Group Report

Cover page

Group report

The job that I have selected is SEO technology. Search Engine Optimization is a concept prevailing in the industry for the last decade. It is driving a huge influx of jobs due to increased dependence of companies on digital technologies. The current trend depicts that the demands for SEO specialists will increase in future. As today over 1 billion websites exist in the world, SEO is a dominant tool for content discovery. This job demand that the SEO professional must specialize in mastering algorithms behind the search engines. The SEO professionals are hired by companies for making firm visible in search engines CITATION Eco14 \l 1033 (Economist, 2014). SEO is linked to digital technologies while professionals acquire various skill sets for taking relevant jobs.

The prominent skills required by SEO professionals include web content, HTML, link building, research, data analytics, writing, competitor analytics and keyword research. The companies demand that the SEO professionals must possess hands-on experience in SEO tools that include Moz and Raven. SEO professionals are more in demand today due to the increased reliance of companies of search engine optimization for competing in most of the niches CITATION Bra03 \l 1033 (Brand, Daly, & Meyers, 2003). The people who wish to become part of the SEO professional will require to take digital and content marketing programs. This field offers positions for web developers and content marketers. The central responsibility of the professionals is to generate web traffic for firms that allow them to gran customers.

The interview with the SEO professionals depicts that this field provides opportunities and tremendous growth. The professionals will require familiarity with digital marketing tools such as SEO, metadata, and social sites CITATION Mar167 \l 1033 (Hartemo, 2016).

The process of SEO involves the capturing of value in return from the customers after profitable relationship has been build. Unlike the rest of the steps, this step is focused towards the benefit of the company. The marketing strategies of the company are to be formulated in such a way that they not only help in satisfying the needs of the customers and providing them with superior value but also to bring back value to the company in the form of profits CITATION Bra19 \l 1033 (Geddes, 2019). In general, the key marketing strategies involve, building company’s reputation, increasing market share, attracting more potential customers, retaining already existent customers, creating awareness about the brand, positioning of the brand into the minds of the customers, enhancing sales through advertising and sales promotions, creating loyalty among customers, making the customers trust the brand and increasing profits for the company. Marketing strategies therefore play an important role for the success of any company within any kind of industry CITATION Bra03 \l 1033 (Brand, Daly, & Meyers, 2003).

SEO suggests that there is the detail of some important marketing principles. The key marketing principles are strategy before tactics, narrow market focus, differentiate, marketing material should educate, orchestrate the lead generation trio, create tool online presence and live by a business market calendar. To operate a successful business, organizations hold focus on technology and permit the workers to use excessive technology for fast results CITATION Bra03 \l 1033 (Brand, Daly, & Meyers, 2003). Through high level technology, organizations can communicate with their customers easily and can provide them high quality services. In this situation, technology helps organizations to operate online business CITATION Ham15 \l 1033 (Khraim, 2015). On the other hand, organization needs to make a market strategy to develop and expand business at high level. Market strategies would help the organization to attract customers, to build loyal relationship with customers and to increase the sales. In the same way, organization should keep an eye on its competitors and focus on their strategies CITATION Bra19 \l 1033 (Geddes, 2019). Completion also helps organizations to improve their overall system and to redouble their efforts for effective results.

The interviews with the SEO professionals suggest that youth planning to become part of this profession will require analytical skills and deep learning experience of digital marketing for a successful career CITATION Sis11 \l 1033 (Neti, 2011). Moving into the field of digital technologies is easier when fresher have acquired experience by completing various programs. The SEO experience needs a range of skills that allow candidates to increase their salary prospects. they need to understand some tactics of content planning and management of data CITATION Bra19 \l 1033 (Geddes, 2019). They also require to possess adequate skills for using analytical tools and using algorithms for increasing customer traffic. The analysis of the current market situations depicts that they need to fit in the SEO market by establishing competency for competing with experienced professionals.

The analysis of the market situations depicts that the demand for SEO professionals will increase in the near future. The youth planning to acquire degrees in SEO technology is emphasizing on long-term investments. Different job categories are associated with SEO profession including search engine marketer, digital marketer, content marketer and SEO manager. SEO is linked to digital technologies while professionals acquire various skill sets for taking relevant jobs. The key SEO strategies involve, building company’s reputation, increasing market share, attracting more potential customers and retaining already existent customers. SEO professionals are more in demand today due to the increased reliance of companies of search engine optimization. This indicates that choosing the field of SEO for future career provides better future prospects of entering in job market.

References

BIBLIOGRAPHY Brand, A., Daly, F., & Meyers, B. 2003. Metadata demystified. The Sheridan Press.

Economist. (2014). Coming to an office near you. Retrieved 04 24, 2019, from https://www.economist.com/leaders/2014/01/18/coming-to-an-office-near-you

Forbes. 2012. The 6 Basic Components Of A Strong SEO Strategy For Online Retailers. Retrieved 2017 йил 24-March from https://www.forbes.com/sites/theyec/2012/08/03/the-6-basic-components-of-a-strong-seo-strategy-for-online-retailers/#1908143ea533

Geddes, B. 2019. An SEO of Opportunity - 7 Career Paths for Today's SEO Specialist. Retrieved 04 24, 2019, from https://www.simplilearn.com/seo-specialist-career-paths-article

Hartemo, M. 2016. Email marketing in the era of the empowered consumer. Journal of Research in Interactive Marketing, Vol. 10 Iss: 3, 212 - 230.

Jones, C. 2016. Metadata Magic: 4 Powerful Ways to Use Metadata for Marketing. Retrieved 2017 йил 24-March from http://review.content-science.com/2016/03/metadata-magic/

Khraim, H. S. 2015. The Impact of Search Engine Optimization Dimensions on Companies Using Online Advertisement in Jordan. American Journal of Business and Management, Vol. 4, No. 2, 76-84.

Neti, S. 2011. SOCIAL MEDIA AND ITS ROLE IN MARKETING. International Journal of Enterprise Computing and B International Journal of Enterprise Computing and Business Systems.

Group Work

System: Online shopping website

Use Case Number:

1

Use Case Name:

Customer Add a product

Description:

Customer select a product and add a product in a cart.

Extended Use case

Order Cancelled

Description:

Customer can cancel order within the time limit.

Use case Name

Order Cancellation

Use case ID

UCA001

Primary Actor

Customer

Secondary Actor

Administrator and shop representatives

Trigger

User tries to buy a product

Brief Description

Customer selects the order and add it to the cart. After some time he cancels the order.

Flow of tasks

User goes to his cart.

Click on the product.

Click on cancel button.

System verifies that the order cancellation service is availed according to the timing policy.

If yes, then order cancelled and user can place another order.

Precondition

The user must have logged in into the system

Post-condition

The user will be able to access and avail the services

Activity Diagram

0-274955

Sequence Diagram:

Test Plan:

Test Case ID

Test Case

Procedure

Input

Expected Result

Actual Result

1

After order confirmation, cancelled button appeared

Logged in system, Add products in cart and confirm order. Cancellation button appeared.

Add Product

Cancellation button in front of each product in a cart

As expected,

2

Cancelled button working properly

Logged in system, Add products in cart and confirm order. Cancellation button appeared. Click on the button and it shows status.

Add Product

Confirm order

Click on cancellation button

Cancellation request processed

As expected,

3

System checks the time constraint.

Logged in system, Add products in cart and confirm order. Cancellation button appeared. Click on the button

Add Product

Confirm order

Click on cancellation button

Cancellation request processed

As expected,

4

Cancellation Request Approved

Logged in system, Add products in cart and confirm order. Cancellation button appeared. Click on the button

Add Product

Confirm order

Click on cancellation button

Cancellation request is done within the time constraint.

Order cancelled

As expected,

5

Cancellation Request not Approved

Logged in system, Add products in cart and confirm order. Cancellation button appeared. Click on the button

Add Product

Confirm order

Click on cancellation button

Cancellation request is done after the time constraint.

Order Confirmed, Cancellation request not approved

As expected,

Screen Prototype:

In vision Screen:

References:

Bastos, R. M., & Ruiz, D. D. A. (2002, January). Extending UML activity diagram for workflow modeling in production systems. In Proceedings of the 35th Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (pp. 3786-3795). IEEE.

Rodríguez, A., Fernández-Medina, E., Trujillo, J., & Piattini, M. (2011). Secure business process model specification through a UML 2.0 activity diagram profile. Decision Support Systems, 51(3), 446-465.

Groups

Groups

[Name of the Writer]

[Name of the Institution]

Groups

Main Post

Groups are used in Cascading style sheet CSS to reduce the code redundancy. It is a technique to apply declarations at one time to all the CSS selectors in the document instead of assigning attributes to every tag one by one. For example, a developer wants to apply same font color, size, and family in a document to different headers they will only write the CSS selector and will apply that style attributes to all the headers. Grouping in CSS helps in reducing the size of the code and makes it more comfortable for other developers to understand the code (Robertson, 2001). Here is the example in which grouping is used for different headers to apply the same attribute to all.

Normally code is written like this for applying style one by one to each header

h1 { font-color: red; font size: 20px; font-family: arial}

h2 { font-color: red; font size: 20px; font-family: arial}

h3 { font-color: red; font size: 20px; font-family: arial}

Using grouping

h1, h2, h3 { font-color: red; font size: 20px; font-family: arial}

The above codes clearly represent the difference created by grouping. The code which was written in three different lines has been converted into a single line which helped in reducing the size of the code.

Follow up (1)

Selectors are used in CSS for styling content of a web page. There are three types of selectors in CSS which include id selector, element selector, and class selector. Selectors allow the developers to save more space within HTML code. It is important to note that different headers can be used with each other for styling.

Follow up (2)

The class selector is used in CSS to select the elements using class attribute. The id selector is used in CSS to select elements by looking at the id attribute of HTML element. The element selector is used in CSS to select the HTML element using element name. The class selector is denoted by ‘#', id selector is denoted by ‘.' and element select is written simply without any special character.

References

Robertson, A. (2001). Cascading style sheets: The difinitive guide. Technical Communication, 48(2), 213-214. Retrieved from https://search.proquest.com/docview/220960381?accountid=41759

Hacktivism Presentation

Haktivism Presentation

[Author Name(s), First M. Last, Omit Titles and Degrees]

[Institutional Affiliation(s)]

Author Note

[Include any grant/funding information and a complete correspondence address.]

The security of any system or network is essential to maintain confidentiality, integrity and availability of the information. With the increase of internet traffic and software development, the related threat to this data is also increasing. Virtualization makes the data handling easy but managing the security of the data is a separate challenge. We will take an overview of 5 recent cybersecurity attacks, their cause, and precautions that are required to mitigate the danger of data theft.

Stuxnet was a worm attack, described as the most advanced cyber attack of that time, was designed to infect secretly into the host network and affect the physical processes controlled by that network. Its target was The HVAC company and the theft of more than 40 million customer’s debit cards was reported. ‘Signature only’ security systems were vulnerable to the attack of this generation. To avoid, zero-day attack technologies emerged which are far from signatures.

A very famous virus that gained popularity all around the globe ILOVEYOU. It would penetrate into hundreds of computers in a very short time. Estonia was under such an attack on April 2017. To avoid such virus eruption in your network, a complete vulnerability scan is required.

Melissa Virus, a malware document which when opened, would email that document to a number of different connections. This virus crushed more than one lac email servers. An open-source firewall is the best option to monitor your network from this attack related to social engineering.

A.P Moller, the shipping company was attacked by a ransomware Petya. Petya had the potential to read encrypted data and then will ask a ransom to return key of decryption and set files free. To avoid such attacks, the security structure is needed to be designed in such a way that they are more integrated and unified.

