Russia has since the beginning of the Cold War been a security problem and a threat to the Scandinavian countries, this considered by the countries' respective intelligence service, actors that are analysing Russia and the threat to the countries. However, information about Russia as a threat from the intelligence services' own perspective has so far been limited to information related to the Cold War period. This study thus aims to fill the research gap that exists on how intelligence services currently view Russia and contribute to more knowledge about how they view the threat from Russia, through their annual reports concerning the years 2012-2019. These annual reports are published by the intelligence services and describe their focus areas. This thesis uses a qualitative method to study the annual reports. To analyse what emerged from the annual reports, three different analytical frameworks are used: Buzan’s expanded security concept, the regional security complex theory and the balance of threat theory. What has emerged from examining these annual reports is that the threat from Russia has become increasingly complex and that Russia today and in contrast to the Cold War period, operates not only in the traditional military and political sector, but also in the economic and the societal sector. Based on the intelligence services' annual reports, Russia has increased as a threat and affects more regions concerning the security than its own. In order to be able to fully understand Scandinavia's region and security, Russia as a threat to the countries must be included. Sweden has not chosen to respond to the threat from Russia by joining NATO, where both Denmark and Norway are already members. The three Scandinavian countries have responded to the threat from Russia by increasing their focus on the national defence.

Les troubles du spectre de l’autisme (TSA) sont caractérisés par des difficultés persistantes dans les domaines de la communication et des interactions sociales. Les individus atteints de TSA ont notamment des difficultés à décoder les émotions d’autrui et il est souvent suggéré qu’un déficit général du traitement des visages émotionnels est à l’origine de ces difficultés. Cependant, les résultats de la littérature sont incohérents et soulignent l'importance de facteurs méthodologiques qui pourraient influencer la performance des personnes TSA. Deux théories actuelles sont pertinentes au regard de ces difficultés rencontrées dans les interactions sociales : 1) la théorie de la régulation comportementale propose que ces difficultés résultent de dysfonctionnements du traitement des émotions et/ou des mécanismes permettant de répondre de façon appropriée à ces émotions; et 2) la théorie de la motivation sociale propose au contraire que ces mécanismes sont intacts et que les difficultés rencontrées sont le résultat d’un déficit de motivation sociale. Cette thèse avait pour but de départager ces deux théories, tout en contrôlant de nombreux facteurs méthodologiques qui pourraient influencer la performance des personnes TSA. L’expérience 1 visait à étudier l’impact de la direction du regard sur le traitement de la peur et de la colère. L’expérience 2 étudiait les choix d’actions spontanées en présence de visages de peur ou de colère et la catégorisation de ces émotions présentées en vision périphérique. Ces deux études révèlent des résultats similaires chez des adolescents neuro-typiques et TSA. Ces deux groupes sont capables de décoder des expressions de peur et de colère, présentées au centre de l’écran ou en périphérie, ils sont aussi sensibles aux variations d’intensité de ces émotions et aux variations de contexte (ici étudié sous la forme de la direction du regard). D’autre part, les deux groupes répondent de façon similaire à ces émotions, notamment en choisissant des actions qui leur permettent d’éviter des individus menaçants. Pris dans leur ensemble, ces résultats indiquent que les mécanismes impliqués dans le traitement des émotions, l’intégration des facteurs contextuels, et dans l’adaptation de son comportement en réponses à ces signaux sociaux sont intacts chez des adolescents atteints de TSA. Ces résultats sont discutés au regard des théories de la motivation sociale et de la régulation comportementale. / Autism spectrum disorders (ASD) are neurodevelopmental conditions characterised by persistent deficits in social reciprocity. Deficits in emotion perception are common in ASD and suggested to stem from a generalised deficit in the processing of facial affect. The literature however is inconsistent, stressing the importance of methodological factors that might bring individuals with ASD to a disadvantage. Two relevant theoretical frameworks are considered: 1) the behavioural self-regulation account proposes that affective atypicalities stem from deficits in the processing of the emotional signals and/or the regulation of appropriate responses to these signals; and 2) the social motivation account proposes that the mechanisms behind either of these two stages of emotion understanding are intact and that behavioural deficits stem from reduced weighting of social information. This Ph.D. aimed to disentangle between the two theories in the context of social threats by taking into account the necessary methodological factors. Experiment 1 investigated the contextual impact of gaze direction on the categorisation of facial expressions of anger and fear. Experiment 2 investigated both free action choice in response to implicit social threats –facial expressions of anger and fear- and their emotion categorisation accuracy in visual periphery. Across both studies ASD and typically developing (TD) adolescents demonstrated intact processing of both anger and fear in direct view and in visual periphery and were sensitive to the changes in emotional intensity of the stimuli. In Experiment 1, although the control group was overall more accurate than the ASD group in emotion decoding, gaze direction impacted the processing of threat similarly in both groups. Specifically, gaze direction raised the saliency of the threat for the observer and enhanced their sensitivity to the most salient ones. In Experiment 2, both groups demonstrated an overall tendency to avoid emotional agents, which was particularly evident in the case of anger. Taken together, the mechanisms behind the processing of facial social threats appear relatively spared in ASD adolescents and the impact of contextual factors are similar ASD and typical development. Adolescents with ASD are able to use social threats to adapt their behaviour by avoiding the emotional agent, which is not surprising during a developmental period characterised by enhanced reactivity to threat. These findings are discussed in terms of the social motivation and behavioural self-regulation frameworks and future directions are proposed.

