Cybersecurity in our World

In our day and age our personal information is at a greater risk than ever. When we choose to disclose our personal information to a company we are putting our trust in that business to keep our information safe. When security for a business is infiltrated by a cyber-threat, they gain access to our information which is then sold or used in identity theft. The threat of data breaches is increasingly growing across the world and they can ruin a business if they do not take the appropriate measures to ensure security. We interact with businesses everyday and we are constantly being asked to sign up for a rewards program or to create some sort of account. What are these companies doing with our information? We must do our part to ensure that we are not at an increased risk. Cybersecurity is a major concern among businesses to ensure customer loyalty and retention. We as consumers need to learn how to keep our information secure so we are not at an increased risk. Businesses must be willing to aggressively defend against cyber-attacks to gain trust from consumers.

What are businesses doing to make sure they are up-to-date with their security? “The sad state of affairs today is that most companies do not have a clue as to what their cyber risk profile is nor do they know how to calculate it (Touhill, 2014).” Touhill (2014) explains that many of today’s business owners do not know the risk that they may face if they were to have a data breach. He also advised to develop a security strategy, Touhill (2014) suggests that business owners ask themselves the following questions to find where they need to start developing their strategy. “Where are we now? What do we have to work with? Where do we want to be? How do we get there? (Touhill, 2014)” Cyber-attacks are constantly evolving and working to become for efficient and effective. Therefore, businesses must never let their guard down and must also regularly evaluate and, reevaluate their security and developing their strategy. If the appropriate measures are not taken on a regular basis the business risks being susceptible to an attack. If there is a successful attack it will deter their customers from continuing to do business with them. So, to maintain customer loyalty and retention I reemphasize that business must regularly revisit the state of their security. What are we as consumers doing to make sure that we are safe? A tech company Quora, advised that there are several things that consumers can do that can keep us secure when surfing the web. They wrote an article that outlines 6 different ways to secure yourself. Some of the items listed are protecting passwords, turning off screen notifications, locking apps, hiding photos, using a private number, keep browsing history secret (Quora, 2018). If we take these suggestions seriously, they can be great stepping stones on a path to ensure that our private information is safe.




Vahid, F., & Lysecky, S. (2017). Computing technology for all. Retrieved from zybooks.zyante.com/

Touhill, G. J., & Touhill, C. J. (2014). Cybersecurity for Executives : A Practical Guide. Hoboken,      New Jersey: Wiley-AIChE. Retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com.proxy-library.ashford.edu/login.aspx?direct=true&db=edsebk&AN=792115&site=eds-live&scope=site

Quora. (2018, May 25). Six Easy Steps You Can Take To Protect Your Data Online. Retrieved from https://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2018/05/24/step-by-step-instructions-for-how-to-protect-your-data-online/#1afc2ab5623f

Security Concerns

Human error is an enormous factor in cybersecurity. “Research revealed that 80-90% of security breaches are due to human-enabled errors in the U.S. and U.K. (Nobles, 2018).” Not only do companies have to invest time and money into making sure that their security is impenetrable from the outside, but they also must take the time to train their employees on how to be safe and make sure that they don’t accidentally pose an internal security threat. What kind of things could cause an internal data breach? Weak passwords, leaving computer unlocked, and social engineering are all different things that could put a business at risk when it comes to an internal attack. Policy and procedures must be put in place to teach employees proper ways to maintain safety. “Moreover, researchers emphasize that understanding human behavior in cybersecurity is a complex problem (Nobles, 2018).” As Nobles (2018) mentions researchers confirm that this issue will continue to grow which will require a more substantial solution that businesses will have to develop. This is another aspect that they must revisit constantly to update and reform procedure.

Rivera (2018) does a great job explaining some of the different types of attacks that a hacker may use to gain access to a system. He does a particularly great job using simple language so that business owners who are not very technical can understand and take appropriate measures. Different types of attacks would include malware, phishing, and DDoS. Lots of these different types of attacks can be countered by firewalls, antivirus, and data backup (Rivera, 2018). This gives business owners the ideas they need to arm their businesses with an adequate defense to these different types of attacks. In addition, many businesses have an information security team or security officer that oversees being up to date on this information. Business owners should rely on these individuals and their expertise on the topic, they will be able to give ample suggestions on how to improve the current security level. There is also the option of hiring an outside consultant to advise your business on how to maintain security.

References

Nobles Calvin. (2018). Botching Human Factors in Cybersecurity in Business Organizations. Holistica, (3), 71. https://doi-org.proxy-library.ashford.edu/10.2478/hjbpa-2018-0024

Rivera, A. (2018, April 11). Cybersecurity: A Small Business Guide. Retrieved July 22, 2019, from https://www.businessnewsdaily.com/8231-small-business-cybersecurity-guide.html

Computers in the Workplace

Computers have completely revolutionized many different industries. The industry I have chosen to write about is Education. Computers have changed education so much over the last few years. Education at all levels has evolved and changed, when I was young and in elementary school we just had a couple of hours a week to have a keyboarding practice. Nowadays young kids have computer time daily and many different learning avenues have been developed for teaching young children. Not to mention the idea of education at a higher level. Look at all of us, we are pursuing degrees online through a fantastic school where we will never see each other. We are able to communicate and work with each other over the internet because of the advances that computers have made recently. In the past, those working to graduate from college in the past had to use books to research different topics. Encyclopedias and dictionaries were required to complete the work necessary in college. Because of computers we now have far more information at our fingertips because of the internet than previous generations did flipping through encyclopedias. Also, the concept of Microsoft Word has completely changed how papers are written and submitted to teachers. Again, in the past papers were hand-written and had to be physically turned in to the teacher who had to decipher the handwriting. Currently, students can just submit a paper to a teacher who can read it from any device in the world and at their earliest convenience.