WannaCry was also a famous ransom based attack that encrypted the data and demanded a ransom ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM CSL_CITATION {"citationID":"HZGKtWce","properties":{"formattedCitation":"({\\i{}Preventing-the-next-mega-cyber-attack.pdf}, n.d.)","plainCitation":"(Preventing-the-next-mega-cyber-attack.pdf, n.d.)","noteIndex":0},"citationItems":[{"id":122,"uris":["http://zotero.org/users/local/5OlhLovK/items/ZYRMU5DA"],"uri":["http://zotero.org/users/local/5OlhLovK/items/ZYRMU5DA"],"itemData":{"id":122,"type":"article","title":"preventing-the-next-mega-cyber-attack.pdf","URL":"https://www.checkpoint.com/downloads/product-related/whitepapers/preventing-the-next-mega-cyber-attack.pdf","accessed":{"date-parts":[["2019",11,4]]}}}],"schema":"https://github.com/citation-style-language/schema/raw/master/csl-citation.json"} (Preventing-the-next-mega-cyber-attack.pdf, n.d.). It explored a vulnerability in Windows and also infected the British Health Service profile system and made a lot of money. The attacked could be avoided by installing regular updates of the operating systems because windows cleared those patches after a few days.

References

ADDIN ZOTERO_BIBL {"uncited":[],"omitted":[],"custom":[]} CSL_BIBLIOGRAPHY Preventing-the-next-mega-cyber-attack.pdf. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.checkpoint.com/downloads/product-related/whitepapers/preventing-the-next-mega-cyber-attack.pdf

HaddadComprehensive Learning Assessment 1

Haddad Comprehensive Learning Assessment 1

The heart of Google's business model is a value proposition for advertisers: targeted text advertising on the Internet, accessible to users all over the world. With AdWords, advertisers can place ads and links on Google search pages (as well as on other partner networks). When you use Google search, ads appear on every page along with the search results. Google guarantees that the pages will only ads that are relevant to the search query. This business model only works if many people use Google search (Osterwalder, & Pigneur, 2010). The more users accessing the search engine, the more ads you can place and the higher the advertisers' earnings. Google’s value proposition for advertisers largely depends on the number of consumers who use this search engine.

Facebook follows a template called hidden revenue generation. Today, the social network created by Mark Zuckerberg in 2004 in Harvard hostel costs more than $ 500 billion. Facebook's business model is pretty straightforward and ad-based. According to information from the company's annual report for 2017, it relies on five conformist stakes: It allows society to link and communicate by each other via personal computers and mobile devices. The important business model is advertisement. Facebook News Feed shows an algorithmically graded series of stories and ads, modified for each person.

The success of Apple’s iPhone smartphones is largely ensured not only by the use of innovative technologies, but also by aggressive marketing. Apple evangelical marketers were able to convince users that they were able to create incredibly unique devices that have no analogues in the global smartphone market (Bergvall-Kåreborn, et.al. 2013, December).. Thanks to this approach, iPhone sales growth outpaced the growth of the smartphone market. However, according to analysts at Deutsche Bank, in general, iPhone sales followed the trend of the smartphone market: market growth, Apple sales grew, and vice versa (Lazonick, et.al. 2013, December). In recent years, the situation on the smartphone market has changed dramatically, sales growth has slowed sharply. According to analysts of the bank, this is due to the fact that the market is oversaturated. Consumers will buy new gadgets only if they need to replace old ones, the race for "flagship models" has exhausted itself (Keen, & Williams, 2013).

I think is most likely to dominate the Internet is googling. Google’s versatile platform model is remarkable. Here, revenue brings one consumer segment - advertisers, at the same time, the other two segments, Internet users and content owners receive free offers (Manyika, 2008). This is logical, since the more advertising is shown to users, the more revenue one can get from advertisers. In turn, an increase in ad revenue drives even more content owners to become AdSence partners. Advertisers do not buy advertising space directly from Google. They bet on relevant keywords related either to search terms or to the content of partner websites. Bids are made through the AdWords auction service: the more popular the keyword, the greater the amount the advertiser must pay.

There is a significant difference in Facebook, Apple and Google. As an individual consumer, I use to utilize Apple, then Facebook and google. I used Apple phone for my daily use, Facebook is use to spend my leisure time and I use google to search anything for myself.

Chapter 2

Compare the experiences implementing internal social networks of the two organizations described in this case. Why were they successful? What role did management play in this process?

In the case study, the experiences of Facebook and google implementing internal social networks of the two organization. Facebook is successful as it is ideal way to use the web and consume all of the other content people might desire, including video and news. Google has taken an unusual approach to building its fiber network. Its target audience is people actively consuming services (Zott, & Amit, 2010). Typically, completely new services receive no more than 15% of the market share, but thanks to the approach Google can get more. Yes, all companies should implement internal enterprise social network it helps to win their share, and secondly - to shake up the market, make it more competitive and increase the speed of access to create more suitable conditions for services.

References

Bergvall-Kåreborn, B., & Howcroft, D. (2013, December). The Apple business model: Crowdsourcing mobile applications. In Accounting Forum (Vol. 37, No. 4, pp. 280-289). Taylor & Francis.

Keen, P., & Williams, R. (2013). Value architectures for digital business: beyond the business model. Mis Quarterly, 37(2), 643-647.

Manyika, J. (2008). Google’s view on the future of business: An interview with CEO Eric Schmidt. McKinsey Quarterly, 1, 136-138.

Lazonick, W., Mazzucato, M., & Tulum, Ö. (2013, December). Apple's changing business model: What should the world's richest company do with all those profits?. In Accounting Forum (Vol. 37, No. 4, pp. 249-267). Taylor & Francis.

Osterwalder, A., & Pigneur, Y. (2010). Business model generation: a handbook for visionaries, game changers, and challengers. John Wiley & Sons.

Zott, C., & Amit, R. (2010). Business model design: an activity system perspective. Long range planning, 43(2-3), 216-226.

HIPPA

HIPAA and COPPA

Lakeidra Eady

[Institutional Affiliation(s)]

Author Note

Comparison, Similarities, and Differences

HIPAA and COPPA

Introduction

Cyber Security is gaining crucial importance in the present age. The last that anyone wants today is the leaking of their private information for everyone else's entertainment. To prevent such a catastrophe, the government has implemented several measures. In this paper, we will be comparing two such sets of measures: HIPAA and COPPA.

HIPPA and COPPA

The US Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) was passed in 1996 for the protection of the sensitive medical information of the citizens CITATION Con96 \l 1033 (Congress, 1996). It covers the data that is protected to prevent misuse. The Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) was passed in 1998 to restrict certain websites that can collect information about their children CITATION Cor92 \l 1033 (School, 1992). It ensures the transparency regarding the collection of sensitive information of children under the age of 13 and requires them to get the consent of their parents.

Disclosures and requirements

The recent boom in the smartphone sector has brought several new challenges for healthcare service providers. The case of HIPAA is not so troublesome as it covers only three types of businesses: Healthcare providers like doctors and pharmacies, health insurance plans, and healthcare clear housing. This does not make HIPAA much of a concern for the lawmakers, according to several lawmakers. The laws on COPPA are complicated and hard to comply with. For one, there are no certain barriers that can prevent children to lie that they are above the threshold age of 13, or for the website to ascertain that knowledge.

Even though the United States Government has no comprehensive set of laws for dealing with cyber incidents, certain amendments mostly overlap with each other when it comes to their implementation. In the case of HIPPA, the government requests that the client places minimum information on the respective webpages as possible. It also requires that the entities involved in the transactions should give disclosures to each other and third parties too if they are involved. The main penalty that this law enforces on the defendant is about 1.5 million dollars in case it is proven.

COPPA generally requires the websites to display appropriate information regarding the privacy of information. It also obliges the webpages to send the information for the consent of the parents before approving it. The detailed disclosures required for a child is his full name, address, online contact information, telephone number, social security number, photo of a child and geolocation information.

Differences and Similarities

There are certain differences when it comes to the implementation of these laws. For one, the schools can violate the tenants of HIPAA when it comes to medical cases directly coming from schools regarding children less than 13 years of age. COPPA cannot enjoy such liberties. Another difference is that the rules of COPPA, as the acronym suggests, are limited to children in under-teens. Also, all the international agencies operating in the US must comply with this law, whereas only the domains registered in the US have to comply with the standards of COPPA. Lastly, the tenants of HIPPA are limited to health-related records only.

However, there are a lot of similarities when it comes to their implementation. Both require a series of disclosure that are uniform throughout all fifty states. Lastly, the laws discussed are for the safety and security of the citizens of the US, especially against the rising tide of cyber threats.

References

BIBLIOGRAPHY Congress. (1996, August 21). Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996. Retrieved from Government Information: https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/PLAW-104publ191/pdf/PLAW-104publ191.pdf

School, C. L. (1992). Legal Information Institute. Retrieved from 15 U.S. Code CHAPTER 91—CHILDREN’S ONLINE PRIVACY PROTECTION: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/15/chapter-91#

How Has Information Technology Led To The Struggle Between Online And Brick-and-mortar Stores? What Do The Next 5-10 Years Look Like?

Research Paper

[Author Name]

[Institutional Affiliation(s)]

Research Paper

Introduction

 Modern life spins around the elements of technology due to which it has become an indispensable part of our life. People regardless of their age use the internet in everyday life. Due to the rise in technology online marketing is evolving and increasing tremendously. The increase in online shopping has significantly impacted the brick and mortar stores. Although, many people still in favor of buying things after physically seeing them. This is because physical stores offer experiential shopping that is very different from online shopping yet still the percentage of these people is very low. People are more prone to buy things online as they find it a convenient way of shopping in less time. Thus, it is undeniably true that the internet has greatly impacted brick and mortar stores. This paper will discuss how online stores have affected brick and mortar stores along with the research findings regarding this issue. Moreover, possible solutions are proposed to mitigate the issue.

Areas of interest, activity or issue

Brick and mortar is a term that is defined as a traditional way of operating a business. Brick and mortar stores provide their products and services to the customer face-to-face rather than using an online platform (Li & Talebian, 2015). However, due to an increase in the use of the internet Many bricks and mortar stores are struggling to do business. This is because people are using online websites to shop for everything they need. Additionally, the internet provides several options on just one click so people find it convenient to use online websites to shop rather than going out and shop. Many stores and leading brands have utilized the online platform yet many companies still do not offer their services online. As the internet provides wide accessibility, stores can use this opportunity so that many people can view what services and products a brand is offering. However, due to the lack, the exposure brick and mortar stores experience low sales. In many cases, the stores had to file for bankruptcy as well.

 Time is one of the major factors due to which brick and mortar stores are struggling. Usually, using online platform customers can choose from a variety of products and if they can buy things instantly. However, while shopping from the traditional stores if a customer desired product is not available then a retailer has to place an order that may take days to arrive. This is a reason that customers tend to shop online. Although, a trend of experiential shopping is reviving that may help retailers sell their product without the help of online websites yet still, online shopping is taking lead. If online shopping continues to increase, then chances are that after five to ten years the concept of traditional shopping will vanish. Thus to save the brick and mortar stores several interventions are required. If the issue is not treated timely then it may lead to severe consequences. 

Research findings

Brick and mortar stores relied upon the concept of walk-ins in which a customer is attracted to the store due to the store’s presentation. However, due to several options available on the internet customers are more attracted to buy things online. This shift of customers’ choice results in decreasing sales at the brick and mortar stores. A lot of research is published regarding this issue yet most of the studies have shown that shopping of the customers determines which channel of shopping they choose (Schramm-Klein & Morschett, 2007). Thus, to predict the shopping preference of the customers it is necessary to understand which shopping channel is addressing customers' shopping motives. Typically, customers are more concerned about the post-purchase experience so they do consider buying things traditionally but due to lack of accessibility customers prefer buying online. Lack of exposure is one of the main issues that most brick and mortar stores are facing due to which traditional stores are struggling. Although due to a rise in technology brick and mortar stores are struggling yet due to various scams, people have several concerns while shopping online so they prefer physical shopping. Additionally, people are unaware of the footprints they are leaving while browsing due to which they face several privacy issues. Due to this people want to shop from stores yet the convenience of online shopping stops them from going out and shop for themselves. Thus, there is still hope for these stores to make a comeback as many people are many people prefer traditional shopping where they can see and touch things (Steinfield & Lai, 2002).