Digitization has an impact on the change that the accounting industry is undergoing. The vision of development is to automate and systematize society, which means that the technology mainly implements tasks of society. The study aims to dig deeper which effects the digitization has on the accounting firm. These effects are derived from an analysis model in which the role of the accounting assistants is questioned. Employees with different occupational positions at the accounting firm have been interviewed for empirical data collection. The interviews were conducted in a purposeful manner, since the selection is aimed at employees who are helpful in answering the study's question and purpose. The interviews were used to find links with the theoretical reference frames. With the help of the theoretical frame of reference and the collected empirical data, conclusions have been drawn that digitization causes different effects. The work approach is streamlined by automating the basic tasks of the accounting firm. The streamlining will lead to the accounting firm being able to deliver a broader service during the same time frame, which leads to increased client satisfaction. Quality achieves higher levels by increasing customer satisfaction. When the accounting firm delivers services with higher time gains, profitability will be higher. Profitability is something accounting firms and other businesses strive for, therefore it is likely that digitization will be implemented even more. Finally, the different effects of digitization show that the need for accounting assistants is diminishing, which is why digitization is partly perceived as a threat.

abstract: The use of reactive security mechanisms in enterprise networks can, at times, provide an asymmetric advantage to the attacker. Similarly, the use of a proactive security mechanism like Moving Target Defense (MTD), if performed without analyzing the effects of security countermeasures, can lead to security policy and service level agreement violations. In this thesis, I explore the research questions 1) how to model attacker-defender interactions for multi-stage attacks? 2) how to efficiently deploy proactive (MTD) security countermeasures in a software-defined environment for single and multi-stage attacks? 3) how to verify the effects of security and management policies on the network and take corrective actions? I propose a Software-defined Situation-aware Cloud Security framework, that, 1) analyzes the attacker-defender interactions using an Software-defined Networking (SDN) based scalable attack graph. This research investigates Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) attacks using a scalable attack graph. The framework utilizes a parallel graph partitioning algorithm to generate an attack graph quickly and efficiently. 2) models single-stage and multi-stage attacks (APTs) using the game-theoretic model and provides SDN-based MTD countermeasures. I propose a Markov Game for modeling multi-stage attacks. 3) introduces a multi-stage policy conflict checking framework at the SDN network's application plane. I present INTPOL, a new intent-driven security policy enforcement solution. INTPOL provides a unified language and INTPOL grammar that abstracts the network administrator from the underlying network controller's lexical rules. INTPOL develops a bounded formal model for network service compliance checking, which significantly reduces the number of countermeasures that needs to be deployed. Once the application-layer policy conflicts are resolved, I utilize an Object-Oriented Policy Conflict checking (OOPC) framework that identifies and resolves rule-order dependencies and conflicts between security policies. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Computer Science 2020

