Maurizio Naldi

Facebook: a rolling down ARPU?

Posted on 9 November 2013 by admin

The third quarter results of Facebook in 2013 are out (see the press release). The good news (for Facebook) are the increase of both advertising revenues ($1.80 billion, a 66% increase from the same quarter last year) and users (+25% year-over-year for daily active users, and +18% year-over-year for monthly active users). On the other hand, costs soared as well (though less steeply than revenues), reaching $1.28 billion in the quarter, up by 45% from the third quarter of 2012. But what is more worrying is that Continue reading →

Posted in Information economics | Tagged arpu, Facebook | Leave a comment

Call centers: wait, wait, and wait again...

Posted on 28 October 2013 by admin

We all know the often frustrating experience of interacting with a call center. Waiting for an operator to answer can take an appreciable portion of our time. And, while in most cases the chance to talk to an operator comes after a long sequence of choices (press 3, then press 1, then press 5, etc.), in some cases a selection of one of the pre-determined automatic options is all we are offered. Call center waiting times are always too long. Continue reading →

Posted in Call centers, Quality of Service | Tagged call center design, call center quality of service, call center waiting times, call centers | Leave a comment

Discovering communities in a network through network clustering

Posted on 22 October 2013 by admin

Some members in a network (be it a physical or a virtual one) may have a stronger relationship with some of the other members. Inside a network there are communities, whose members have stronger connections inside their community rather than outside of it. The detection of such communities is a relevant task in network analysis and is achieved through network clustering, e.g., decomposing the network into clusters (the communities). Continue reading →

Posted in Network clustering, Network topology, Traffic analysis | Tagged clustering algorithms, community detection, evolutionary algorithms, network clustering, traffic matrix | Leave a comment

The role of customers in data breach events and security investments

Posted on 10 October 2013 by admin

In the most established model to evaluate the effectiveness of security investments by Gordon and Loeb, the probability of data breaches is represented as a function of investments only. The more the company invests to protect the data of its customers, the lower the probability that a data breach occurs. Continue reading →

Posted in Security | Tagged Data breaches, Gordon-Loeb model, Security investments | Leave a comment

Call for papers - DRCN 2014 (Design of Reliable Communication Networks)

Posted on 12 July 2013 by admin

DRCN is a well-established annual forum for scientists, engineers, designers and planners from industry, government and academia who have interests in the reliability and availability of communication networks and services. The conference covers topics Continue reading →

Posted in Call for paper, Quality of Service, Risk analysis | Leave a comment

Some photos from UKSim 2013 in Cambridge

Posted on 2 July 2013 by admin

This year I've attended the annual UKSim conference in Cambridge. UKSim is the flagship conference of the UK Simulation Society and is additionally sponsored by a number of simulation societies as well as the local chapter of IEEE Computer Society. The conference gathers Continue reading →

Posted in Risk analysis | Tagged Credit risk, risk analysis, UKSim 2013 | 1 Comment

If the provider has to compensate for data breaches...

Posted on 23 June 2013 by admin

....revenues can be the right basis to do it.

Proposals for holding the service provider liable for damages suffered by its customers due to data breaches have been submitted in the past. In our papers "Liability for Data Breaches: A Proposal for a Revenue-Based Sanctioning Approach" and "Damage Sharing May Not Be Enough: An Analysis of an Ex-ante Regulation Policy for Data Breaches", Continue reading →

Posted in Security | Tagged Data breaches, Security economics, Security investments, Service providers' liability | Leave a comment

In the beginning it was the Impact Factor

Posted on 3 May 2013 by admin

When I started my career as a researcher (very late 80's...), I was told to publish on international journals of good reputation. And in those days good reputation basically meant journals with an Impact Factor as high as possible (i.e., the index delivered by Thomson Reuters on their Journal Citation Report, updated yearly). Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Altmetrics, H-index, Impact factor | Leave a comment

On credit risk analysis

Posted on 18 April 2013 by admin

Our paper "Solution Space Size in Credit Risk Simulation" on credit risk analysis has been presented at the 15th International Conference on Computer Modelling and Simulation UKSim 2013, held in Cambridge on April 9-12, 2013. You can download the presentation here Continue reading →

Posted in Risk analysis | Tagged Credit risk, portfolio analysis, risk analysis | Leave a comment