Proposed solution and actions

There are many ways retailers can play off the strengths of online and traditional shopping channels. Generally, the cost is a major factor that influences a customer to buy a product. Typically, on the internet, several options are available where customers can choose their desired product that is within their budget. Traditional stores should offer competitive prices so that a customer can be attracted to explore why the prices of some items are more as compared to others. Additionally, providing unparalleled services that are making a customer feel valued and welcomed can increase the interaction between store and customer which cannot be achieved by shopping online. Another issue with traditional stores is the lack of accessibility due to which customers are prone to shop online. It is, therefore, necessary to design an infrastructure that will facilitate customers 24/7. Moreover, customers like to bargain and they cannot do it while shopping online. Traditional stores could benefit from this habit of customers by being friendly with them and offering them rates that they can benefit both the customer and brand. Furthermore, traditional stores must decorate the store to tempt customers as customers. Typically, customers have to pay the shipping charges as well while purchasing online. Brick and mortar stores can use this opportunity and take advantage of this by offering several in-store exclusives and invite regular customers to an event or provide incentives to the customers if they purchase above a certain amount. Traditional stores can also offer discounts to regular customers. This will ensure that customers return to purchase from the specific stores. However, traditional stores must incorporate technology in their marketing strategy because using both traditional and digital platforms will help in achieving desired sales.

Conclusion

Online marketing is growing day by day due to which brick and mortar stores that rely solely upon traditional business methods are struggling a lot. The wide accessibility of the internet is making customers buy products online. If this trend goes on increasing the traditional stores will vanish soon. Although, information technology also impacts online stores as there is a lot of competition in the market. However, the brick and mortar stores are more influenced because of a rise in the use of technology. Thus, there is a need for interventions to solve the issue. Several ways are there that can help brick and mortar stores to revive the place they used to have in the market yet still there is a need that both traditional stores and online markets coexist. Thus, brands must understand the importance of the internet and should use both traditional digital marketing techniques rather than relying on one method to increase their sales.

References

Li, Z., Lu, Q., & Talebian, M. (2015). Online versus bricks-and-mortar retailing: a comparison of price, assortment and delivery time. International Journal of Production Research, 53(13), 3823-3835.

Schramm-Klein, H., Swoboda, B., & Morschett, D. (2007). Internet vs. brick-and-mortar stores-analysing the influence of shopping motives on retail channel choice among internet users. Journal of Customer Behaviour, 6(1), 19-36.

Steinfield, C., Adelaar, T., & Lai, Y. J. (2002, January). Integrating brick and mortar locations with e-commerce: Understanding synergy opportunities. In Proceedings of the 35th Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (pp. 2920-2929). IEEE.

HyperTerminal

HyperTerminal

Your Name (First M. Last)

School or Institution Name (University at Place or Town, State)

HyperTerminal

What HyperTerminal settings should you use to connect to the router console?

In order to connect to the router console, following HyperTerminal settings and steps must be followed

Connect your system to the router using the serial cable. One side of the cable should be linked to the system’s serial port while the other to the router’s serial port.

In the Window’s menu, select ‘Accessories’

From ‘Accessories’, go to HyperTerminal Software. This will display a window.

In the connection title textbox, type Router

Choose ‘COM1’ from the dropdown menu.

Baud Rate should be altered to ‘9600’

Now, type in username and password in order to connect to the router console.

What are the requirements for using a VTY (virtual terminal) connection to a Cisco device?

VTY (Virtual Terminals) are linkages between the network and the router. In order to use VTY connection to a Cisco Device, it must first be configured. First we set a timeout value and give a password. After this, use the transport input command for significant protocols. Use the access-class command to allow an access list for the interface.

What types of cable can you use to connect to a PC to a router console port?

To connect a PC to a router console port, Rollover cable can be used. It is also called a Console Cable or Yole Cable. It falls in the category of null modem cable which can be used to make a connection between a PC and a router’s port. A console cable kit is usually provided along with the router. This kit contains a console cable and an adapter ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM CSL_CITATION {"citationID":"wkRdfLUx","properties":{"formattedCitation":"(\\uc0\\u8220{}Share Your Computer, but Keep It Private - Research Library - ProQuest,\\uc0\\u8221{} n.d.)","plainCitation":"(“Share Your Computer, but Keep It Private - Research Library - ProQuest,” n.d.)","noteIndex":0},"citationItems":[{"id":1909,"uris":["http://zotero.org/users/local/KZl8ZL3A/items/VFXN5D62"],"uri":["http://zotero.org/users/local/KZl8ZL3A/items/VFXN5D62"],"itemData":{"id":1909,"type":"webpage","title":"Share Your Computer, but Keep It Private - Research Library - ProQuest","URL":"https://search.proquest.com/pqrl/docview/200763001/36E3CE7EA8415BPQ/2?accountid=41759","accessed":{"date-parts":[["2019",4,19]]}}}],"schema":"https://github.com/citation-style-language/schema/raw/master/csl-citation.json"} (“Share Your Computer, but Keep It Private - Research Library - ProQuest,” n.d.).

References

ADDIN ZOTERO_BIBL {"uncited":[],"omitted":[],"custom":[]} CSL_BIBLIOGRAPHY Share Your Computer, but Keep It Private - Research Library - ProQuest. (n.d.). Retrieved April 19, 2019, from https://search.proquest.com/pqrl/docview/200763001/36E3CE7EA8415BPQ/2?accountid=41759

Identify Components Of Key Management

Identify Components of Key Management

Chimene Tchokoko Diboma

School or Institution Name (University at Place or Town, State)

Identify Components of Key Management

Introduction:

Modern businesses rely on information technologies for business continuity and operations. Most of the business operations require processing of sensitive information such as personally identifiable information in healthcare institutions and corporations. This type of information is highly valuable for hackers to compromise for monetary benefits. Given to the fact that information technology systems are playing the role of a utility in every aspect of life, cyber-criminals are always creating new and sophisticated attacks to compromise such systems. It is the responsibility of the organization dealing with the data to protect its systems against cyber-attacks ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM CSL_CITATION {"citationID":"au1m87vut5","properties":{"formattedCitation":"(Lei et al., 2017)","plainCitation":"(Lei et al., 2017)"},"citationItems":[{"id":2125,"uris":["http://zotero.org/users/local/gITejLE9/items/CEP78SHE"],"uri":["http://zotero.org/users/local/gITejLE9/items/CEP78SHE"],"itemData":{"id":2125,"type":"article-journal","title":"Blockchain-based dynamic key management for heterogeneous intelligent transportation systems","container-title":"IEEE Internet of Things Journal","page":"1832-1843","volume":"4","issue":"6","author":[{"family":"Lei","given":"Ao"},{"family":"Cruickshank","given":"Haitham"},{"family":"Cao","given":"Yue"},{"family":"Asuquo","given":"Philip"},{"family":"Ogah","given":"Chibueze P. Anyigor"},{"family":"Sun","given":"Zhili"}],"issued":{"date-parts":[["2017"]]}}}],"schema":"https://github.com/citation-style-language/schema/raw/master/csl-citation.json"} (Lei et al., 2017). Therefore, cybersecurity must be a part of the business plans and aligned with the business goals with the primary purpose of ensuring the confidentiality, integrity, availability, and non-repudiation of data. Several systems and frameworks have designed by experts for organizations to achieve these security goals. One such system is known as the cryptographic system that protects the confidentiality and integrity of data. The report describes the cryptographic systems for the healthcare organization to secure personally identifiable information of clients and different components of the key management system.

Discussion:

Cryptography can be considered as the basic requirement for securing confidential data against cyber-attacks. In cryptographic systems information is encoded using some algorithm so, that it can be retrieved only by the intended recipient of the information. A simple cryptographic system can be described as a substitution algorithm. For example, a specific plain text message is to be protected from prying eyes, then certain letters in that message can be substituted with different letters. A popular substitution cryptographic algorithm is known as Caesar cipher. Caser cipher replaces every letter in a message with the corresponding third letter from English alphabets. The resulting text is known as the ciphertext that can be converted back to plain text by performing the exact reverse operation ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM CSL_CITATION {"citationID":"a18vval0u3c","properties":{"formattedCitation":"(Sciancalepore, Capossele, Piro, Boggia, & Bianchi, 2015)","plainCitation":"(Sciancalepore, Capossele, Piro, Boggia, & Bianchi, 2015)"},"citationItems":[{"id":2128,"uris":["http://zotero.org/users/local/gITejLE9/items/AB2HSMLH"],"uri":["http://zotero.org/users/local/gITejLE9/items/AB2HSMLH"],"itemData":{"id":2128,"type":"paper-conference","title":"Key management protocol with implicit certificates for IoT systems","container-title":"Proceedings of the 2015 Workshop on IoT challenges in Mobile and Industrial Systems","publisher":"ACM","page":"37-42","ISBN":"1-4503-3502-0","author":[{"family":"Sciancalepore","given":"Savio"},{"family":"Capossele","given":"Angelo"},{"family":"Piro","given":"Giuseppe"},{"family":"Boggia","given":"Gennaro"},{"family":"Bianchi","given":"Giuseppe"}],"issued":{"date-parts":[["2015"]]}}}],"schema":"https://github.com/citation-style-language/schema/raw/master/csl-citation.json"} (Sciancalepore, Capossele, Piro, Boggia, & Bianchi, 2015). There are some key components in any cryptographic system known as the cryptographic algorithm, cryptographic key, and key management system. In the example rotation of three letters is the key of encryption. The resulting ciphertext cannot be decoded by any criminal or anyone unless the key of encryption is not known. Such systems are known as symmetric encryption systems.

Symmetric Encryption:

A symmetric encryption system is one that uses the same keys for encryption and decryption of the data. The key is then considered to be the symmetric keys. Symmetric encryption is also referred to as the encryption scheme for data at rest. It can be used for protecting the data when it is being stored in the database storage system. It will protect the storage system against un-authorized access ensuring the confidentiality of the data. As in symmetric key cryptographic systems, the same key is used for encryption and decryption of data, it is the most critical part of the system ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM CSL_CITATION {"citationID":"a13tfrtlt4j","properties":{"formattedCitation":"(Kurihara, Kikuchi, Imaizumi, Shiota, & Kiya, 2015)","plainCitation":"(Kurihara, Kikuchi, Imaizumi, Shiota, & Kiya, 2015)"},"citationItems":[{"id":2131,"uris":["http://zotero.org/users/local/gITejLE9/items/CMR9TFTP"],"uri":["http://zotero.org/users/local/gITejLE9/items/CMR9TFTP"],"itemData":{"id":2131,"type":"article-journal","title":"An encryption-then-compression system for jpeg/motion jpeg standard","container-title":"IEICE Transactions on Fundamentals of Electronics, Communications and Computer Sciences","page":"2238-2245","volume":"98","issue":"11","author":[{"family":"Kurihara","given":"Kenta"},{"family":"Kikuchi","given":"Masanori"},{"family":"Imaizumi","given":"Shoko"},{"family":"Shiota","given":"Sayaka"},{"family":"Kiya","given":"Hitoshi"}],"issued":{"date-parts":[["2015"]]}}}],"schema":"https://github.com/citation-style-language/schema/raw/master/csl-citation.json"} (Kurihara, Kikuchi, Imaizumi, Shiota, & Kiya, 2015). Data will be as secure as the encryption key used to encrypt the data regardless of the encryption algorithm used. Therefore, a key management system is required to protect the key of encryption from unauthorized access. If the key is compromised then all of the logical security measures will be breached.

Symmetric encryption is mainly used for storage devices such as in full disk encryption programs instead of transferring the encrypted data. The reason behind the use of symmetric encryption for local security is that in case of data transfer, the key must be transmitted separately via some secure communication channel because the recipient of the data will not be able to decrypt the data without having the same key. As it is very difficult to securely transmit the encryption key using available communication systems, the system is mainly used for local disk or database encryption.

