Vol. 24 No. 1/2020

Issue Topic: Digital Knowledge Society

The Use of LSTM Neural Networks to Implement the NARX Model. A Case Study of EUR-USD Exchange Rates
Catalina-Lucia COCIANU, Mihai-Serban AVRAMESCU 5
The paper focuses on financial data forecasting in terms of one-step-ahead nonlinear model with exogenous inputs. The main aim is the development of a methodology to forecast the exchange rate between EURO and US Dollar. The prediction task is carried out by two recurrent neural networks, the standard NARX neural network and a LSTM-based approach. The exogenous inputs consist of historical trading data and three widely used technical indicators, namely a variant of moving average, the Upper Bollinger Frequency Band and the Lower Bollinger Frequency Band. In order to obtain accurate forecasting algorithms, the exogenous inputs are filtered using the well-known Gaussian low-pass filter. The quality of each method is evaluated in terms of both quantitative and qualitative metrics, namely the root mean squared error, the mean absolute percentage error, and the prediction of change in direction. Extensive experiments point out that the most suited forecasting method is based on the proposed LSTM neural network for NARX model.
Keywords: Exchange Rate Forecasting, NARX Model, NARX Networks, LSTM Networks, Statistical metrics

Comparing Six Free Accessibility Evaluation Tools
Marian PADURE, Costin PRIBEANU 15
The web is continuously growing in content and functionality having an important impact on society. An objective of the Digital Agenda for Europe is to make the web technologies availa-ble for all. Recently, a European directive has been issued that requires the accessibility of public websites by September 2020. Given the low accessibility of public websites, systematic evaluation and monitoring strategies are needed. Covering the huge number of public websites with reasonable effort is only possible in a tool-based approach which makes the selection of a suit-able tool a critical issue. The goal of this paper is to compare six accessibility evaluation tools as regards the coverage of accessibility-related issues, identification, reporting, and document-ing of accessibility errors. The comparison is illustrated with six case studies of Romanian mu-nicipal websites. The results show large differences as regards the way of reporting and the number of errors which suggest that only one tool is not enough.
Keywords: Accessibility Checking Tools, Web Accessibility, WCAG 2.0, Municipal Websites

Using the Semantic Web in Academic Websites
Loredana MOCEAN 26
One of the important activities in the academic environment is student orientation, professional counselling and work with students, as well as interaction with them. This collaboration be-comes a feature of the professionalism of the management team as well as of the knowledge and abilities of its members. This activity is based on the information system on which it relies and so, becomes essential. A semantic Student Administration System can help university managers, teachers, students and administrative staff to integrate information into the higher education organization. This asset can be part of a strategy to improve students’ management to meet the nowadays challenges and requirements for data integration. The paper motivates and presents an ontology adapted to the needs of educational data management. This new semantic web-based system helps students and members of the university management team. The presented paper describes the components and architecture of the system that underlie its implementation in a real platform and proposes an early stage ontology design for the area of appli-cation presented.
Keywords: Student Administration Systems, Semantic Web, Modelling Academic Websites, Local ontology, Knowledge

CrawVulns - A Software Solution for Vulnerabilities Analysis
Alin ZAMFIROIU, Paul POCATILU, Sergiu CAPISIZU 38
Mobile devices and applications are very popular worldwide. Android and iOS dominate the mobile operating systems market. Most of the mobile applications connect to external servers that process and store users’ data. These systems are exposed to malicious attacks and the de-velopers should be always concerned about the applications and data security. This paper pre-sents known threats and vulnerabilities related to mobile applications and proposes a software solution for vulnerabilities analyses (CrawVulns) that aims to help eliminate or mitigate security risks.
Keywords: Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVEs), Mobile, Data, Security, Vulnerability.

Data Security Methods in Cloud Computing
Livia Maria BRUMA 48
Digital technology has become an important part of organizations due to the global spread of the internet and the increase in the number of smart devices, offering multiple benefits to users. The need for adapting to current requirements, has led to emergence of a new technology, cloud computing, developed for modern people needs, addicted to information and on the run. Information security is one of the main challenges for cloud developers, data loss causing damage in various fields and this is one of the reasons why some organizations do not adopt cloud migration. This paper analyzes the security of cloud computer technology, as well as the issues to ensure the security of the data in the cloud, according to the current technological methods and the specific architecture. The final part of the paper proposes a customized method for data security according to their importance to a particular organization, using current security methods.
Keywords: Cloud Computing, Data Security, Security Methods, Data Life Cycle, Data Classification


Integration of Emerging Technologies into Social Networks
Ion-Costel-Marius BALTOI 61
Social networks provide solutions to more and more everyday needs of people. Appearing as a solution to people's need to communicate through technology, they have developed and integrated more and more features. In this paper a qualitative research based on the study of the existing articles is carried out. Thus, a series of statistical data on the impact and penetration of the Internet and social networks within society will be presented, and some of the benefits that social networks offer to people or businesses and a series of various functionalities and emerging technologies that presents a particular interest for future development, having the capacity to innovate in this field; electronic payments and emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence, Internet of Things devices or biometric technology to increase security.
Keywords: Biometrics, Internet of Things, Electronic Payments, Social Networks, Emerging Technologies

CBSD – A Suitable Solution for Building a Centralized Educational Library of Software
Irina-Miruna RADU 75
The educational system is one of the few systems that have not found until this date a worldwide accepted solution when it comes to building educational apps. And knowing the importance of educational systems in developing future generation, further research is important in this field. This article analyses one possible solution in building a centralized library of educational pieces that can be reutilized through different applications. The methodology name is component-based software development and through this paper, it is investigated the way this can impact the way educational systems are developed. To achieve this goal different studies are analyzed to underline the most common advantages and disadvantages of CBSD, which then are analyzed through the aspects and problems that the current educational system is facing.
Keywords: CBSD, Component-Based Software Development, E-Education

The Relationship between the Decision-Making Process and the Emotional Intelligence in E-Society: A Time Series Analysis of Choosing a University Product
Ion-Danut LIXANDRU 87
In a world where information is one of the most valuable resources, which both organizations and individuals want to make the most of, choices are becoming increasingly difficult to anticipate, even if a multitude of tools are available to us. The evolution of emotional intelligence, based on the opportunities created by e-society, makes the need for analysis from a psycho-social perspective become an element of major importance for organizations. The differences between the generations of consumers, easily detectable from the outside (regarding the way of choosing the products), have, however, a difficult process to explain. This article aims to find a correlation between the changes brought about by the information society at the level of the emotional intelligence of individuals regarding the aspect of the decision on the choice of a product, in this case, a university product.
Keywords: Emotional intelligence, E-society, University marketing, Time series analysis

The 19th International Conference on Informatics in Economy, IE 2020 98

Publishing Guide for Authors 99

INFOREC Association 101