Rather than hit the beach or slopes, these Kelley students spend spring break making a difference

Posted on March 11, 2022 by George Vlahakis

Apurva Gadde, president of Kelley’s Alternative Break Program, worked with indigenous women in Oaxaca, Mexico.

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. – Three years ago, Indiana University Kelley School of Business student Gracelyn “Grace” Pavy traveled to Puerto Rico for spring break. But instead of looking for sun, sand, and libations, she spent the week working with a non-profit organization focused on sustainable farming.

“This included eating the food previous groups planted, planting food for future groups, composting, and teaching young students about sustainable practices,” recalled Pavy, a senior from LaPorte, Indiana and a Kelley Scholar. “I learned a lot about setting personal goals to minimize my individual carbon footprint as well as how to apply circular economic thinking into my future career.”

Fifty-one Kelley students are traveling to five destinations across the United States to participate in alternative spring break trips, restarting a decades-long tradition at the school that was interrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Gracelyn “Grace” Pavy

Some students are traveling to Detroit to participate in a program that fosters urban revitalization through entrepreneurship. Others will travel to South Dakota to work with Native Americans on a project that helps preserve their culture. Another group will learn about prison reform in Washington, D.C. through the organization Thrive DC. Other trips will take students to South Carolina, where they will assist with water sustainability and social entrepreneurship projects.

“Students get the chance to learn more about social issues from one of our partner organizations, and engage with the local communities in an attempt to try to make a difference,” explained Apurva Gadde, a senior from Hyderabad, India and president of the student organization Alternative Break Program. “They typically spend most of their time volunteering with the organization and reflecting on their experiences as a group at the end of the day.

“Students are motivated to go on our trips if they’re willing to branch out and learn more about a social issue, and if they want to experience something college career-defining,” Gadde added. “While these trips focus on social issues, volunteering, and learning, they are also a great way to find a community of people who care about similar issues, which is enticing to many.” (more…)

Seven trailblazing Kelley School women recognized through new series of banners

Posted on March 1, 2022 by George Vlahakis

The banners complement those featuring recognizing African American alumni, which were installed last spring.

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. – In advance of Women’s History Month, the Indiana University Kelley School of Business recently installed a new series of banners recognizing an accomplished group of female alumni who have been part of the school’s history and efforts to be inclusive.

The banners highlight trailblazers not only at Kelley but also at the university level. They included one of the school’s first female faculty members and someone critical to the creation of a network for women in the business school. The banners highlight successful women who were the first to graduate from the school with bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degrees.

They also recognize the first woman to earn a Kelley degree through the Consortium for Graduate Studies in Management – an organization that has greatly contributed to increased diversity in corporate management ranks – and the first Kelley alumna to be named an IU trustee.

Blance McNeely Ween

Blanche McNeely Wean

In 1922, just two years after its establishment, the School of Commerce (today the Kelley School) admitted its first female student, Blanche McNeely Wean. A Bloomington native and the daughter of the owner of a grocery store and the local Yellow Cab Co., she had enrolled at IU two years earlier to study education but took as many business classes as she could.

“She shared with a male professor that she had ambitions to join the business world, stemming from her work experience. The professor told her that business was a ‘man’s world’ and suggested she stick to education,” wrote Ellie Kaverman, in an article for the Indiana History Blog.

She was soon followed by two other women, Anna Hasler and Athleen Catterson, who transferred from the University of Chicago and were admitted concurrently. All three women graduated together in 1923, and McNeely Wean was the first to meet all of IU’s degree requirements.

After graduation, McNeely moved to Lafayette to begin working as a teacher, and married Francis Wean in 1926. In 1930, her husband unexpectedly passed away, leaving her to raise three daughters under the age of three at the onset of the Great Depression. She returned to Bloomington and began substitute teaching stenography at the school.