Traversing a Network

Ping is a great tool to test connectivity. In my workplace, we utilize a lot of printers. Printers are a great way to utilize ping to see if the printer is actually connected to the internet. We use this as a troubleshooting step to try and identify if an ethernet cable is faulty or if there is something wrong with the printer itself. Using ping we are able to identify if everything is connected properly. Once we can confirm that the printer is connected to the network then we can send print jobs to that IP and they should print out accordingly. This scenario would be used to troubleshoot within a local network, but ping can also be used to see if a particular computer is connected to the internet. As we all did we can ping a website and see if we get a response. If we are not getting a response then we are likely not connected to the internet, it is less likely that the website is down.

Here I was able to ping google.com, amazon.cn, and amazon.ca. In the time= section of the ping we can see how long it takes for the website to respond to my ping. The closer the source is to the server the shorter the time needed to get a response. When pinging the website in China it took much longer than pinging a website that is based in the United States.

Tracert is a helpful tool when trying to identify where communication gets broken. When running a Tracert you can see each "hop" that information takes on its way to its destination. If we can see that info is hoping at one IP address and then stops it tells us that something is stopping our info from hopping to that next IP. This could cause a network engineer to look into where the hop is stopping to see what could be blocking it.

Documenting a Day

Microsoft Office has a wide variety of different products. Each product has been designed to fulfil a specific task. In many situations such as documenting what you do in a day there are several different options that you could choose to get good results. A writer may choose to use word to vividly replay the moments of their day through graphic explanations and detail. Someone who prefers graphs, or a visual representation may choose to document their day in excel since it makes creating tables easy and generates many different types of graphs for a visual representation. The ultimate use of visual effects would be PowerPoint. It uses slides and transitions to present the day to day activities of an individual. These transitions are used to draw the attention of the audience and to introduce information one step at a time. Access would be a way for a very analytical person to keep track of their daily tasks. I have not used this product before, and I don’t think it is as widely used as the previous 3 Microsoft Office products. Access seems to look like excel but it does have some key differences on how it handles data and multiple data tables being related to each other. If it were up to me, I would prefer to use excel to outline how I spend my time throughout my day. Excel is easy to use and adding charts and graphs can add a visual aspect of time. Ultimately, all these different products can be used to outline daily tasks. The flexibility of the products leaves the decision up to the user and what the user prefers to use or is more comfortable with. 

Mobile App Critique

I don't feel that I am very creative which is why I think that app design is so tough. Many apps nowadays follow a similar pattern for how they choose to layout the options within their app. The app I will be reviewing will be the Amazon mobile app.

Amazon has done a great job over the years of incorporating an updated look and feel while maintaining functionality. Many apps now utilize the 3 lines "menu" icon. This is useful on mobile apps because unlike on a web version where you may have tabs along the top, that will not work on a mobile app due to space and sizing issues. This menu tab typically opens a side panel with options listed top to bottom. This is able to give the user different sections or categories to choose from without taking up excess space on the front screen of the app.

Some of the suggestions that I would make for Amazon would be, firstly, I really like that the Amazon app has notifications letting you know when things are being shipped or delivered to your house. I share my Amazon prime account with other people, and I have to turn notifications off because there is not an option to turn off just some of the notifications. You can either have all of the notifications or none of the notifications. My suggestion would be to have a selection where you can select notifications based on the address or card used in the purchase. That way even if multiple users were living in the same house, they could set up the app to only get notifications on their purchases.

My second suggestion would be, updates on when something will be delivered. Recently Amazon added a package tracking system that allows the user to see where the delivery driver is and how many stops their package is away from delivery. I really like this new addition, but it only appears when your package is 10 stops away or less. I think they should expand this functionality and show updates on where the package is as soon as it leaves the warehouse that morning. This would add greater visibility allowing the user to plan on when the package is going to arrive, also this only works if Amazon is the one that is delivering your package. If UPS, USPS, or FedEx is delivering the package this functionality does not integrate with those other services.

Thirdly, I would update how the cookies work within the app. Since I share an account with multiple people, I do not get the appropriate suggested products for purchase. I would update the cookies to function based on the device being used so that I get the appropriate suggestions.

Programming Languages

Scratch is an interesting program. It allows the user to create simple commands in a small provided environment. It provides a background as well as a character that can be manipulated via the programming blocks. It took me a few minutes to get my bearings and to understand how to initiate action and how to control the following events. I also struggled somewhat with the “control” functions. I was trying to create a loop or have a certain set of events happen multiple times and it took some playing around with the fields to realize that I could put more than 1 block inside the “repeat” bracket. Once I realized this it was simple and straightforward to be able to add animations to the different characters I was using. The block formatting made it easy to show the sequential order that I wanted things to happen. I think that Scratch is a sort of assembly language that is taking simple predefined options to create a string of code. The website is then able to run this code and execute what the user puts together.

Due to the design of Scratch it makes it very easy to use and understand. I was able to get a good idea of how to run a program by just playing around in the website for 15 minutes or so. Other programming languages are much more complicated, and I would not be able to just sit down and figure out how to program complex code. The possibilities of other languages are much higher due to the higher complexity. Every programming language has its place allowing it to be utilized for exactly what it was designed for. Scratch was designed to have basic commands and inputs to more easily understand the programming processes that the computer makes. I believe that HTML is one of the most popular programming languages because many different sites are moving toward a web-based version of their software so that information is readily available. The days where software is downloaded to a specific PC is going away, increasing the amount of HTML programming out in the world.

Scratch Program: https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/370666167