Triple DES:

Data encryption standard (DES) is an encryption algorithm that uses the same keys for encryption and decryption of the data. It was designed in 1970 as the standard for securing digital information against cyber-attacks. It is a block cipher meaning that it operates over a block of plaintext information and convert that plaintext information into the corresponding ciphertext. As in the previous example the encryption key length was 3 bits because the letters were rotated three places. Key length is important in cryptographic systems because when researchers are designing sophisticated encryption algorithms, the criminals are also trying to exploit such systems at the same time ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM CSL_CITATION {"citationID":"a100m06m7io","properties":{"formattedCitation":"(Kumar, Roth, Rubin, Seigle, & Tirdad, 2016)","plainCitation":"(Kumar, Roth, Rubin, Seigle, & Tirdad, 2016)"},"citationItems":[{"id":2134,"uris":["http://zotero.org/users/local/gITejLE9/items/HE64NHYE"],"uri":["http://zotero.org/users/local/gITejLE9/items/HE64NHYE"],"itemData":{"id":2134,"type":"book","title":"Redundant key management","publisher":"Google Patents","author":[{"family":"Kumar","given":"Sandeep"},{"family":"Roth","given":"Gregory Branchek"},{"family":"Rubin","given":"Gregory Alan"},{"family":"Seigle","given":"Mark Christopher"},{"family":"Tirdad","given":"Kamran"}],"issued":{"date-parts":[["2016"]]}}}],"schema":"https://github.com/citation-style-language/schema/raw/master/csl-citation.json"} (Kumar, Roth, Rubin, Seigle, & Tirdad, 2016). Being a block cipher DES uses a key length of 64-bits. A block of data is encrypted using 64-bit keys of encryption and it can encrypt the data in different modes. In simple mode, each block of data can be encrypted using the independent key. The second mode of operation is in which the blocks of data are encrypted such that each block of encrypted data depends on the previous block of encrypted data.

Regardless of the mode of operation of the algorithm the data can be retrieved by performing the exact reverse operation following the reverse order of encryption. DES was prone to brute force attacks. A brute force attack uses all the possible combination of keys to decrypt the message until a correct key is found. The length of the key determines the total number of attempts for such an attack to be successful. In reality DES was not using 64-bit keys, instead, the data was encrypted using 56-bit keys while rest of the bits reserved for parity checks. Depending on the key length it will only take a total of 256 attempts to decrypt the message encrypted using DES. At the time of introduction and implementation of this algorithm considerable computing power as required to try such a large number of keys on a single block of data. However, with the exponential increase in computing power available today DES system is not feasible anymore. To overcome the weakness of the DES algorithm, its successor was introduced known as triple-DES ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM CSL_CITATION {"citationID":"a8ultavt67","properties":{"formattedCitation":"(Baek, Vu, Liu, Huang, & Xiang, 2015)","plainCitation":"(Baek, Vu, Liu, Huang, & Xiang, 2015)"},"citationItems":[{"id":2138,"uris":["http://zotero.org/users/local/gITejLE9/items/MKAIG772"],"uri":["http://zotero.org/users/local/gITejLE9/items/MKAIG772"],"itemData":{"id":2138,"type":"article-journal","title":"A secure cloud computing based framework for big data information management of smart grid","container-title":"IEEE transactions on cloud computing","page":"233-244","volume":"3","issue":"2","author":[{"family":"Baek","given":"Joonsang"},{"family":"Vu","given":"Quang Hieu"},{"family":"Liu","given":"Joseph K."},{"family":"Huang","given":"Xinyi"},{"family":"Xiang","given":"Yang"}],"issued":{"date-parts":[["2015"]]}}}],"schema":"https://github.com/citation-style-language/schema/raw/master/csl-citation.json"} (Baek, Vu, Liu, Huang, & Xiang, 2015). Triple DES uses three rounds of DES to encrypt the data increasing the key length from 56 bits to 168 bits. However, due to the intermediate attacking mechanism, the effective length of the key was only 112 bits. Soon after the introduction, severe flaws were discovered by the researchers in the Triple DES algorithm and it was replaced by the modern encryption system known as advanced encryption standard (AES). AES is currently the most secure encryption standard being used by the governments as well.

AES:

Advance encryption standard (AES) is the successor of DES. It is also a block cipher like the predecessor of it but uses a different approach for encryption and decryption of the data. It uses a block of 256 bits for data to be encrypted but with a variable length of key such as key lengths of 128 bits, 192 bits, and 256 bits. AES is the most secure cryptographic algorithm available today and being used as a data encryption standard. The federal government of the United States has approved AES as an encryption standard to encrypt the classified information. AES uses a substitution-permutation network as compared to the DES. Currently, AES encryption is being used in conjunction with the asymmetric cryptography.

Symmetric Key Systems:

As it is evident by the explanation that any encryption system is as secure as the key of encryption used in the algorithm. Therefore, a key management system is utilized by organizations that secure the key of encryption from being stolen or compromised by the targeted attacks on information technology infrastructure. There are several components o symmetric key management system as well. The key primarily used to encrypt and decrypt the data is known as the data encryption key. Then a key is used to encrypt the data encryption key and is known as the key encryption key. An application interface is used to provide lengthy encryption keys to the clients requesting the keys from a server and known as the key management application program interface. A server that hosts the key management software is known as the key management system. The following figure shows the working of a symmetric key cryptography system.

When a client has to access a protected data resource the direct key of encryption is not provided to the client to ensure the security of the key. The request is forwarded to the above mentioned key management system. The client sends a request for the data encryption key to the application interface that connects the client with the server housing the database of encryption keys along with the key management software. Certificate of the client will be verified by initiating a transport layer security session with the client. If the certificate of the client is verified by the server then the key encryption key is used to retrieve the original data encryption key on behalf of the requesting client. The data encryption key is then provided to the requested database or file storage system that decrypts the required resource using that key and provide the client with plain text information ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM CSL_CITATION {"citationID":"a2je3brcc4e","properties":{"formattedCitation":"(Rodgers et al., 2017)","plainCitation":"(Rodgers et al., 2017)"},"citationItems":[{"id":2141,"uris":["http://zotero.org/users/local/gITejLE9/items/J8JQWVLY"],"uri":["http://zotero.org/users/local/gITejLE9/items/J8JQWVLY"],"itemData":{"id":2141,"type":"book","title":"Method and system for key management","publisher":"Google Patents","author":[{"family":"Rodgers","given":"Robert Stephen"},{"family":"Eatherton","given":"William Norman"},{"family":"Beesley","given":"Michael John"},{"family":"Dyckerhoff","given":"Stefan Alexander"},{"family":"Lacroute","given":"Philippe Gilbert"},{"family":"Swierk","given":"Edward Ronald"},{"family":"Geraghty","given":"Neil Vincent"},{"family":"Holleman","given":"Keith Eric"},{"family":"Giuli","given":"Thomas John"},{"family":"Rajagopal","given":"Srivatsan"}],"issued":{"date-parts":[["2017"]]}}}],"schema":"https://github.com/citation-style-language/schema/raw/master/csl-citation.json"} (Rodgers et al., 2017). The file system or database may store the key temporarily in memory for decryption purpose but that will be cleared after a set interval of time. Implementation of such key management system will help the organization to secure its critical information systems against cyber-attacks. The clients will be accessing the encrypted data without explicitly requiring access to the key itself. The access to the symmetric key in this key management system is protected by the public key cryptographic system also known as the public key cryptography system.

Asymmetric Cryptography:

As it is evident by the name asymmetric cryptography use different keys for encryption and decryption. It uses a pair of public and private keys for encryption and decryption. The key pairs of public and private keys are based on the large prime number factorizations. None of the keys can be extracted from each other meaning that the public key cannot be used to extract the public key in any way. The public key, as the name suggests, is known to the public. Whenever a person needs to send a message to some then the message is encrypted by using the public key of the recipient as the recipient is the only entity that has the corresponding private key to decrypt the message. In the organizational situation, a public key cryptographic infrastructure is used for key management and handling of public keys ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM CSL_CITATION {"citationID":"abhp7f4bvh","properties":{"formattedCitation":"(Al Salami, Baek, Salah, & Damiani, 2016)","plainCitation":"(Al Salami, Baek, Salah, & Damiani, 2016)"},"citationItems":[{"id":2144,"uris":["http://zotero.org/users/local/gITejLE9/items/X8P3E8TM"],"uri":["http://zotero.org/users/local/gITejLE9/items/X8P3E8TM"],"itemData":{"id":2144,"type":"paper-conference","title":"Lightweight encryption for smart home","container-title":"2016 11th International Conference on Availability, Reliability and Security (ARES)","publisher":"IEEE","page":"382-388","ISBN":"1-5090-0990-6","author":[{"family":"Al Salami","given":"Sanaah"},{"family":"Baek","given":"Joonsang"},{"family":"Salah","given":"Khaled"},{"family":"Damiani","given":"Ernesto"}],"issued":{"date-parts":[["2016"]]}}}],"schema":"https://github.com/citation-style-language/schema/raw/master/csl-citation.json"} (Al Salami, Baek, Salah, & Damiani, 2016). The certification authority issues digital signatures or digital certificates that can be used by individuals or organizations to prove their identity providing the confidentiality and integrity of the data. A digital signature or certificate is just the public key of an individual with some additional details such as the expiry date of the certificate. The certification authority keeps the identification record of the individual and matches the public keys with corresponding private keys. It verifies the owner of a legitimate public key for authentication and authorization purpose.

Asymmetric Key Systems:

In public key cryptographic systems implemented by the healthcare organization, each party owns a digital certificate provided by the certification authority. The sender of the information sends its certificate to the receiver for verification. The receiver then checks the validity and authenticity of the received certificate with its certification authority by sending it to the corresponding server hosting the validation data. When the certificate of the sender is verified then the receiver sends its certificate for verification and acceptance. After acceptance of digital certificates and having shared corresponding public keys a symmetric session key is created for an added layer of security. The session key is unique for each session to rule out the possibility of a man in the middle attacks in which an attacker can masquerade as the original sender by intercepting the initial validation communication between the parties. The sender encrypts the session key with the public key of the receiver. The receiver, on the other hand, decrypts the content of the message using the corresponding private key. Following flow chart describes the working of an asymmetric key cryptographic system.

The encryption scheme is implemented by the organization to secure its critical information infrastructure from cyber-attacks. The system utilizes a combination of asymmetric and symmetric cryptography to ensure the integrity, non-repudiation, availability, and confidentiality of the data. Key generation and storage take place on a dedicated server. On local hosts, the integrity of system files verified using the local encryption keys stored in trusted platform module device that cannot be accessed by software solutions making difficult target for attackers. Any client requesting for a protected resource is required to first prove the identity using public key cryptography system employing the digital certificates and then provided with the encrypted resource.

Benefits and Risks:

Any information technology system cannot be guaranteed to be 100% secure against targeted and advance persistent attacks. Cryptographic systems can also be tampered using techniques such as frequency analysis for stream ciphers and major cryptanalysis techniques for other encryption standards. Protection of the key itself is a challenging job in all of the cryptography system. The proposed implementation of the system uses encryption to encrypt the key as well as obfuscating the information and making it hard for cracking the original key ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM CSL_CITATION {"citationID":"ag7oe1joac","properties":{"formattedCitation":"(Vasilomanolakis et al., 2015)","plainCitation":"(Vasilomanolakis et al., 2015)"},"citationItems":[{"id":2147,"uris":["http://zotero.org/users/local/gITejLE9/items/ZJUJMIUV"],"uri":["http://zotero.org/users/local/gITejLE9/items/ZJUJMIUV"],"itemData":{"id":2147,"type":"paper-conference","title":"On the security and privacy of Internet of Things architectures and systems","container-title":"2015 International Workshop on Secure Internet of Things (SIoT)","publisher":"IEEE","page":"49-57","ISBN":"1-4673-7769-4","author":[{"family":"Vasilomanolakis","given":"Emmanouil"},{"family":"Daubert","given":"Jörg"},{"family":"Luthra","given":"Manisha"},{"family":"Gazis","given":"Vangelis"},{"family":"Wiesmaier","given":"Alex"},{"family":"Kikiras","given":"Panayotis"}],"issued":{"date-parts":[["2015"]]}}}],"schema":"https://github.com/citation-style-language/schema/raw/master/csl-citation.json"} (Vasilomanolakis et al., 2015). Normal keys and symmetric keys of shorter lengths can be cracked using brute force attacks. In the case of public key infrastructure the session keys can be collected by the attackers intercepting the network traffic. Such attacks are considered to be the man in the middle attacks. If an attacker has access to the session key then he will be able to communicate with the server to retrieve the encryption key. A successful attack can compromise the entire system even if the resources are encrypted. Therefore, encryption of session keys with public keys rules out the possibility of such attacks.