While teaching at IU, McNeely Wean worked on obtaining her master’s degree (in economics) and was offered a trial position as the head of the business department at Central Normal College in Danville (later renamed Canterbury College). Rather than uprooting her family, she woke up every Monday morning at 2:30 a.m. to drive to Danville and teach a 6:00 a.m. class.

In 1932, McNeely Wean received an official offer from Central Normal College to head the business school, serve as the dean of women for the college, and serve as the student newspaper’s advisor—with the expectation that she would first graduate with her master’s degree from Indiana University that same year. She graduated with a Master of Arts degree in May 1932, and then moved her family to Danville. She continued at Central Normal College for fifteen years while also working as an accountant for outside businesses. All three of her daughters earned their undergraduate and graduate degrees at Indiana University.

Esther Bray

Esther Bray

Raised on a northern Indiana farm, Esther Bray came to IU in 1922 and earned a business degree five years later. A decade later, she was invited by President Herman B Wells to return and teach at the school. She went on to teach business education for 34 years.

By comparison, the prestigious Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, founded in 1881, would not appoint its first female faculty member, Dorothy Swain Thomas, until 1948. The first woman to become a tenured professor at Harvard Business School, Regina Herzlinger, was appointed there in 1971. Mary Munter, the first woman to teach full-time at Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business, arrived in 1983.

For many years, Bray would be the only woman on the IU business school faculty. “Esther was instrumental in the development of young women both in and out of the business school,” noted Ellie Kaverman, in an article produced for IU’s bicentennial.

(more…)

Project helps businesses and government work together to prepare for environmental change

Posted on February 24, 2022 by George Vlahakis

More frequent heavy rain events leading to flash floods are among the environmental resilience issues affecting communities and their employers. (Getty Images)

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. – Leaders from several of Indiana’s largest employers and at nine cities across the Hoosier state are meeting to discuss how to better collaborate on resilience to climate change, through a federally funded project led by faculty at the Indiana University Kelley School of Business and the IU Environmental Resilience Institute.

As a result of a $25,000 grant from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, business and public officials will participate Feb. 25 in a virtual workshop about research-informed strategies for improving resources, information, and tools for collaborative climate planning among local governments and businesses.

Sarah Mincey

Nearly 40 participants will include representatives of the Indiana Chamber of Commerce, the Indiana Economic Development Corp., Berry Global, Cook Group/Cook Medical, Cummins Inc., Duke Energy, IU Health, Subaru of Indiana, Sweetwater and cities such as Indianapolis, Bloomington, South Bend, Fort Wayne, New Albany, Richmond, Terre Haute, Jasper, and Lafayette.

Sarah Mincey, managing director of the Environmental Resilience Institute and an associate clinical professor in the O’Neill School of Governmental and Environmental Affairs, said local governments and companies often have addressed these environmental issues separately.

“The issue here is essentially that local governments are doing their own planning and businesses are doing their own planning. What we’re finding is not much evidence that they’re working together,” said Mincey, who also directs IU’s Research and Teaching Preserve. “They really need to be planning together and we want to understand if they are, and if not, how to facilitate that.”

Kelly Eskew

At the core of the one-day workshop will be a discussion of the Environmental Resilience Institute Toolkit, which helps local governments across the Midwest prepare for climate change by providing information tailored to their communities. Organizers will demonstrate how ERIT can be useful for the private sector as well as in public-private collaboration.

The workshop will develop research-informed strategies for improving resources, information and tools for collaborative climate planning among local governments and businesses. IU will provide a final report including workshop materials, presentations, participant lists and an analysis of participants’ exit survey responses.

It also will be a networking opportunity for those in communities and businesses who want to work together more on sustainability and environmental resiliency and learn from each other.

(more…)

Kelley professor studies increased use of artificial intelligence in cybersecurity

Posted on February 18, 2022 by George Vlahakis

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. – For decades, movies and books have portrayed the potential of artificial intelligence and researchers continue to explore ways in which computers outpace humans. Professors at the Indiana University Kelley School of Business are conducting significant research and teaching about how AI is used, including increasingly in cybersecurity.

