1,721,018 research outputs found
Family firm in the eyes of private equity companies
No full textFamily firms form the majority of organizations around the world (Burkart, Panunzi, &
Shleifer, 2003). However, only few survive beyond the first generation (Poza, 2007).
Traditionally, intergenerational succession has been equated to the success of a family firm.
Passing the firm on to children was always regarded as the central task. This fact is mirrored in
the family business literature with succession being the most researched domain. However, very
little has been said about succession routes alternative to intergenerational transfer (Goosens,
Manigart & Meuleman, 2008, Scholes, Wright, Westhead, Burrows, & Bruining, 2007; Vought,
Baker, & Smith, 2008). The view that handing over the family firm to the children is the only
way to go appears somewhat limited and distant from the reality. Indeed, family business owners
often use the term “pass along” to mean both transferring ownership to the next generation and
selling the firm to pass along the wealth created by the business (Vought et al., 2008). In effect,
some families want and can be passed on to multiple generations, while others may be unwilling
or unable to do so. Empirical research suggested that some owners may perceive that there are no
suitable family members to whom ownership and leadership can be transferred (Wright,
Thompson, & Robbie, 1992; Bierly, Ng, & Godfrey, 1999). Accordingly, for some business
families an exit can be a positive choice (Birley et al., 1999). Consequently, more research is
needed that would recognize a sale as a viable option for a family firm and cover this and other
alternative succession routes.
The research focuses on an alternative succession route for family businesses, i.e. sale, with
a particular emphasis on valuation and acquirers’ perception of family firm targets. In order to
cope with the research objective, I implemented a variety of methods, some of which have never
been employed in previous family business studies.
In the "Family Firms in the Eyes of Private Equity Companies"
we analyze the perception of family firm targets by an important
class of acquirers, private equity firms. The research has an exploratory character and was
meant to lay the ground for the overlooked topic of family firm acquisitions and in particular to
examine this topic from the acquirers’ perspective. We found that one half of the private equity
professionals surveyed flag the fact that a potential acquisition target is a family firm, but only for
a third this difference would translate into valuation, mostly a discount. To some extent, this is
explained by the higher risk attributed to family firm targets. We also noted that private equity
professionals may equate family firms to small businesses
Design and Development of a Technique for the Automation of the Risk Analysis Process in IT Security
No full textCloud service architectures are very heterogeneous and commonly relies on components managed by third parties. As a consequence, the security verification process of these architectures is a complex and costly process. Moreover, development of application that runs in cloud should take into account the agile software design and development methodologies and a really short time-to market, which are often incompatible with deep security testing. This article aims at addressing such issues proposing a technique, compatible with Security-By-Design methodologies, that automates the threat modeling and risk evaluation of a system, reducing the costs and requiring a limited set of security skills. Through the proposed approach, the software system is analysed identifying the threats that affects the system technical assets, ranking the level of risk associated to each threat and suggesting a set of countermeasures in standard terms; the process requires a minimal user interaction. The proposed technique, was implemented through a dedicated tool and, correctly integrated in development processes, can significantly reduce the need of costly security experts and shorten the time needed to execute a full system security assessment. In order to validate the technique, we compared our results with approaches available in literature and existing tools
Family firm in the eyes of private equity companies
No full text.Family firms form the majority of organizations around the world (Burkart, Panunzi, & Shleifer, 2003). However, only few survive beyond the first
generation (Poza, 2007). Traditionally, intergenerational succession has been equated to the success of a family firm. Passing the firm on to children was
always regarded as the central task. This fact is mirrored in the family business literature with succession being the most researched domain. However,
very little has been said about succession routes alternative to intergenerational transfer (Goosens, Manigart & Meuleman, 2008, Scholes, Wright,
Westhead, Burrows, & Bruining, 2007; Vought, Baker, & Smith, 2008). The view that handing over the family firm to the children is the only way to go
appears somewhat limited and distant from the reality. Indeed, family business owners often use the term “pass along” to mean both transferring
ownership to the next generation and selling the firm to pass along the wealth created by the business (Vought et al., 2008). In effect, some families want