Conclusion:

Cryptographic systems are considered to be the primary line of defense for organizations against digital dark arts. As it is an established fact that any cryptographic system is as secure as the corresponding keys of encryption being used by the system. Therefore, securing the encryption keys is an inevitable task for the security teams of organizations dealing with sensitive information such as healthcare organizations. The best way of implementation of a cryptographic system is to aid the implementation with a key management infrastructure. It will help organizations in legal scenarios as well because if a key is lost and misused then the court of law may ask whether or not the organization was using a key management system. Even if it is not a legal or standardized requirement it will add value to the business.

Enterprise Key Management Policy

The goal of information security technology systems is to ensure the security of critical information systems. While designing security infrastructure, security teams have to find the balance between security and usability of the system. There is always a tradeoff between the security and usability of the system in information technology infrastructure. A most secure system will be one that is not connected to anything including the power source. But at the same time, the system will be the most useless system as well because it cannot be accessed by anyone. In the case of the cryptographic systems, strict security policies will make the system useless due to the complexity of operations involved. However, the system can still be protected if a key management system along with a comprehensive key management policy is deployed. Following are the key management rules implemented in healthcare organizations for the cryptographic system installed.

As a single encryption key cannot be used for data protection for an extended period of time. The key management system will use a key manager to ensure the rollover of existing keys and activation of new keys. For example when a new key of activation is generated the system will restrict the encryption activity using the previous key. Encryption operations will only be allowed using the newly activated encryption key. However, it will not be feasible for the system to re-encrypt all of the existing data with the new key because it will create a lot of processing overhead rendering the overall system useless ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM CSL_CITATION {"citationID":"a1r3bvv34hk","properties":{"formattedCitation":"(Barker & Barker, 2018)","plainCitation":"(Barker & Barker, 2018)"},"citationItems":[{"id":2150,"uris":["http://zotero.org/users/local/gITejLE9/items/Y9SUCCW7"],"uri":["http://zotero.org/users/local/gITejLE9/items/Y9SUCCW7"],"itemData":{"id":2150,"type":"report","title":"Recommendation for Key Management, Part 2: Best Practices for Key Management Organization","publisher":"National Institute of Standards and Technology","author":[{"family":"Barker","given":"Elaine"},{"family":"Barker","given":"William"}],"issued":{"date-parts":[["2018"]]}}}],"schema":"https://github.com/citation-style-language/schema/raw/master/csl-citation.json"} (Barker & Barker, 2018). Therefore, the key manager will allow the previous key to be used for the decryption operation of existing data but not for the encryption. Similarly, the key manager can also revoke a key for both encryption and decryption operation in emergency conditions. The key manager will be required to maintain a list of all of the key operations along with the revocation list of keys.

Escrow keys also known as the backup keys must be maintained even after the expiration of their crypto period. Achieved keys must be protected against accidental deletion and corruption. It is required to decrypt the backup of data in case of a large-scale breach of data happens or hardware failure. On the other hand, the key manager is also authorized to securely delete an entire encryption key along with all of its instances or only selected instances if the key is compromised. The operation will make it impossible for attackers to reconstruct the encryption key and use it to exploit the protected systems. Even if the encrypted data is compromised, the deletion of the key will ensure that the data is completely secure and cannot be recovered at all. As per the framework of the national institute of standards in technology, key generation roles will be segregated between three parties. Meaning that no single person will know about the entire structure of the key. Each person will only be aware of a certain part of the key making the key generation secure against insider attacks.

In addition, the operation of the entire key management system will be divided between at least two persons. It will ensure that no single entity has complete control of the system. It is also a requirement of the NIST framework. Physical security of the key management system will also be ensured as per the federal information protection standards. It is inevitable for any organization to have an adequate physical defense in place along with the logical measures. Because if a system can be physically breached and compromised then all of the logical protection measures will fail too.

References

ADDIN ZOTERO_BIBL {"custom":[]} CSL_BIBLIOGRAPHY Al Salami, S., Baek, J., Salah, K., & Damiani, E. (2016). Lightweight encryption for smart home. 2016 11th International Conference on Availability, Reliability and Security (ARES), 382–388. IEEE.

Baek, J., Vu, Q. H., Liu, J. K., Huang, X., & Xiang, Y. (2015). A secure cloud computing based framework for big data information management of smart grid. IEEE Transactions on Cloud Computing, 3(2), 233–244.

Barker, E., & Barker, W. (2018). Recommendation for Key Management, Part 2: Best Practices for Key Management Organization. National Institute of Standards and Technology.

Kumar, S., Roth, G. B., Rubin, G. A., Seigle, M. C., & Tirdad, K. (2016). Redundant key management. Google Patents.

Kurihara, K., Kikuchi, M., Imaizumi, S., Shiota, S., & Kiya, H. (2015). An encryption-then-compression system for jpeg/motion jpeg standard. IEICE Transactions on Fundamentals of Electronics, Communications and Computer Sciences, 98(11), 2238–2245.

Lei, A., Cruickshank, H., Cao, Y., Asuquo, P., Ogah, C. P. A., & Sun, Z. (2017). Blockchain-based dynamic key management for heterogeneous intelligent transportation systems. IEEE Internet of Things Journal, 4(6), 1832–1843.

Rodgers, R. S., Eatherton, W. N., Beesley, M. J., Dyckerhoff, S. A., Lacroute, P. G., Swierk, E. R., … Rajagopal, S. (2017). Method and system for key management. Google Patents.

Sciancalepore, S., Capossele, A., Piro, G., Boggia, G., & Bianchi, G. (2015). Key management protocol with implicit certificates for IoT systems. Proceedings of the 2015 Workshop on IoT Challenges in Mobile and Industrial Systems, 37–42. ACM.

Vasilomanolakis, E., Daubert, J., Luthra, M., Gazis, V., Wiesmaier, A., & Kikiras, P. (2015). On the security and privacy of Internet of Things architectures and systems. 2015 International Workshop on Secure Internet of Things (SIoT), 49–57. IEEE.

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440055022860000

2020 Flanagan Software

Company Getaway

The Flanagan Software Company Getaway Team has been meeting over the last two months to plan this year’s getaway. We have been studying your survey responses and talking to you about how to make this year’s activities as productive, vibrant, and fun as they were last year.

The overwhelming consensus is that the workshop sessions were a big success. Most people also appreciated having the opportunity to participate in many types of activities, from challenging outdoor experiences to relaxing walks and casual small group interactions. We are planning to offer the same range of activities this year (but no more trust falls or motivational speakers—that came through loud and clear!).

The 2020 Flanagan Software Company Getaway will be held at the Snake River Lodge and Resort in Grand View, Idaho, on June 8–11. The focus this year is on recharging and connecting with each other and our guests. The attached overview provides details about the Snake River Lodge and the activities we are planning. Highlights of this year’s plans are the Flanagan spa, which is designed to recharge participants, whitewater rafting for the adventurous, and Iron Chef–style competitions.

Let us know what you think—the plans have plenty of room for changes.

Flanagan Software Company Getaway Team

info@fsgetaway.cengage.com

right0Recharge and Connect

00Recharge and Connect

2020 Flanagan Software Company Getaway

T

his year’s getaway is shaping up to be one of our best retreats yet, combining work with play and plenty of opportunities for creativity, physical activities, and making connections with each other, our customers, and our inspiring guests. The event will be held at the Snake River Lodge and Resort in Grand View, Idaho, over four days:

Monday, June 8: Arrivals and greetings

Tuesday, June 9: Work and play

Wednesday, June 10: Workshops and explorations

Thursday, June 11: Wind down and departures

(Note: The office will be closed for foundation fundraising on Friday, June 12.)

Why are we getting away?

0825500It’s time to recharge! Flanagan Software is composed of mostly virtual teams with offices scattered across the United States. Our entire staff gets together only twice a year—and the company getaway is one of those times. We want to take advantage of being together to brainstorm in person about Flanagan Software and its culture, products, and customers. For the second year, we are inviting customers to join us at the getaway so we can connect with them and show off our new apps and planned features. We are also inviting inspiring people from diverse fields—sports, art, film, technology, and science—to tell their stories and help us rejuvenate in new ways.

What’s new this year?

Much of what Flanagan Software does involves social media. We want to use our own products to connect with customers who cannot join us in person. The idea is to set up a blog before the getaway and then use our Flick app to update the blog from Idaho. Customers can keep in touch using their favorite social networking app or they can try Flick and leave comments on the blog. We can post photos, screenshots, videos, and the usual mix of fun and work-related posts.

What are the goals?

We are setting goals in two categories: company goals and product goals. The company goals are personal—we want to relax and get to know one another in a setting other than our office and video conferences. It’s been a busy year with many stressful deadlines, and we want to reward ourselves for releasing apps and updates on schedule. We also want to figure out what’s next.

The product goals are to show off Flick and other apps and to use the apps as customers do—to connect with each other. The company getaway is a perfect time to test our own products for real and in public. We hope this exercise will help solidify our relationships with our current customers and attract new ones.

Activity Snapshots

Your survey responses recommended combining work and play, so we are planning lots of fun activities. Professional event organizer Shelley Cohen will be on hand to keep things running smoothly.

Outdoor recreation

31591251460500The Snake River has mild to wild rapids for river sports. Whitewater rafting trips will be led by experienced guides for two to three hours through breathtaking gorges and woods. Kayaks and tubes are also available for paddles and floats on the middle fork of the Snake River, which flows past the lodge. Well-marked trails lead up and through the Snake River gorges, providing stunning vistas. All of the outdoor recreation activities are optional.

Flanagan Software day spa

3223895444500The Snake Lodge has a full range of spa facilities, and we plan to take advantage of them. The spa provides massage therapies, facial treatments, and waterfall cleanses. The day spa is connected to a yoga and meditation center and offers classes for beginners and advanced practitioners. In a nearby fitness complex, you can play tennis and other racquet sports, join a kickboxing class, use the strength-training equipment, or work with a personal trainer.

Competitions

323596024130All in the spirit of fun, Shelley Cohen is organizing daily competitions, including an Iron Chef–style team cooking competition with secret ingredients and surprise mentors. Customers will be the judges. Shelley is also preparing a Battle of the Airbands, complete with costumes and props, back-to-back drawing competitions, and a trivia contest. (What was the name of our very first customer? Winner gets a company t-shirt—just kidding!)

left20001078865About the Snake River Resort

Location: The Snake River Lodge and Resort is situated on the banks of the Snake River in the Magic Valley, about 40 minutes from Weiser, Idaho.

History: Early settlers in the area-built dams and canals along the Snake River, dramatically changing an arid plain into fertile valley. The dams created reservoirs that attract wildlife and campers today.

Natural attractions: Deep canyons, high bluffs, unusual rock formations, and even lava flow make the Snake River area one of the most ruggedly beautiful parts of the country.

Directions from the Idaho Falls Regional Airport: Take Skyline Drive to US-20E, and then turn right on Lewisville Highway. Turn left onto N Yellowstone Highway – the resort is on the left.

The resort also runs a shuttle from the airport every 30 minutes.

346000About the Snake River Resort

Location: The Snake River Lodge and Resort is situated on the banks of the Snake River in the Magic Valley, about 40 minutes from Weiser, Idaho.

History: Early settlers in the area-built dams and canals along the Snake River, dramatically changing an arid plain into fertile valley. The dams created reservoirs that attract wildlife and campers today.

Natural attractions: Deep canyons, high bluffs, unusual rock formations, and even lava flow make the Snake River area one of the most ruggedly beautiful parts of the country.

Directions from the Idaho Falls Regional Airport: Take Skyline Drive to US-20E, and then turn right on Lewisville Highway. Turn left onto N Yellowstone Highway – the resort is on the left.

The resort also runs a shuttle from the airport every 30 minutes.

Lodging

The Snake River Lodge and Resort has a variety of lodging options. In the next week, we will be posting a form on which you can rank your top three choices for accommodations and request cabin mates if you are saying in a cabin. Complimentary Wi-Fi is available throughout the resort.

Rustic log cabins: These handcrafted cabins are built from high-quality, dead-standing lodgepole pines using the traditional building techniques of the Northwest. Each cabin has two bedrooms, a convenience kitchen, at least one fireplace, and luxury bathrooms.