One of those researchers, Sagar Samtani, assistant professor of operations and decision technologies and a Grant Thornton Scholar, said artificial intelligence is increasingly efficient and effective in improving cybersecurity protection. He believes AI’s role in cybersecurity has rapidly become a critical concern worldwide.

Sagar Samtani

“AI’s value for cybersecurity is in its ability to automatically sift through large quantities of data, including malware, log files and the Dark Web, and detect patterns missed by manual analysis,” said Samtani, also a fellow at the IU Center for Applied Cybersecurity Research.

Samtani came to Kelley in 2020. His research centers around AI for cybersecurity and cyber threat intelligence. He also studies deep learning, network science, and text mining approaches for smart vulnerability assessment, scientific cyberinfrastructure security, open-source software security, and Dark Web analytics.

He has published more than 40 journal, conference and workshop papers on these topics in leading venues, including MIS Quarterly and the Journal of Management Information Systems. His research has received funding from the NSF Cybersecurity Innovation for Cyberinfrastructure (CICI), CISE Research Initiation Initiative (CRII), and Secure and Trustworthy Cyberspace Education (SaTC-EDU) programs.

To help explain both the potential of AI in cybersecurity, as well as where it falls short, we asked him to provide a few “sound bytes.” Below is a brief Q&A with Samtani:

Where does AI measure up to its promise?

“AI has significant success in cybersecurity tasks such as malware detection, malware evasion, Dark Web analytics (detecting emerging threats, modeling hacker language) for cyber threat intelligence, vulnerability detection, and threat modelling. Areas such as malware detection and evasion have benefited greatly due to significant advances in reinforcement learning (agents) and generative adversarial networks.

“Dark web analytics tasks such as detecting emerging threats or modeling hacker language are achievable due to the advent of computational diachronic linguistics and advanced approaches to automatically generate embeddings of hacker terminology. Knowledge graphs have played a pivotal role in automatically modeling threats for organizations.” (more…)

Kelley professor’s M-Score model remains most viable means of predicting corporate fraud

Posted on February 17, 2022 by George Vlahakis

Beneish’s M-Score model was among the earliest to detect fraud at Enron. (Photo by Hanne Therkildsen)

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. — Enhanced oversight over the auditing profession and firms’ financial reporting has led to a proliferation of models to predict financial statement fraud.

But one of the first forensic models, the M-Score, devised by an Indiana University Kelley School of Business professor in the late 90s, remains accurate and is the most economically viable for investors to use, according to a forthcoming paper in The Accounting Review — the official journal of the American Accounting Association.

The article, “The Costs of Fraud Prediction Errors,” co-authored by M. Daniel Beneish, professor of accounting and the Alva L. Prickett Chair at Kelley, compares seven fraud prediction models with a cost-based measure that nets the benefits of correctly anticipating instances of fraud against the costs borne by incorrectly identifying non-fraud firms as fraudulent.

Daniel Beneish

Even though newer fraud models nearly doubled the success rate of M-Score, which Beneish developed, they did so at the cost of a much larger number of false positives. As a result, the other models are not used in practice by auditors because they are too costly to implement as all flagged firms must be carefully investigated.

“I have long known from my experience consulting with Arthur Andersen — for whom my model detected Enron before the debacle — and other public accounting firms, that litigation concerns relating to false positives — firms incorrectly flagged as having fraudulent financial statements — created an unwillingness by auditors’ general counsel to use fraud prediction models in practice,” Beneish said.

“My efforts back then to improve the M-Score in the context of auditing failed because I could not increase the model’s success rate without increasing the number of false positives. It seems that the new models cannot either,” he added.

Interestingly, as early as 2017 the M-Score flagged Kangmei Pharmaceutical, a Chinese publicly traded company that was involved in financial reporting fraud between 2016 and 2018. Like the Enron scandal in the U.S., the Kangmei Pharmaceutical scandal helped trigger new regulation in China that increased regulatory penalties for financial fraud (effective March 2020) and last November became China’s first successful class-action lawsuit involving corporate fraud. Its chairman was sentenced to 12 years in prison.

