Turner Business

New research by TSYS School computer scientists Jianhua Yang and Lixin Wang addresses deficiencies in network-based stepping-stone intrusion detection methods using packet crossover.   As they point out in the study, which appears in the December 2022 issue of Journal of Wireless Mobile Networks, Ubiquitous Computing, and Dependable Applications , previously known network-based approaches for stepping-stone intrusion detection either do not work effectively in the Internet environment, are inefficient as they require a large number of packets to be captured and analyzed, or have limited performance as the length of a connection chain must be predetermined.   In explaining the vexing nature of the issue, Yang points out that “none of these existing methods to detect stepping-stone intrusion can be used to estimate the length of upstream connection sub-chain, which has been a long-standing and challenging open problem in this research area.   [W]e develop effective networ...

Research by faculty in the corps of instruction in the Turner College’s Department of Accounting and Finance is adding more than 5,600 Google Scholar citations to the College’s total count.  A recent search by Turner Business reveals that research by the 10 faculty in this department, which includes instructors of economics, has garnered 5,660 Google Scholar citations.  These figures produce an average of 566 Google Scholar cites per person.  Recent research by members of this department appears, or will soon appear, in Tourism Economics , Journal of International Money and Finance , Scientometrics , Journal of Forecasting , Economic Modelling , Empirical Economics , Internal Auditing and the Journal of Sports Economics .

As TSYS School computer science professor Yi Zhou and his colleagues from Jinan University and the University of Maine explain in their new study, data deduplication has been widely used in backup storage systems to improve storage utilization and extend device lifetime by reducing data writes.  Inline deduplication, in particular, removes redundant data in real-time as data is being sent to the storage system.  However, it causes data fragmentation, meaning that logically consecutive chunks are physically scattered across various containers after data deduplication.  Many existing rewrite algorithms aim to alleviate the performance degradation due to fragmentation by rewriting fragmented duplicate chunks as unique chunks into new containers.  Unfortunately, these algorithms determine whether a chunk is fragmented based on a simple pre-set fixed value, ignoring the variance of data characteristics between data segments.  This means that when backups are restore...

Research by faculty in the corps of instruction in the Turner College’s Department of Management and Marketing is nearing a total of 10,000 Google Scholar citations.   A recent search by Turner Business reveals that research by the 13 faculty in this department, which includes instructors of management information systems, has garnered 9,550 Google Scholar citations.  These figures produce an average of 735 Google Scholar cites per person.  Recent research by members of this department appears, or will soon appear, in Small Business Economics , Journal of Computer Information Systems , Compensation and Benefits Review , Journal of Values-Based Leadership and the International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy .

Autumn Palmer , a Trust Specialist II at Synovus, began her professional career with that banking company in 2015 as a part-time teller.  She stayed in that role for three years, and then moved into the part-time position of Recon Specialist with Synovus, which she held for two years.  At that point, in 2020, she graduated from CSU’s Turner College of Business with an undergraduate degree in management.  This achievement propelled Autumn into a full-time role at Synovus as an Operations Specialist.  She filled this role for a year before moving into her current position with Synovus.  Later, in 2022, Autumn earned an MBA from the Turner College, equipping herself for the next milestone in her professional career.   While we do not yet know what that will be, Turner Business will be on the sidelines cheering for Autumn and other Turner College alumni.    

In the latest  U.S. News & World Report  rankings released on January 24, 2023, Columbus State University remains among top-ranked public and regional universities in the South on the publication’s list of “ Best Online Programs .”  In addition to the strength of its overall online education programs, the CSU’s business online programs were among those specifically cited by the magazine.  CSU’s online master’s in computer information programs placed among the best nationally, ranking among the 65-85 group.  As a program in the Turner College’s TSYS School of Computer Science, CSU works closely with regional businesses and industries to understand their needs and create a responsive, state-of-the-art learning environment.  Every program and major is current, providing students with a firm foundation in the technologies of today and preparing them for the technologies of tomorrow.  CSU’s  online Master of Business Administration progra...