Large cabins: Using the same materials and construction as the rustic log cabins, the large cabins also have expansive wraparound porches with built-in hot tubs. Each cabin has four bedrooms, a well-equipped kitchen, at least one fireplace, and luxury bathrooms.

River Tower rooms: The River Tower features midsize rooms with wall-to-wall windows looking on river and mountain views. Amenities include signature king-size or queen-size beds, private dressing areas, gas fireplaces, and in-room refrigerators.

Whitewater suites: Each suite has at least 1,500 square feet of space with views of the river and the mountains. In addition to the amenities offered in the River Tower rooms, whitewater suites have separate bedrooms with king-size beds, soaking tubs, and spacious balconies.

Flanagan Software Corporate Giving

14287533020FSF is a charitable organization that receives funding from Flanagan Software and private donations. The foundation has been supporting community organizations and programs since 2014.

00FSF is a charitable organization that receives funding from Flanagan Software and private donations. The foundation has been supporting community organizations and programs since 2014.

The Flanagan Software Foundation (FSF) takes seriously its responsibility as a member of the worldwide community. We began in 2014 by funding literacy programs around the world. Today, the Flanagan Software Foundation gives dozens of grants to nonprofit organizations to support opportunities for youth, community service, literacy, and access to clean water. When we return from our company getaway, you are invited to head to the Pathways for Youth Center and participate in the Great American Grill-Out to raise funds for youth programs.

Supported Organizations

Grants made in 2020

Organization

Contribution

Pathways for Youth

$150,000

Heart Family Services

$75,000

DEA Literacy

$50,000

Youth Leadership Grants

$250,000

Clean Water Pipeline

$80,000

Customers Participating in the 2020 Flanagan Software Company Getaway:

Advocates for Youth

Alicia Knapstein

Anita Wang & Associates

Antonio and Marijo Sommers

Benjamin Egan

Braxton Design

Brian and Belinda McNelly

Camille Lafontaine

Dale Beckenbaugh

Darren and Chris Taylor

David and Barbara Robertson

Donovan Enterprises

Dustin and Julie Hatcher

Ernesto Padilla

Harry and Candace Tham

Jaspar Chakilam

Jeff and Allison Salazar

Jesse and Terese Malkowski

John and Paige Piper-Hall

Kenny Cao

Min and Amy Huang

Padilla Consulting

Richard and Joy Bachmann

Tito and Monica Salinas

Zimmers Financial

© Copyright 2020. All rights reserved.

Impact Of Data-Mining And Data Warehousing On Business

Impact of Data-mining and Data Warehousing on Business

[Name of the Writer]

[Name of the Institution]

The process of studying big databases that already exist for generating new information is called Data-mining. This helps in discovering patterns, anomalies, and correlations in data by using software(s). It is also called knowledge discovery in databases (KDD). This process is used by companies so that raw data can be made useful by learning about their customers and their needs/ preferences and form better and effective marketing strategies targeted towards those customers and consequently generate higher profits at minimized costs. Data mining is also useful in finance and banking to minimize the risks of loans, mortgages, and detection of fraudulent transactions. Data mining is useful for understanding customers’ preferences and business objectives by taking into account the available resources and given constraints and other important factors. It is a complex and difficult task as the data from different sources usually do not coincide with each other and poses challenges in the process of data integration. So companies use “metadata” to omit the errors that occur in the process. The data is aggregated, generalized (e.g. replacing a city with a country) and normalized (create ranges) for easy analysis and obtaining the results.

Data mining is used in education, manufacturing, communications, insurance, retail, E-commerce, crime investigation, supermarkets, and bioinformatics.

Data mining can be obtained from Object-oriented and object-relational databases, Transactional and Spatial databases, Heterogeneous and legacy databases, Multimedia and streaming database, Text databases and Text mining and Web mining. Based on the objectives of the business, relevant mathematical techniques are used for generating the results and it’s important to make sure that the results are understood and studied by all stakeholders to meet data mining goals.

The main steps in data mining are classification, clustering, regression and association of data that then predict the trends, patterns and possible future events.

There are challenges for business for the implementation for data mining as skillful and expert people are needed to work on the data in question. Sometimes the data is too small for the test and large databases are difficult to handle. The nature of data also mattes as for accurate analysis, diverse data is required.

The tools used in data mining are R-language (statistics and graphics) and Oracle Data Mining (for predictions).

Data warehousing is the main component of business intelligence and influences the decision-making process of the business managers. It allows space for data to be stored that is required by the business to report and analyze and for other business intelligence functions. This helps in controlling the stock and inventory. This helps in providing the customers with the desired goods and services and to keep the products up to date for future use. In data warehousing, the data is used at many levels. For example, the user of data may want to see the total sales of a good/ service in a community, city, state and the country. Usually, it starts from a higher level; and goes down to lower levels.

The usage of data warehouse is called Online Analytical Processing (OLAP), which uses complex queries to analyze rather than process transactions. The main purpose of data warehousing is to see the connection b/w different data from various systems. The difference between database and data warehouse is that a data warehouse can store huge amount of historical data and uses OLAP to solve queries across the data while a database records the transactions and helps look at the details of the transactions if need be. It is called “Online Transaction Processing” (OLTP). A Data warehouse can be used to combine data from various places to form one database. It mitigates the difficulty of analysis in transaction process database and maintains the history of the data. It enables to see data from different sources from the same point. This is mainly useful when organizations merge. It also improves the data quality and even omits the errors in data. Data warehouse also helps in restructuring the data for use by the business doer as it gives better query fulfillment with no impact on the system of operations and adds value to CRMs. It enables easy writing of queries and removes the ambiguities by organizing recurring data.

There have been many pieces researches on the impact of data mining and data warehousing on different businesses. One such research suggests that businesses have gained important hints from the data gathered via such techniques/ systems by analyzing the results given by these systems. For many years, the use of such systems has led businesses to a new and interesting domain of business intelligence. This also enables better and focused market search, which further leads to a better understanding of customer behavior and preferences, consumer requirements, and to recognize and cease new investment and growth options. And this doesn’t stop here. New technologies and methods will further lead to even better and mature business intelligence and actionable news/ insights. This even points out that the next generation of employees will need even polished skills and abilities to equip themselves with the newest technologies and work in a more competitive business environment. It will have applications not only in business but also in healthcare, government, and security and there is a need for more research on this shift (Chen, Chiang, & Storey, 2012).

Another study clarifies that the technology of Data mining given by Cloud computing is an extremely important practice for any business to decide actively on the basis of actionable knowledge, so that they may have an idea on upcoming patterns and predict the outcomes of their decisions. The study shows that it is necessarily important and is of great benefits to use data mining in cloud computing. As the requirement for tools of data-mining tools is ever increasing, the need to integrate them in cloud computing is also becoming ever significant.

Another study revealed that the use of information systems like data warehousing has had a significant impact on the consumer satisfaction as they enable the business doers to look into the market and help them make important decisions and amendments in the way of doing business. This further helps the business grow and improve. The information systems greatly impact the performance of the business (Chen, Soliman, Mao, & Frolick, 2000).

Another study emphasizes on the designing of the systems as they are extremely valuable and helpful in decision making process. It suggests that the designing of the systems should be precise and thoughtful so that it may satisfy the needs to the best level. The systems are essential for business as nowadays no business can survive without business intelligence and market research. So the systems should be engineered I such a way that they provide accurate, precise authentic and actionable data trends and analysis for the business to grow and operate in a cost-effective mode (Golfarelli, Maio, & Rizzi, 1998).

Data warehousing has enabled companies to meet the need for better and accurate decision making by providing integrated, organized and readable data on the right time. This enables the business to survive in a highly competitive environment by identifying the opportunities and weaknesses and guiding them on the changes to be made to get better results. The information systems help in forming the strategies and their implementation and evaluating the results which further leads to innovation and beneficial customer relationships (March & Hevner, 2007).

The art of data mining has been studied by many researchers to better understand the process so that the possible mistakes be avoided and correct the ones already committed. The tasks that eat up most of the time in this process is the selection of data and its initial processing. However, much of the decisions are affected by the analysis of that data. The selection of data is its initial processing has a great influence on a company’s efficiency. The effective way of collecting and analyzing the data needs to involve the experts in the working, who have command over the business area to be studied. Although there are many technologies that enable automatic data collection and its analysis, there is still a need of experts who have the required knowledge of the process and are helpful in mitigating the risks associated with mistakes and errors (Feelders, Daniels, & Holsheimer, 2000).

There is a term “Churn Management” which refers to being able to identify valuable consumers and being able to retain them. This is noticeably important in the telecommunication industry. As mentioned earlier, the practice of data mining is essentially important in the telecommunication industry, while I looked at a study regarding churn management, it emphasized that as the economy is becoming digital day by day, churn management is even tougher for companies nowadays. This has led companies to formulate more consumer-focused plans to maximize profits and the developments in data mining have to play a key role in the process of decision making (Lejeune, 2001).

Information systems are playing a key role in hospitals and healthcare as well. A study on the use of information systems in hospitals in Greece has suggested that they’ll be beneficial for smooth and efficient outcomes for the hospitals if there is an encouragement for their efficient usage as well as the contentment level of the people using such systems. Many pieces of researche have been carried out to see the level of satisfaction of the users of hospital information systems and the factors that determine it. The research in this regard which I studied highlights that there is enough support for the usage of information systems and the EUCS model (which incorporates new factors) can gauge the satisfaction level of the users as it is robust and reasonable to use in different cultures and linguistic settings (Aggelidis & Chatzoglou, 2012). The research in this regards hints that more hospitals are using the information systems for better service provision.

As almost all the companies are using the systems for better performance, we also need to acknowledge that the security of information of various companies is of utmost importance. Companies are investing to secure their information systems. It is mainly concerned with the management of the organization. It has significance as some companies may sell their data of consumers to other companies in exchange for money which is not approved by the consumers and is ethically wrong as well. Some companies can hack the systems of other companies and obtain their data. A study on the topic of information security systems reveals that the company data cannot be protected merely by technical means. The study reveals that the users think that the security of information systems is essential but it makes it difficult to use the systems and the efficiency of the systems is compromised. Companies need to see the tradeoff between the benefits of securing the systems and the loss in productivity (Montesdioca & Maçada, 2015).

The process called “Volunteered Geographic Information” (VGI) is used to increase the capabilities of the analysts with the assumption that data is credible and precise. Research integrates the data of volunteered geographic information and spatial OLAP system and finds out that both the data sets resemble in certain ways and vary in other. The research provides a logical guideline for framing warehouse and OLAP data (VGI data). The purpose is to address the issues of accuracy and reliability of volunteer geographic information data. Using a Volunteer geographic information system, the researchers are also defining a newer spatio-multifaceted model which will help the business planners to describe the accuracy of the accumulated data (Bimonte, Boucelma, Machabert, & Sellami, 2014).

There is also a need to use good software for data mining. When I researched which is a good software to serve the purpose of data mining, I came up with the a list that includes the Sisense, Oracle Data Mining, Rapidminer, Microsoft SharePoint, IBM Cognos, KNIME, Dundas BI, Board, Orange, SAP Business Objects, Salesforce Analytics Cloud, DOMO, SPSS Modeler, Limestats and AtomLynx Insights Engine etc. All these software packages have distinct characteristics that the companies can use according to their needs. For example, the companies can use SQL developer by Oracle with a Data Miner GUI to amend the information readily in the database, which further helps in integrating the predictions to the apps so that the intelligence patterns can be used automatically.

The top companies that use data mining are the Amazon, American Express, BDO, Capital One, General Electric (GE), Miniclip, Netflix, Next Big Sound, Starbucks and, T-Mobile. All of these companies are highly competitive and efficient, the leaders in the industry in their domain and are doing great. The fact that all these big companies use data mining is proof that it has significant implications in decision-making process of the business. And data mining is essential for a business to operate efficiently and compete in the industry.

If we look for data warehouses in the market that are in high demand nowadays, we come up with the Teradata, Oracle, Amazon web services, Cloudera and the MarkLogic.