“The main purpose of our paper is to provide evidence on the costs and benefits of using fraud prediction models, and to show whether using these models is economically viable for auditors, investors and regulators,” Beneish said. “This is important because the traditional measures commonly used in recent research to justify new models are misleading about model performance in fraud samples as the proportion of fraud firms in the population is very small, and as they typically assume that the cost of a false positive and false negatives (missed detections) are equal.” (more…)

Kelley alumni to talk about their experiences in ‘extreme career pivoting’ at webinar Feb. 24

Posted on February 16, 2022 by George Vlahakis

Before earning an MBA at Kelley, Daniel Keller excelled on the soccer pitch (Photo/NASL)

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. – Media reports have well chronicled the “Great Resignation” and provided many examples of professionals working in healthcare environments, pharmacies and schools who have left careers due to burnout, stress and changing priorities.

The Full-Time MBA Program at the Indiana University Kelley School of Business on Feb. 24 is launching its new, free webinar series – “Career Exploration” – which will feature alumni who will discuss their experiences in “extreme career pivoting.”

Before coming to Kelley, Whitney Hamilton worked at a museum

The five alumni — who previously had careers as a crime victims’ advocate, as a professional soccer player, a schoolteacher, a football coach and a museum manager — will share their stories and their experiences transitioning into successful roles in marketing, as supply chain managers, development and human resources.

The live webinar — from 8 to 9 p.m. (Eastern) – also will feature information and tips from Kelley faculty and MBA students about pursuing careers in a specific job function.

Participants will include:

Johnna Alig, a Class of 2019 Consortium and Forté Fellow who previously was a crime victim compensation director for a district attorney’s office in Colorado and today is a Lean Six Sigma Black Belt and project manager for Avient Corp.
Luis Sifuentes, also a Class of 2019 Consortium Fellow who previously was a history teacher and today is a senior HR lead for Owens Corning.
Whitney Hamilton, a Class of 2020 Consortium and Forté Fellow who was manager of visitor services and experiences at the DuSable Museum of African American History in Chicago and now serves as a senior advisor and workstation cycle planner at Dell Technologies.
Daniel Keller, Class of 2020, who fulfilled a lifelong dream of playing professional soccer, having been drafted in 2014 by the Los Angeles Galaxy of Major League Soccer and playing three seasons with the Indy Eleven of the United Soccer League. He today is at IU Health as a member of their Management Rotational Program, working in the internal corporate development function where he focuses on strategic transactions/partnerships.
Clark Smith, Class of 2019, previously a middle school math teacher and football coach and today a product manager at Corteva Agriscience.

A Kelley advertising industry veteran offers insights into Super Bowl commercials

Posted on February 9, 2022 by George Vlahakis

You may have previously chosen your “two scoops” of Raisin Bran because of Ann Bastianelli. (By Albert Huynh)

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. – Before coming to the Indiana University Kelley School of Business in 2002, initially as a lecturer, Ann Bastianelli, spent more than 30 years in advertising and marketing.

Campaigns she worked on include many of the classics of American consumer products advertising. They include the “Two Scoops of Raisins” campaign for Kellogg’s Raisin Bran, the “talking Parkay” margarine ads for Kraft, and Dow Bathroom Cleaner’s “Scrubbing Bubbles.” Your kids may have loved their Happy Meal at McDonalds through her work with Leo Burnett.

Bastianelli, today a teaching professor of marketing and a Kelley MBA graduate, remains in tune with the latest in advertising and marketing trends. We asked what she expects to see this Super Bowl Sunday, the biggest day of the year in advertising.

Continue to look to laugh

Ann Bastianelli

Viewers should “look for absurdist humor that gets people to laugh out loud, stories of kindness and empathy — everyday enjoyment,” she said, adding that patriotism may not be a big theme this year.