and can be passed on to multiple generations, while others may be unwilling or unable to do so. Empirical research suggested that some owners may
perceive that there are no suitable family members to whom ownership and leadership can be transferred (Wright, Thompson, & Robbie, 1992; Bierly,
Ng, & Godfrey, 1999). Accordingly, for some business families an exit can be a positive choice (Birley et al., 1999). Consequently, more research is
needed that would recognize a sale as a viable option for a family firm and cover this and other alternative succession routes. The research focuses on an
alternative succession route for family businesses, i.e. sale, with a particular emphasis on valuation and acquirers’ perception of family firm targets. In
order to cope with the research objective, I implemented a variety of methods, some of which have never been employed in previous family business
studies. In the "Family Firms in the Eyes of Private Equity Companies" we analyze the perception of family firm targets by an important class of
acquirers, private equity firms. The research has an exploratory character and was meant to lay the ground for the overlooked topic of family firm
acquisitions and in particular to examine this topic from the acquirers’ perspective. We found that one half of the private equity professionals surveyed
flag the fact that a potential acquisition target is a family firm, but only for a third this difference would translate into valuation, mostly a discount. To
some extent, this is explained by the higher risk attributed to family firm targets. We also noted that private equity professionals may equate family firms
to small businesses
ESSecA: An automated expert system for threat modelling and penetration testing for IoT ecosystems
No full textDespite the growing spread of Internet of Things (IoT) ecosystems, their security assessment is still an open issue. Identifying threats, vulnerabilities, and attacks is a costly and time-consuming process, incompatible with their time-to-market. Undoubtedly, the introduction of automated security assessment techniques would increase the security level of many IoT products, while containing the costs. In this article, we introduce ESSecA, an Expert System for Security Assessment that guides penetration testers during the assessment of IoT systems, in a threat-intelligence-driven perspective. ESSecA bases its analysis on different knowledge-bases, some maintained by MITRE. Starting from the system model, ESSecA produces a Threat Model and a list of Attack Plans for each identified threat. This information can be used by penetration testers to perform a systematic security test of the target IoT infrastructure. We applied the technique to a typical home automation system, the Open Energy Monitor, providing some attack patterns for its security evaluation
Mid-Fidelity Numerical Approach for the Calculation of the Aerodynamic Static and Dynamic Stability Derivatives
No full textSemi-Automatic PenTest Methodology based on Threat-Model: The IoT Brick Case Study
No full textIntegration of the Internet of Things (IoT) with cloud computing has accelerated the emergence of a wide range of new applications in different areas, such as manufacturing, supply chains, commercial, engineering, etc. On the other hand, security represents a severe limitation in the adoption of IoT technology in many contexts. Although the cloud paradigm offers and enables flexible adoptions of on-demand services to a variety of IoT applications, due to limited resources of IoT devices and rapid implementation, IoT-cloud-based infrastructures are prone to numerous security vulnerabilities and threats. Therefore, it has become imperative to develop or enhance security strategies. Ideally, security should be built in from the early stages of a new product's development, which often starts as a prototype for internal use and then becomes an end-user product. Therefore, it is necessary to certify the level of security through vulnerability assessments or penetration tests, before the product is made available to the general public. Since both activities are time- and resource-consuming, a semi-automatic penetration testing technique based on the PETIoT framework has been proposed. The suggested approach can be used to evaluate the security of a system that's already in place. It takes into account potential threats, likely attacks, and provides recommendations for improvements. The methodology has been applied to a common IoT case study: the IoT Brick by Babuino Controllers
An Evaluation of Propagation of the HIV-Infected Cells via Optimization Problem
No full textMathematical models have the potential to contribute to design and evaluate the infectivity spreading and growth of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). Providing a better understanding of the dynamics of HIV infection in vivo and the immune system interactions with the virus can improve the classification of the infected cells and drive to an early diagnosis of the disease and drug evaluations. We analyze a two-dimensional environment HIV model from a new perspective, in terms of a multi-objective optimization problem, by introducing a linear modeling approach and providing numerical evidence for its suitability by introducing a general Instantaneous Control Algorithm
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