The leading companies like Apple Inc., eBay and Walmart have the biggest data warehouses one can see. The industries that use data warehouses are computer software, financial services, information technology and services, hospitals and healthcare, staffing and recruiting, banking, insurance, higher education, telecommunications and retail. This means that usage of data warehousing is huge and is ever increasing day by day.

The countries that top the list of data warehouse usage are the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, India, France, Germany, Netherlands, Italy and New Zealand. All these countries are the leaders in economy, science and technology. India is an emerging economy with the most favorable market for startups and entrepreneurships. This implies that the use of data warehouses is an undeniable reality and the businesses need to make arrangements for their needs of data and information if they aspire to operate efficiently with minimum costs and maximum profits.

All the above discussion proves that data mining and data warehousing is part and parcel of effective operation of a business and without this, the companies are surely unable to make efficient and beneficial decisions and are less likely to succeed in the respective industries. This also provides better opportunities to data miners and developers as well as poses a challenge as more and more companies are using the data mining and warehousing techniques, data miners need to keep themselves up to date and polish their skills so that they might be of help to businesses to grow and cater to the needs of the growing customer base.

References

Bimonte, S., Boucelma, O., Machabert, O., & Sellami, S. (2014). A new Spatial OLAP approach for the analysis of Volunteered Geographic Information. Computers, Environment and Urban Systems, 48, 111–123. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compenvurbsys.2014.07.006

Chen, Chiang, & Storey. (2012). Business Intelligence and Analytics: From Big Data to Big Impact. MIS Quarterly, 36(4), 1165. https://doi.org/10.2307/41703503

Aggelidis, V. P., & Chatzoglou, P. D. (2012). Hospital information systems: Measuring end user computing satisfaction (EUCS). Journal of Biomedical Informatics, 45(3), 566–579. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbi.2012.02.009

March, S. T., & Hevner, A. R. (2007). Integrated decision support systems: A data warehousing perspective. Decision Support Systems, 43(3), 1031–1043. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dss.2005.05.029

Lejeune, M. A. P. M. (2001). Measuring the impact of data mining on churn management. Internet Research, 11(5), 375–387. https://doi.org/10.1108/10662240110410183

Chen, L., Soliman, K. S., Mao, E., & Frolick, M. N. (2000). Measuring user satisfaction with data warehouses: an exploratory study. Information & Management, 37(3), 103–110. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0378-7206(99)00042-7

Montesdioca, G. P. Z., & Maçada, A. C. G. (2015). Measuring user satisfaction with information security practices. Computers & Security, 48, 267–280. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cose.2014.10.015

Feelders, A., Daniels, H., & Holsheimer, M. (2000). Methodological and practical aspects of data mining. Information & Management, 37(5), 271–281. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0378-7206(99)00051-8

Golfarelli, M., Maio, D., & Rizzi, S. (1998). The dimensional fact model: a conceptual model for data warehouses. International Journal of Cooperative Information Systems, 07(02n03), 215–247. https://doi.org/10.1142/S0218843098000118

Impact Of Data-Mining And Data Warehousing On Business

Impact of Data-Mining and Data Warehousing on Business

[Name of the Writer]

[Name of the Institution]

Impact of Data-Mining and Data Warehousing on Business

Abstract

This research report the overall role of data mining and data warehousing in the operations of business or businesses. In the current business environment, data mining and data warehousing are the key and major part of business operations. The concepts of data mining and data warehousing have made the businesses capable to meet all of their business targets, achieve their financial targets as well as bring improvement in the performance and operations. Furthermore, these concepts have been found useful by a number of businesses (even all) in the entire world for enhancement of target markets, segments and number of potential customers. This report and research further clarify that who and how the concepts of data mining and data warehousing are crucial for any type of business or organization. The paper is keenly focusing on the overall impact of these two concepts on business. For this purpose, the study and paper review the past studies, literature about business efficiency because of implementation of data mining and data warehousing concepts. The report also analyzes how these concepts can improve the business operations of LAH incorporation. In other words, the paper analyzes that how LAH and its business can get benefit from the implementation of the concepts as well as how it can help the company to improve its business operations and perform better. Additionally, to the study, some of the critical issues or problems regarding the implementation of data mining and data warehousing are also analyzed and discussed.

Data Mining

Data Mining is the critical process in which the hidden data and information are gotten from the piles of the database and used for the analysis purpose(s). In short, it is the process of extracting the data from both large and small database for some specialized purpose or work.

The concept of Data Mining is used in a number of applications like product and service analysis, understanding marketing research and customers’ preferences, analysis of demand and supply, investment analysis, return analysis, budget settlement, e-commerce, communication, and many other applications. The concept and operations of data mining are based on analytical skills and mathematical algorithm that is used to drive the expected and desired results and outcomes from the huge database collection (Doug, 2019).

Data mining involves the process of analyzing and exploration of larger blocks of data and information to gather meaningful and useful trends and patterns. The results can be further used for the purpose of risk management, marketing purposes, detection of frauds and many other uses.

The process of data mining is usually broken into five major steps or stages. These steps are;

Firstly the organization gather all data and load it to their data warehouse for the desired purpose.

In the next step, the organization or business should store their data in a secure place like the Cloud or In-House Server.

The next step is the management of the team and professionals who will be involved in the process. In this step, the business analyst determines how the team(s) and professionals access the data as well as how will organize it.

Then the specific software sorts the data on the basis of results or outcomes of the user(s).

The final steps are the end user present the data and results in an easy to share formats like table or graph.

Data Warehousing

Data Warehousing is the collection of all corporate information and data gathered from all operating systems as well as other external data sources. Data Warehouse is developed with the purpose of generating or developing critical business decisions through allowing data analysis, data consolidations and reporting at altered aggregate levels (Bose, 2018). Extraction, loading a transformation are the ways through which the data is populated into a data warehouse.

Data warehousing integrates stores of data as well as all logical, conceptual and physical models and prototypes to support the goals and objectives of the business or organization as well as meets the needs and expectations of the end user(s). Development of Data Warehousing needs structuring data targets and sources, then catching all the facts of transforming in metadata fountain or repository (Zaki, 2018).

The process of Data Warehousing conglomerates and combines the collected information from different sources in a single detailed or comprehensive database. For instance, data warehouse gathers all information about customers of a business from the mailing lists, website and other sources of the businesses (Bose, 2018). Confidential information like details of a company’s employees or other financial information may also be considered in the data warehousing. Business users such information for analyzing their target and potential customers. Data warehousing has also the relation with data mining which is meant to look for useful and meaningful data patterns in a large data volumes and develop new and strong strategies and tactics for generating higher revenues, making higher profits as well as to make more sales than existing sales volume of business (Dawood, 2019).

In addition, data warehousing matters a lot in business operations, companies with having strong and effective data warehousing systems thinks a way ahead than others in terms of marketing analysis, product analysis, pricing, and promotion analysis, product development, production analysis, and historical analysis as well as customer satisfaction (Dawood, 2019). Sometimes, data warehousing can be found an expensive process to design and implement but it adds a lot to the efficiency of business operations in many terms.

Data Mining versus Data Warehousing

There is a number of components which distinguishes the role of data mining and data warehousing and their different impacts on the business and operation. Some key differences and benefits are;

Data warehousing helps business in storing user data or information while data mining helps business in taking both major and minor decisions (Haroon, 2018).

Data warehousing is usually started at the beginning stage of any project or process while data mining is done as per demand or request.

The availability of data depends on the supported load of the warehouse while data mining does not bring any issue or problem like this.

There are a number of analytical algorithms available for mining the data if the professional has deep knowledge about the data and use of the tools (Haroon, 2018).

By looking at the different benefits which data mining and data warehousing provide to a business, the following comparing table clarifies the thoughts.

Data Warehousing

Data Mining

Faster and quicker access to the data

Quicker processing of the data

Improved system performance and operations

Enhanced throughput

Easy and relaxed data handling

Easy and convenient to produce a report for analysis

Data Integrity

Analytics of the data

In details, the difference between Data Mining and Data Warehousing is data warehousing stores the data from several databases and provide the data for different purposes at any time. All of the data has been cleaned after it has been received from multiple sources because of its format and structure differences. After this process, the data has been assimilated to shape and form commonly available and integral available data store.

The process of data mining is done on the currently available data to generate results for decision making. It is done to gather the scenario as well as to get the knowledge and facts about the business. The states after data mining provide a clean and clear picture of the trends and facts and figures.

Literature Review

There is a number of studies, analyses and researches have been done about the impact of data mining and data warehousing on business or business operations and efficiency. These researches and studies have been done for several years. These studies have focused on a number of aspect regarding the point of impact of data mining and data warehousing on business. Most of the researches show that businesses have enjoyed a number of benefits from the concepts of data mining and data warehousing (Ramesh, 2016). Those benefits include all the hints for business efficiency and performance and operations improvement. From a number of years even decades, the concepts of data mining and data warehousing have helped the businesses to perform better than without having such concepts as well as to empower all of operations and procedures of the business (Inmon, 1996). These concepts further help businesses in introducing new strategies and tactics to perform better business operations and give insights to the businesses to know that facts about your customers like and dislikes, their needs and expectations as well as their buying behaviors.

A recent study states that the using the concept of data warehousing made businesses and companies able to gain higher customers satisfaction. As the customers’ satisfaction is an extremely important things for every business or company if they want to get succeed in long term, the data about customers and their feedbacks is very important to be kept at hand. Data warehousing is the way which provide the source to keep all these information and data for any decision(s). Data warehousing helps businesses and companies to keep an eye on the trends, market and industry and take all the decisions perfectly and accordingly (Inmon, 1996). As well as it helps to make changes in the existing strategies and tactics (if necessary) to enhance customers satisfaction and grow your business effectively and earn higher revenues and profits. In this way the concept of data warehousing has huge impact on the performance of business (Ramesh, 2016).

Another research shows that in the present competitive business environment, no business can run its operations without having proper and highly effective information system and business intelligence as well as strong market and industry research. But the system is required to be designed in a way which makes available all the data at the required time for any purpose while the data should be fine, accurate, realistic, actionable and implementable for the required purpose, so that the business would be able to perform efficiently and in a better way (Ramesh, 2016).

These concepts (data mining and data warehousing) further enables the business to improve the skills and capabilities of each staff members and engaged in every new and advance technology and patterns. Additionally, data mining and data warehousing do not only have better impacts on businesses while these concepts play a huge role in making other sectors efficient. The sectors include but not only, health care, security, government, non-profit organizations, and many other sectors (Inmon, 1996).

A study shows that data warehousing is an association of data which is developed for the purpose to support the key decision-making process of organization or business. Further, the core benefit of data warehousing id the provision of a very clear and concise picture of the organization os business at a particular time which can be used for effective decision making which will further lead to the success of the business or organization.

Another study emphasizes that business intelligence is the technique of describing a full set of methods and tools which transform data into useful and meaningful information which is used for business improvement and efficiency, so data mining and data warehousing concepts strengthen the tool of business intelligence (Eiad, 2013). Beyond that, data mining and data warehousing are the concepts which help the business to design highly systematic techniques which highly efficient and useful so that they might be found the most useful for any business improvement purpose. In the current competitive business world, no business or organization can run its business operations without having s strong business intelligence practices and deep market research. So the concepts are used for the purpose to provide actionable and realistic as well as fully perfect statistics to grow and perform in a way that leads to gain a competitive advantage in the industry as well as in the market place.

There are number of problems and issues incorporate with the concept of data mining, which have been found by many professionals as well as by the researchers. The core and highly critical problem is the amount of time which the data selection process takes as well as some crucial processing steps. The selection of data is a key action which is always required to be taken very carefully because it decides the effectives of business and its operations while these steps and data collection is mostly done through automatic resources (Edureka, 2014). So in this case, the researchers suggest that the organization or business needs to involve highly professional people or individuals in such activities instead of completely depending on automatic resources.

The concept of data warehousing has a huge role in making businesses to make strong and successful business decisions. This has been done by the provision of any kind of required data and information from the sources for taking any of the decision. In this way, the business becomes able to work on the identifications of its strengths, critical weaknesses, potential opportunities and crucial threats from the external environment. As well as work on the strengths to utilize all the potential opportunities to gain success as well as turn all of the threats into opportunities for future growth and success. Beyond that, it also enables the business to identify its weaknesses and work towards improving such areas and to convert their critical weaknesses to highly competitive strengths (Edureka, 2014).