Reaction times (RTs) are a valuable measure for assessing cognitive processes. However, RTs are susceptible to confounds and therefore variable. Exposure to threat, for example, speeds up or slows down responses. Distinct task types to some extent account for differential effects of threat on RTs. But also do inter-individual differences like trait anxiety. In this functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study, we investigated whether activation within the amygdala, a brain region closely linked to the processing of threat, may also function as a predictor of RTs, similar to trait anxiety scores. After threat conditioning by means of aversive electric shocks, 45 participants performed a choice RT task during alternating 30 s blocks in the presence of the threat conditioned stimulus [CS+] or of the safe control stimulus [CS-]. Trait anxiety was assessed with the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory and participants were median split into a high- and a low-anxiety subgroup. We tested three hypotheses: (1) RTs will be faster during the exposure to threat compared to the safe condition in individuals with high trait anxiety. (2) The amygdala fMRI signal will be higher in the threat condition compared to the safe condition. (3) Amygdala fMRI signal prior to a RT trial will be correlated with the corresponding RT. We found that, the high-anxious subgroup showed faster responses in the threat condition compared to the safe condition, while the low-anxious subgroup showed no significant difference in RTs in the threat condition compared to the safe condition. Though the fMRI analysis did not reveal an effect of condition on amygdala activity, we found a trial-by-trial correlation between blood-oxygen-level-dependent signal within the right amygdala prior to the CRT task and the subsequent RT. Taken together, the results of this study showed that exposure to threat modulates task performance. This modulation is influenced by personality trait. Additionally and most importantly, activation in the amygdala predicts behavior in a simple task that is performed during the exposure to threat. This finding is in line with “attentional capture by threat”—a model that includes the amygdala as a key brain region for the process that causes the response slowing.

This thesis examines the meaning and construction of the debated concept of hybrid war/warfare in the existing scholarly literature. The identified research problem stems from the lack of reflection on the conceptual reasoning and thought that underpins the nature of war, which relates to the fact that a historical linguistic perspective is neglected in most studies on war. Through this study, conceptual history theory has demonstrated its utility in War Studies by illustrating the benefit of applying a historically focused lens on debated and contested concepts. Thus, demonstrating how both a synchronic and diachronic perspective is necessary to examine how the meaning and construction of a concept change over time.  The analysis aims to answer the question of how the meaning of the hybrid war concept has developed in the existing body of literature between 2008-2021. Based on the analysis, it was observed that the greatest shift in terms of the meaning and use of the concept occurred after the Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014. The previously optimistic anticipation of hybrid war in future was replaced with a more critical understanding of the concept itself, and the prospect of its future. All in all, the result of this thesis, beside the observed shift in the meaning and construction of the hybrid war concept, is that conceptual history theory can contribute to the understanding of contested and debated concepts related to the nature of war.

As the central goal of the submitted diploma thesis, I set myself to approach the meaning of values in the work of Albert Schweitzer in the ethical and environmental context and to map this footprint in the non-profit sector of the Czech Republic. With this work, I would like to emphasize the importance of Schweitzer's ethics of respect for life for its constant relevance and monitor this influence across the spectrum of non-profit institutions focused on environmental protection. The added value of the work lies mainly in the presentation and own critical reflection of the main theses of this important figure of the 20th century and evaluation of its impact on the current state of environmental education, where for capacity reasons I limit myself to selected Czech institutions through a sociological method (a questionnaire survey). To support objectivity, I expanded the research with a probe into the media image of Albert Schweitzer in the Czech Republic.

Master's thesis focuses on proposal for the implementation of security measures in the software development company. Theoretical section defines chosen information security terms. Analytical section deals with analysis and assessment of current security situation in the company. Solution proposal contains risk analysis, proposal of security measures for risk treatment and economic evaluation.

This work deals security of SCADA industry systems which are used in energetic networks. It describes architecture of those systems and also analyze in details two communication protocols -- DNP3 and IEC 60870-5-104.  Next part is devoted to the analysis of anomaly and security threats which can be happen in SCADA systems. The main goal of this work is design and implementation of system which will be able to detect some of threats or anomalies. Also is necessary to propose simulation environment for testing.

This diploma thesis analyses the current state of information security management in an organization. In the theoretical part of the thesis general concepts are described as well as the relations between risk management and information security, applicable laws and standards. Further, the theoretical part deals with the risk analysis and risk management, strategies, standard procedures and methods applied in this field. In the practical part a methodology is suggested for information risk analysis in a particular organization and appropriate measures are selected.