The TSYS School’s cybersecurity Nexus degree program is breaking enrollment records.   The newest group of enrollees, Cohort 7, began its journey earlier this month with 34 students.   As Patrick Aiken , Director of the TSYS Center for Cybersecurity, explained, “T wo years ago when I started with the Cybersecurity Nexus program at Columbus State University, the . . . January cohort had eight students.   Fast forward to today and we have completely rewritten and restructured everything we were doing . . . and our new January cohort has 34 students.”   With the addition of the newest cohort, there are now 63 students enrolled in the three active cohorts in the program.   According to Aiken, the number of enrollees is so large that group meetings are held in the 100-seat Synovus Center auditorium.   The tremendous growth in the program is not hampering camaraderie among its enrollees.   It is becoming a tradition for a ll of the active cohorts to com...

Compensation and Benefits Review CSU’s Turner College of Business is home to the editorial offices of a number of academic journals.   One of these is Compensation & Benefits Review , the leading journal for senior executives and professionals who design, implement, evaluate and communicate compensation and benefits policies and programs.   The current editor of CBR is Phil Bryant , an associate professor of management in the Turner College.   CBR launched in 1969, and it aims to address important and difficult issues at all levels, such as income inequality, demographic wage gaps, strategic compensation, benefits strategy, total rewards, individual motivation and performance, and work-life balance .   CBR is currently published by SAGE Publishing, which is headquartered in Thousand Oaks, California.   Sixteen scholars comprise the Editorial Board of CBR .   This list includes Tesa Leonce , a professor of economics at CSU.   Among the other Edi...

A number of TSYS School computer science students competed in Game Jam 2023 over this past weekend.  Under the direction of TSYS School computer science professor Rodrigo Obando , each team of students had 48 hours to design and present their own computer game.  CSU’s Game Jam is modeled after Global Game Jam, which is set to take place between January 30 th and February 5 th of this year.  Global Game Jam participants work concurrently around the globe, rallying around a central theme and working together to create a game.   Each year’s iteration produces some experimental prototypes that participants continue to work on after the jam.   Many games developed in previous Global Game Jams have become fully realized games.  

American Journal of Entrepreneurship CSU’s Turner College of Business is home to the editorial offices of a number of academic journals.  One of these is the American Journal of Entrepreneurship , whose founding editor is Kirk Heriot , professor of management and holder of the Ray and Evelyn Crowley Chair.  The AJE launched about 15 years ago, and its mission is to increase knowledge of entrepreneurship and entrepreneurs in the many ways they manifest themselves in the global economy.  About 25 percent of manuscripts that are submitted to the AJE are eventually accepted for publication.  In addition to Heriot, the Editorial Board includes Scott Manley of Midwestern State University, David Mitchell of the University of Central Arkansas, and Alicia Plemmons of Southern Illinois University – Edwardsville.  Recently, the AJE has added a managing editor role.  That position is held by Michael Brizek of Lander University.  Currently, the most cited paper ...

TSYS School computer science students Maochang Qin and Noah Neundorfer recently gained valuable research experience after joining TSYS School professors Jianhua Yang and Lixin Wang in an investigation of how a ttackers can exploit compromised hosts to launch attacks over the Internet.  Such attacks are called stepping-stone intrusions, and they work by placing an intruder behind a long connection chain consisting of multiple compromised hosts.  Most attackers establish a long connection chain with more than three stepping stones to better protect themselves when launching attacks.  As these researchers explain in their new study appearing in Electronics , explains, many algorithms have been proposed to detect stepping-stone intrusions, but most detection algorithms are weak in resisting intruders’ session manipulation, such as chaff perturbation.  Chaff perturbation is a concealment method in which attackers can insert some trivial packets into a regular IP connec...

Two important career-related events for Turner College students will be held during the first half of spring semester.   The Young Alumni Council of the CSU Alumni Association will be hosting a Speed Networking event on February 9, 2023.   This event, to be held in the President’s Club in the Lumpkin Center at 6 p.m., will provide CSU students with an opportunity to connect with young professionals, meet various industry professionals, and promote a business or brand in the local community.   Interested students may register for Speed Networking by visiting alumni.columbusstate.edu/YAC.   Later, on February 28, 2023, the Turner College will hold its Career Fair from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. in the Synovus Center.   The fall semester 2022 Career Fair saw participation by 12 employers and 158 students.   One student, former Turner College intern Grace Davin , secured a position with Charbroil during the fall 2022 fair.   The CSU Career Center is working with Tur...