“The wounds are still raw from January 6, 2021, and inflation and lingering threats of Covid hotspots are ever present worries,” Bastianelli said. “One-third of adults are stressed to the point that everyday decisions are overwhelming. Half of them believe that planning for the future is futile. We’ve seen increases in hoarding, pandemic-driven DIY, anxieties about the future of the democracy, and job resignations.

“Differences in financial resources, race, gender or sexual orientation have exaggerated the different ways the global population has experienced the pandemic,” she said. “Brands must meet people where they are. Advertisers in the Super Bowl may tap into this opportunity to express compassion and understanding that while we’re not all in the same boat, we are in the same storm.”

This includes recognizing that the pandemic has changed the way many look at life, leading to different lifestyle choices, including more attention to feeling like “human beings, rather than human doings.”

“Rather than grinding out more in productivity, people are reconsidering and rejecting the never-ending pursuit of corporate profit and productivity. Some even find it unethical. Life balance and emotional health are more often prioritized over stereotypical achievement,” Bastianelli said. “This explains job resignations, dropping out, opting out of the workforce, and drags on the mental health system.

“Philosophies centered on self-control are in. Specifically, Pop-Stoicism is a conviction that takes the balanced perspective that life is short, what doesn’t kill us makes us stronger, and clear, unbiased thinking is the true path to understanding universal reason,” she added. “If this leaning toward keeping a stiff upper lip continues, it’s likely that trends such as sustainability and purpose-driven brands will be around for a while.” (more…)

‘Who Dey?’ Bengals’ Trey Hopkins and Jordan Evans seek a Super Bowl ring and a Kelley MBA

Posted on February 8, 2022 by George Vlahakis

Trey Hopkins (Photo courtesy of the Cincinnati Bengals)

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. – After Sunday’s AFC Championship game, football fans around the country became reacquainted with the Cincinnati Bengals’ rallying cry, “Who Dey?” They probably included a few people around Indiana University’s Kelley School of Business, in support of two members of the Bengals who also are earning their MBAs through a partnership with the NFL Players Association.

But others, particularly those with West Coast ties, might have shouted “Whose House?” in support of their beloved Rams and a third Kelley student who will be part of the big game.

Bengals’ starting center Trey Hopkins and linebacker Jordan Evans and the Rams’ cornerback Grant Haley are among more than 110 current and former NFL players who are pursuing an online MBA or Master of Science degree or a graduate certificate through a partnership between Kelley and the NFLPA.

Another 50 players have improved their financial literacy through courses offered by Kelley since the partnership began in 2014.

Trey Hopkins (Courtesy of the Cincinnati Bengals)

“For nearly a decade, Kelley Executive Degree Programs and the NFLPA have partnered to offer our MBA and MS programs to current and former players,” said Rich Magjuka, faculty chair of Executive Degree Programs and the Fred G. Steingraber Chair in Distributed Education.

“During this period, our NFL players have distinguished themselves in their course work. Their dedication, discipline and intellectual contributions to our programs have greatly increased the quality of learning in our programs. EDP is fortunate to have a great partner in the NFLPA and to the players of the NFL,” Magjuka added.

While viewers can look forward to seeing Hopkins hiking the ball to star quarterback Joe Burrow at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, California, Evans was injured in in the fifth week of the season, in a game against the Green Bay Packers, and is out for the season. Both players have spent their entire NFL careers with the Bengals.

Jordan Evans (Courtesy of the Cincinnati Bengals)

Hopkins and Evans also continue a tradition of Kelley student success off and on the field. Recent Super Bowls have featured students who celebrated with the Lombardi Trophy, which goes to the winning team. Last year, they included two members of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Ryan Griffin and Cameron Brate, and in 2020, then-Kansas City Chief Tanoh Kpassagnon.

