understanding of what motivates their employees to stay in the job, they are better able to establish a positive work environment that likely to promote employee well-being and job satisfaction. This can result in enhanced job performance, increased productivity and higher employee retention rates, all of which are advantageous to the organisation and its employees.

The review concludes that there has been little consideration of the retention, as opposed to the turnover, of hospital doctors. We argue that more expansive methodological approaches would be useful, with more qualitative approaches likely to be particularly useful. We also call on future researchers to consider focussing further on why doctors remain in posts when so many are leaving.

This research aims to build a system that will continuously. This paper is an extended version of SECPRE 2021 paper and presents a research on the development and validation of a behavioral biometrics continuous authentication (BBCA) system that is based on users keystroke dynamics and touch gestures on mobile devices. This paper aims to build a system that will continuously authenticate the user of a smartphone.

Session authentication schemes establish the identity of the user only at the beginning of the session, so they are vulnerable to attacks that tamper with communications after the establishment of the authenticated session. Moreover, smartphones themselves are used as authentication means, especially in two-factor authentication schemes, which are often required by several services. Whether the smartphone is in the hands of the legitimate user constitutes a great concern and correspondingly whether the legitimate user is the one who uses the services. In response to these concerns, BBCA technologies have been proposed on a large corpus of literature. This paper presents a research on the development and validation of a BBCA system (named BioPrivacy), which is based on the user’s keystroke dynamics and touch gestures, using a multi-layer perceptron (MLP). Also, this paper introduces a new BB collection tool and proposes a methodology for the selection of an appropriate set of BB.

The system achieved the best results for keystroke dynamics which are 97.18% accuracy, 0.02% equal error rate, 97.2% true acceptance rate and 0.02% false acceptance rate.

This paper develops a new BB collection tool, named BioPrivacy, by which behavioral data of users on mobile devices can be collected. This paper proposes a methodology for the selection of an appropriate set of BB. This paper presents the development of a BBCA system based on MLP.

The use of mobile devices in handling our daily activities that involve the storage or access of sensitive data (e.g. on-line banking, paperless prescription services, etc.) is becoming very common. These mobile electronic services typically use a knowledge-based authentication method to authenticate a user (claimed identity). However, this authentication method is vulnerable to several security attacks. To counter the attacks and to make the authentication process more secure, this paper aims to investigate the use of touch dynamics biometrics in conjunction with a personal identification number (PIN)-based authentication method, and demonstrate its benefits in terms of strengthening the security of authentication services for mobile devices.

The investigation has made use of three light-weighted matching functions and a comprehensive reference data set collected from 150 subjects.

The investigative results show that, with this multi-factor authentication approach, even when the PIN is exposed, as much as nine out of ten impersonation attempts can be successfully identified. It has also been discovered that the accuracy performance can be increased by combining different feature data types and by increasing the input string length.

The novel contributions of this paper are twofold. Firstly, it describes how a comprehensive experiment is set up to collect touch dynamics biometrics data, and the set of collected data is being made publically available, which may facilitate further research in the problem domain. Secondly, the paper demonstrates how the data set may be used to strengthen the protection of resources that are accessible via mobile devices.

The ability of third generation telephones to store sensitive information, such as financial records, digital certificates and company records, makes them desirable targets for impostors. This paper details the feasibility of a non‐intrusive subscriber authentication technique – the use of keystroke dynamics. This feasibility study comprises a number of investigations into the ability of neural networks to authenticate users successfully based on their interactions with a mobile phone keypad. The initial results are promising with network classification performing well, achieving a 9.8 per cent false rejection rate and an 11.0 per cent false acceptance rate.

Concerns for information security in e‐learning systems have been raised previously. In the pursuit for better authentication approaches, few schools have implemented students' authentication during online exams beyond passwords. This paper aims to assess e‐learners' intention to provide multibiometric data and use of multibiometrics during online exams.

Based on data collected from 163 e‐learners from two institutions, the authors compared such measures when provided by their university versus by a third‐party service vendor. The multibiometrics discussed included fingerprint, face, and voice recognition.

The results show a clear indication by the learners that they are significantly more willing to provide their biometric data and intend to use multibiometrics when provided by their university compared with same services provided by a third‐party vendor.

Research implications include the need for better understanding of multibiometrics implementations in educational settings.

The findings are profound for vendors of multibiometrics as they must adjust their approach when implementing such technologies at higher educational institutions, rather than simply opt to license the use of such solutions and to host them.

This study helps higher educational institutions better understand that learners do not appear to object to the use of multibiometrics technologies during online exams, rather the way in which such technologies are implemented and managed on‐campus.

Now more than ever, climate action requires both private and public investment in building a sustainable future for all. COP26 affirmed the importance of collective action at all scales coupled with supporting public policy to limit global warming to a 1.5-degree trajectory. This chapter outlines the process and building blocks that culminated in the launch of the Drawdown Georgia Business Compact, whose mission is to leverage the collective impact of Georgia’s business community to achieve net zero carbon emissions in the state by 2050. In bringing together companies across diverse industries, the Business Compact creates a community of practice where cross-sector collaboration accelerates Georgia’s path to actualizing COP26’s decarbonization vision while also considering ‘beyond carbon’ issues such as the economy, equity, public health, and the environment. This is a regional and voluntary approach to Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 17 (Strengthen the means of implementation and revitalize the Global Partnership for Sustainable Development), which recognizes multi-stakeholder partnerships as important vehicles to achieve SDGs.

The paper aims to develop a microcredit evaluation model (MEM) which could serve as a useful tool for banks and NBFIs when SMEs’ economic and financial risks are evaluated.

Based on the literature review, a set of 17 qualitative and quantitative prudential indicators is selected. Further, a calculation system is developed which relies on the multiple criteria analysis model elaborated by Altman (1968); starting from this, a matrix is developed and a rating system is built. The model is tested among six NBFIs which operate on the Romanian market; three of them are labeled by the Romanian Central Bank as the worst performers, while the other ones are qualified as the best performers. Data are collected from companies’ annual reports and also from the Ministry of Finance.

It proves that the MEM can serve as a useful tool for the national and international NBFIs’ risk assessment. It can anticipate NBFIs’ success or fall. Furthermore, its results can be guaranteed with a probability of 95 per cent, calculated through the VaR method. Last but not least, it can also be used by the international NBFIs which intend to enter in the Romanian market.

The present paper proposes an original model based on both quantitative and qualitative indicators organized in an integrative equation. The MEM helps both parties involved in the financial grant awarding process – NBFIs are able to better assess requests from SMEs, enabling them to increase the volume of granting, whereas SMEs are able to access money for development projects more easily.