Morgan C. Benton

Nicole M. Radziwill, Morgan C. Benton

Chatbots are one class of intelligent, conversational software agents activated by natural language input (which can be in the form of text, voice, or both). They provide conversational output in response, and if commanded, can sometimes also execute tasks. Although chatbot technologies have existed since the 1960s and have influenced user interface development in games since the early 1980s, chatbots are now easier to train and implement. This is due to plentiful open source code, widely available development platforms, and implementation options via Software as a Service (SaaS). In addition to enhancing customer experiences and supporting learning, chatbots can also be used to engineer social harm - that is, to spread rumors and misinformation, or attack people for posting their thoughts and opinions online. This paper presents a literature review of quality issues and attributes as they relate to the contemporary issue of chatbot development and implementation. Finally, quality assessment approaches are reviewed, and a quality assessment method based on these attributes and the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) is proposed and examined.

Nicole M. Radziwill, Morgan C. Benton

There is no standard yet for measuring and controlling the costs associated with implementing cybersecurity programs. To advance research and practice towards this end, we develop a mapping using the well-known concept of quality costs and the Framework Core within the Cybersecurity Framework produced by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in response to the Cybersecurity Enhancement Act of 2014. This mapping can be easily adopted by organizations that are already using the NIST CSF for cybersecurity risk management to plan, manage, and continually improve cybersecurity operations. If an organization is not using the NIST CSF, this mapping may still be useful for linking elements in accounting systems that are associated with cybersecurity operations and risk management to a quality cost model.

Morgan C. Benton, Nicole M. Radziwill

Declarative styles such as functional programming (FP) are rapidly gaining ground on their imperative cousins, including procedural and object-oriented programming. The shift is subtle because it is happening within the context of multiparadigm programming languages such as JavaScript. FP is better suited to modern processes like test-driven development (TDD), and architectures like massively parallel, cloud-based computing. This article describes the technical details that characterize the shift from imperative to FP and implications for software quality management, particularly reuse and testability.