They also have included three members of the 2019 New England Patriots — Stephen Gostkowski, Ted Karras, Joseph Thuney (who was a member of the Kansas City Chiefs this season) – and Philadelphia Eagle Corey Graham in 2018.

Kelley is a leader in online education. In 1999, Kelley Direct became the first online MBA offered by a top-ranked business school. In addition to the NFL Players Association, Kelley offers specialized graduate programs for employees at companies such as General Motors, General Electric, Cummins Inc. and Booz Allen Hamilton.

Magjuka observed that NFL players enrolled at Kelley share something in common with other students – an appreciation for working successfully with others towards a common goal.

“Part of an athlete’s training is learning how to improve. To learn to improve is rooted in being able to accurately look at where you’ve fallen short and where you’ve had a failure. If you can’t accurately diagnose what you’re doing wrong, then it’s very difficult to improve,” he said. “I think that’s a trait, a characteristic, that athletes bring to their studies and their work with other students that is very important.”

If you’d like to learn more about the program, Magjuka and two former NFL players Lester Archambeau and Andy Studebaker were interviewed in 2019 by Kelley’s ROI Podcast. The former players shared unique perspectives gained through their football careers to business.

Editor’s note: This article was revised after receiving additional information about a third Kelley student, Grant Haley, playing in the big game. We have Kelley pride for all of our students, no matter what uniform they wear.

Declining viewership for live events, including the Super Bowl, presents concerns for advertisers

Posted on February 4, 2022 by George Vlahakis

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. – This year’s NFL Championship, best known as the Super Bowl, will again be one of the most watched events. But public interest in live events appears to be declining, even for the “Big Game,” say two marketing professors at the Indiana University Kelley School of Business.

“Live sports events are the last stand for live TV, with the Super Bowl being the biggest spectacle to unite the American audience. Live events like this are languishing. Need proof? Look at record low ratings for award shows,” said Ann Bastianelli, teaching professor of marketing at Kelley, who added that the Super Bowl remains “a rare opportunity to gauge the U.S. cultural consciousness.”

Demetra Andrews

“The early reports and teasers suggest that Super Bowl viewers are in for a smorgasbord of memorable and even humorous commercials, providing some much-needed laughs during the ongoing pandemic. Even so, the Super Bowl isn’t enjoying the same viewership it once had which should prompt changes in marketing decisions,” added Demetra Andrews, clinical associate professor of marketing.

With a television audience of more than 90 million last year, the Super Bowl continues to provide the biggest platform for advertisers. But, according to Andrews, television viewership of the Super Bowl has declined fairly steadily for years and the increase in livestreaming of the game does not account for the decline.

Of note, she said, is a persistent decline in watchers aged 18-49 since 2008, a key component of the Super Bowl audience. According to Morning Consult, 40% of Generation Z-aged American aren’t sports fans, compared to only 24% of Millennials opting out of sports. Gen Z may be more likely to watch and share ads online than during the sporting event.

“Despite this, the price for advertising during the Super Bowl has remained high for a 30-second ad. This is likely to prompt marketing organizations to reexamine the value of the Super Bowl as a promotional platform,” Andrews said.

Ann Bastianelli

The cost of a 30-second commercial in the 2022 game is $6.5 million, up significantly from the $5.5 million price tag of just a year ago. “Clearly, the network is not bashful about asking that, even with the misgivings that advertisers have had in the past few years,” Bastianelli said.

Super Bowl parties traditionally have been a big part of the game day experience and something most attractive to advertisers. But with larger gatherings discouraged and even restricted last year, this aspect was greatly diminished for the 55th Super Bowl. More people may gather to watch the game, while others will be hesitant to do so.

“Without Super Bowl parties, brands might not get the same return on investment, because people couldn’t discuss ads in real-time with others, so brands shifted to digital/online advertising to avoid the $5.5 million price tag,” Bastianelli said. They also do this “because spending money online builds reach and frequency and gives brands valuable data to maximize customer engagement much more cost-efficiently.