The administration of CSU’s Turner College of Business is seeking student applicants for positions in the College’s tutoring lab.   The lab provides free tutoring services for Turner College students who are enrolled in introductory courses in accounting (ACCT 2101 and 2102), business analytics (BUSA 3115), economics (ECON 2105 and 2106), finance (FINC 3105) and management information systems (MISM 2115).   Candidates are expected to have completed an earned at a least a B in each of these same courses.   The Turner College tutoring lab is located on the third floor of the Synovus Center on CSU’s main campus.

Graduate and non-traditional business majors in the Turner College are invited to attend a welcome back event to be held on January 26, 2023.   The event will be held from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. at the RiverPark Activity Center on CSU’s RiverPark campus.   The RiverPark Activity Center is located across the street from the CSU Yancey Center at One Arsenal Place.  The meeting room is downstairs below the Columbus Convention and Visitors Bureau, with free parking available in both the shared lot (green painted lines) next to the RiverCenter Parking Garage and the garage itself.   The stairs are located on the outside of the building, essentially below the Visitors Center sign on the corner of the building and running alongside 9th street. 

CSU’s Office of Research and the Graduate School are partnering with CSU Libraries to host a celebration of Faculty Research and Creative Endeavors in February.  The event, which is scheduled for February 23, 2023, will celebrate CSU faculty book authors, along with composers, artists, and musicians.  Faculty from CSU’s Turner College of Business will be among those celebrated.  One of these is Phil Bryant , an associate professor of management in the Turner College.  Bryant is the co-author of Managing Employee Turnover: Dispelling Myths and Fostering Evidence-Based Retention Strategies , which was published by Business Expert Press in 2012.  Co-authored with David Allen of the University of Memphis, the book culminates volumes of academic research on employee turnover into a practical guide to managing retention.  Work by Turner College economist Frank Mixon will also be celebrated at the event.  Mixon is the author of a number of books, with the mo...

A new study by TSYS School computer science professor Rania Hodhod and research colleagues from Princess Nourah Bint Abdulrahman University (Saudi Arabia) and Ain Shams University (Egypt) extends the academic literature demonstrating how artificial intelligence, in particular deep learning, has proven to be efficient in medical diagnosis.   The study, which appears in the current issue of Electronics , introduces a new hybrid deep learning model for pneumonia diagnosis based on chest CT scans.   The core of the model developed by Hodhod and colleagues includes an expectation-maximization algorithm that works to extract the regions of interest from the chest CT scans while also preventing it from learning trivial solutions.   To test their model, the researchers examined a dataset of chest X-rays for pneumonia from the Kaggle website.   The data set contains 5,856 images with 1,583 normal cases and 4,273 pneumonia cases, with an imbalance ratio of 0.46.   To bett...

A new study by Kevin Hurt , an associate professor of management in the Turner College, and Elliott Long , a graduate of the Turner College’s MSOL program, explores the concepts of positional authority and influence in servant leadership.   The study, which appears in a 2023 issue of the Journal of Values-Based Leadership , explains that a large portion of servant leadership literature is dedicated to understanding specific characteristics that embody and demonstrate the true essence of servant leadership, such as empathy, conceptualization, and a commitment to the growth of other people.   To date, this literature accounts for the positional authority held by the servant leader, which is a contextual factor that has the potential to serve as either a highly impactful tailwind or headwind to unleashing servant leadership’s positive effect on organizational performance.   The new study by Hurt and Long addresses two related research questions.   First, how does positi...

TSYS School computer science professors Jianhua Yang and Lixin Wang recently teamed with CSU computer science student Noah Neundorfer to develop a novel approach to detect stepping-stone intrusion by modelling and identifying encrypted network traffic of a host. As their new study, which appears in a recent issue of the Journal of Internet Services and Information Security , explains, attackers commonly use Secure Shell (SSH), which securely connects two hosts together and encrypts their interactions, to hide their identity.   As this process plays out, one connection of SSH leads to another on a different host, and over again until the attacker becomes untraceable from a victim host.   Prior investigations into detecting a stepping-stone intrusion have assumed that the encryption algorithm used for encryptions would remain the same.   These TSYS School researchers instead focus on the length sequences of incoming and outgoing packets under heterogeneous encryption alg...