“The downside is that, while culture spreads at the speed of social, it’s much harder to stand out with sustained hype,” she added.

Reevaluation of the Super Bowl as a promotional platform should include a determination of whether an organizations’ target customer groups are likely to watch or attend a Super Bowl event, Andrews said.

Both professors are available for interviews. Contact George Vlahakis at vlahakis@iu.edu for assistance.

Kelley professors offer thoughts on marketing, cybersecurity concerns around Winter Olympics

Posted on January 28, 2022 by George Vlahakis

Many companies have used the Olympics as an ideal platform for positioning their brand to worldwide audience. However, with the games being held in a nation facing international criticism over human rights and privacy issues, the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing Feb. 4-20 will present challenges in marketing and cybersecurity.

Kim Saxton, clinical professor of marketing, said China’s human rights policies present a predicament for Olympic sponsors. While some companies – such as the Coca Cola Co. – have said they won’t advertise at the games, others that do may take a different approach than they have in the past.

“It creates an interesting challenge. There is more airtime available and the controversy is stoked. The athletes deserve the support. In fact, they depend on it. But with the U.S. government not sending a delegate, it creates an air of caution,” Saxton said, adding “the U.S. government has not expressly said that companies cannot advertise.

“There are other issues to consider as well. First, the winter Olympics have been very quiet. It’s quite unusual to have summer and winter Olympics within one year. Many consumers need that bi-annual cadence in order to process information about the Olympics and get excitement up,” she added. “Many Americans right now probably cannot name an athlete in more than one sport. And the games start in about two weeks.

“Traditionally, the Olympics is one of the few places that advertisers can find a critical mass of viewers on TV today. The Super Bowl, the Olympics and the FIFA World Cup are the largest TV audiences. So, advertisers have to be creative this year. Some will not mention the host city. Some will run ads that don’t mention the Olympics. Some will stay away. Finally, some will move their efforts to PR. They will balance a fine line of promoting their brands and athletes, while not promoting China.”

Sagar Samtani, assistant professor and Grant Thornton Scholar, whose research centers on AI for cybersecurity and cyber threat intelligence, is particularly watching two major cybersecurity issues.

Sagar Samtani

“The Olympics are an international, global event. As such, there are often political undertones and agendas that may drive how countries present themselves. Disinformation, misinformation, and computational propaganda that are state-sponsored or provided by individual threat actors could pose a significant threat,” Samtani said.

Samtani noted that this will be biggest Olympics for streaming services. For example, NBC Universal will present Winter Olympics record of over 2,800 hours of coverage. But this move away from network reliance on broadcast channels could present a tantalizing target for hackers.

“The Olympics are a widely covered, highly publicized TV event. In recent years, streaming services have grown in popularity, while conventional satellite and cable services have declined. As such, the concerns around denial-of-service attacks against prevailing streaming services as it pertains to viewing the Olympics is a very real concern,” he said.

Scott Shackelford, associate professor of business law and ethics at Kelley, IU Cybersecurity Risk Management Program chair and director of the Ostrom Workshop Program on Cybersecurity and Internet Governance, said the high-profile diplomatic breach leading up to the games — including the boycott led by the United States – “means that the games could be targeted by hacktivists and other groups seeking to embarrass or otherwise harass Beijing.”

Scott Shackelford

“There are always issues associated with the Olympics given that they are a target-rich environment for criminals seeking to target athletes and spectators alike,” Shackelford said. “Beijing’s harsh data localization, cybersecurity, and cyber sovereignty laws also raises human rights concerns for athletes and reporters attending the games.”

He also noted that ironically while the Olympic games generally often coincide with a peaceful break from ongoing geopolitical tensions, this might not last long. “Witness the Russian invasion of Crimea three days after the 2014 Sochi games concluded,” he said.

For more information and assistance in reaching Saxton, Samtani, Shackelford or any other Kelley expert, contact George Vlahakis at vlahakis@iu.edu or 812-855-0846.

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