Beyond above, information system (concepts of data mining and data warehousing) is used in many other industries like hospitals, public services, and health care industry. Based on a research in the public services industry, it has been found that all of the operations and processes would be more effective and strong if all players of the industry give focus towards the concepts of data mining and data warehousing. These concepts and their efficiency can improve the operations of overall industry. It can help because the concerned organization would have full data about the public as well as they would have way to analyze the data for any purpose they want. So they could contribute a lot to the society’s or community’s well-being. While in terms of health care industry, most of the bodies (even all) have adopted the use of information system to provide the most convenient and high quality services to the people and community (March. & Hevner, 2007). This has been found as an excellent steps of all players of health care industries by most of the researchers.

In terms of financial and management benefits, several businesses and companies have implement the practices of data mining and data warehousing. They have adopted the practices and still using them for the purpose to improve their business performance and make more revenues as well as to develop a highly effective and efficient management system inside the company (Watson. & Wixom, 2007).

Impact of Efficient Application of Data Mining on LAH (IT Company)

A recent research state that data mining can be found a useful concept for businesses to avoid the factors which lead to increase in miss happenings and critical mistakes that happen in the operations of many businesses around the world. These mistakes may misjudgments of customers’ preferences, wrong targeting, and selection of a non-potential segment or region to be targeted by the business or consideration of wrong stakeholders as key stakeholders (Business Impact, 2015). So these things may happen with LAH and its management. In this case, data mining is the crucial and highly beneficial concept which can be found useful for LAH to keep itself away from such wrong decisions or deeds (Dhingra. & Chaudhry, 2019). In addition, data mining can help in this case by providing fully perfect information for decision making at any time and about any matter. As well as it provides insights into the management of LAH that what could be the result if a wrong decision has been taken.

Proceeding forward, data mining can help LAH in forecasting its future sales based on past information. In the case of sales forecasting, data mining can help LAH to look at the time that when the customers make purchases and predict on that basis that when they might be purchasing in the future (Jyoti, 2019). In this way, LAH can develop relevant and appropriate strategies for the future to figure out the expected sales in the future. In this LAH will also look at the information of potential customers like a number of potential customers, their needs, want and expectations, their preferences, their buying behaviors, their lives standard and their likes and dislikes. Such information about customers can be gathered only if LAH has strong data mining as well as data warehousing systems.

For LAH the best use of data mining is the segmentation of its target market. In this way, LAH can divide its target market(s) into different pieces or segment on the basis of age, gender, income level, buying behavior, preferences, occupation as well as geographic and demographics. This (segmentation) can be done in an efficient and successful way if LAH has all possible data about its markets and target customers. By looking at this factor, the impact of data mining can be found very huge and positive on businesses or companies like LAH.

Beyond above, the concept of data mining has a huge impact on the operation of LAH in terms of increasing profit, boosting current revenues, enhancement of existing operations and their efficiency and reduction of costs. These benefits can be exercised by the company because data mining and its advanced software have enabled thousands of businesses to gather data and analyze for their particular purposes accordingly.

There is a number of considerations which should be kept in mind while making a decision or developing practice. Most of the times, some decisions are required to be made promptly and on urgent basis because they are required for a specific purpose and a specific time, but sometimes decision makers fail to make such decision in the required deadline or time frame (Zeel, 2017). This mostly leads to failure in a certain aspect of business operation and the same case may be happened by LAH anytime.

So data mining is the concept that provides required data and information as needed at any time. So if the decision makers get the data at the exact time then they may not get failed to provide what has been asked.

Impact of Efficient Application of Data Warehousing on LAH (IT Company)

Confidentiality of data and information are highly crucial things for every kind of business or organization. They have to keep all un-sharable information fully confidential and secure in any situation and at any cost. So same importance for LAH and for this purpose (information security and confidentiality) data warehousing concept is extremely useful for LAH. As data warehousing stores the data in the server or cloud, it can be the one source that LAH always have to keep its data and important information fully secure. Beyond that, with the help of data warehousing, data or information can be kept secured by the organization (LAH) as well as management can get that data or information any time when they go towards making a business decision. The efficient application of data warehousing adds a lot to the success of every company or organization especially IT Companies (Dhingra. & Chaudhry, 2019). Data warehousing plays a huge role in business improvement as well as empowers the existing operations and performance.

In terms of LAH Company, the efficient application and implementation of data warehousing can contribute a lot to the performance improvement of the company. Some key and crucial contributions are;

Enhanced Business Intelligence

In the last few months (a year) there was an issue which has been faced by the managers and directors of LAH Company. The issue was that they had very limited information while they were taking theirs about the implementation of new IT practices. So the efficient application of data warehousing can free up managers and directors or other decision makers from limited data and information and they would have all the information, facts and statistics while making any decision(s) (Ahmed, 2004). So if the management and decision makers have all the information available for decisions making then they could make any successful and effective business decision at any time they have to. So, in this case, the efficient application of data warehousing can help LAH in performance improvement.

Enhanced Query and System performance

Data warehousing is the concept which is majorly designed with a strong focus on the retrieval of data for analysis. So in case of the efficient processes of data warehousing, can help in the development of the enhanced and increased system and query performance. As well as the efficient application of data warehousing allows the LAH Company to have fully timely access to the data for decision-making purposes.

Improved Data Quality and Consistency

Enhanced and improved data quality and consistency of data are the key consideration while analyzing the performance of any organization, company or business. Data warehousing and its implication can help LAH to enhance the quality of the available data. This is possible if the LAH has all the data in the data warehouse. So if the company has all the data at hand then they can look at weak areas and can work to eliminate these weaknesses and improve the quality of the data and keep it consistent (Ranjan. & Bhatnagar, 2011).

High Return on Investment

Return on investment refers to the level of increase in the revenues of an investment or level of decrease in the overall expenses of a project or plan in the process of implementation. So if you or the company has all the data available which can be used to determine the expected revenues or level of expenses, then the company or decision-makers would be able to make fully perfect and relevant decisions accordingly. This will help the organization to enhance the level of revenues to the possible highest level and decrease or reduce the expenses level (Anandarajan. Anandarajan. & Srinivasan, 2012). Expenses level can be reduced by the development of strategies which will help LAH to eliminate all extra costs and expenses. In short, the increase in Return on Investment leads to overall business improvement of LAH.

Best Software(s) for Data Mining

The process of data mining cannot be found as a simple while it is a critical and highly technical process which needs several expertise. The concerned person or professional must have full knowledge about the process of data mining and must be used with the most common software for data mining.

Beyond that, there is a number of software available which can be used for the purpose of data mining. But the most useful and highly efficient software which have been found well-working all the time are; Oracle Data Mining Software, Sisense data Mining, SAP Business Object, MS SharePoint, Dundas BI, Board data Mining Software, SPSS Modeler, Sales-force Analytic Cloud and number of other effective software. All of these mentioned software has different features and capabilities because of which they have been used by the companies and businesses of different natures. Like Sisense can be used by the companies or business which analyze their available data from several resources and develops highly applicable and useable reports which they share in their departments for making both small and large scale business decisions. While Oracle Data Mining software is used by high level and large scale companies who serve as the market leaders of their industries. They use this software for prediction of future growths and sales as well as success in the market and industry. The analysis of this software provides information to target fully fine and highly potential customers, target productive segments and markets and identify all selling opportunities in the marketplace (Madhuri, 2019).

Companies Using Data Mining and Data Warehousing Concepts

As found in the entire report and after the analysis of the impact of data mining and data warehousing on businesses, these concepts and their utilization has added and add a lot to the success of businesses. So there is a huge number of companies which use data mining and data warehousing concepts. They use these concepts for the purpose to improve inside management, operations, improve decision making, empower business strategies, gain loyal and higher number of customers and make higher revenues.

Some companies which use these concepts very highly and critically are;

Amazon

Google and CDC

McDonald’s

Netflix

Starbucks

Walmart

Arby’s

Delta

Amazon uses data mining concept through their App which is named as Amazon Price Check Mobile App. The company gathers pricing information and inelegance from its major competitors.

Google uses a new approach which is they use historical data from the CDC and then process it through data mining for decision-making purposes.

MacDonald's use large data analytics approach for the purpose to improve their existing operations and expand the business operation to new regions and markets by knowing the actual facts and figures about the markets or regions (Alexandra, 2017).

Data mining and Data warehousing have a key role in the business success of Netflix. They use these to store data and analyze to know that what makes movies and shows popular as well as they have huge success from utilizing these concepts.

It is enough risky to open a new branch or business block in new or existing place. Starbucks uses data mining and data warehousing concepts very hugely when they go towards any step regarding opening a new store or chain. By having all the information, the company opens new stores while they confidently guarantee an impressive and higher success rate.

Walmart uses data mining for the purpose of generating highly relevant and appropriate search results about their business concerns. They do this through their in-house designed platform which is known as Polaris (Alexandra, 2017).

Arby's is one of the leading fast food chains, which use data mining and data warehousing to help the company to determine the finest targets of their marketing and advertisements. They have very successful past experience regarding what advertisement the most effective, while ensuring the aspects of related costs and expenses (Barbosa, 2019).

Delta (an Airline company) uses these concepts to know the feedbacks of the customers' regarding different issues like flight delays, entertainment, and upgrades (Alexandra, 2017). In this way, they act according to each feedback of the customers especially to negative feedbacks which leads to improvement of their operations and customers’ satisfaction.

Conclusion

After the deep analyses of every aspect of the impact of data mining and data warehousing concepts on the business as well as the impact of efficient application of these concepts on LAH Company and its operations, it has been found that the impact is very fruitful, positive and huge. Furthermore, the impacts of the concepts are very positive which are; improvement of business management, decision making, organizational processes and practices, enhancement of customers’ satisfaction and increase earnings level. In short, data mining and data warehousing can add and have added a lot to the success and business improvement of LAH as well as they have been found effective and productive concepts for the success of any kind of business or company if implemented efficiently.

In addition, some successful companies have been listed which have enjoyed the benefits of using data mining and data warehousing concepts. The companies have been listed as an example for LAH that in these ways, the efficient application of data mining and warehousing can affect (positively) LAH too.

References

Ahmed, S. R. (2004). Applications of data mining in retail business. In International Conference on Information Technology: Coding and Computing, 2004. Proceedings. ITCC 2004. (Vol. 2, pp. 455-459). IEEE.

 Alexandra, T. (2017). Data Mining: How Companies Use Data to Find Useful Patterns and Trends. Investopedia. Retrieved 1 June 2019, from https://www.investopedia.com/terms/d/datamining.asp

Anandarajan, M., Anandarajan, A., & Srinivasan, C. A. (Eds.). (2012). Business intelligence techniques: a perspective from accounting and finance. Springer Science & Business Media.

Barbosa, R. (2019). Importance of Data Mining In Today's Business World - Ricardo & Barbosa. Ricardo & Barbosa. Retrieved 1 June 2019, from https://www.ricardo-barbosa.com/importance-of-data-mining-in-todays-business-world/

Bose, B. (2018). Introduction to Data Warehousing: Definition, Concept, and Techniques. Digital Vidya. Retrieved 1 June 2019, from https://www.digitalvidya.com/blog/introduction-to-data-warehousing/

Business Impact. (2015). The Pros & Cons of Data Warehouses. Businessimpactinc.com. Retrieved 1 June 2019, from http://businessimpactinc.com/blog/the-pros-cons-of-data-warehouses/

Dainis, H. (2019). What is Business Intelligence and Analytics? And What's the Difference? Klipfolio.com. Retrieved 2 June 2019, from https://www.klipfolio.com/blog/difference-between-business-analytics-and-bi

Dawood, M. (2019). Data Warehouse: What It Is, Meaning & Definition | Informatica US. Informatica.com. Retrieved 1 June 2019, from https://www.informatica.com/services-and-training/glossary-of-terms/data-warehousing-definition.html#fbid=MBQ3BdOC83i

Dhingra, S. and Chaudhry, K. (2019). A Study of the Impact of Data Warehousing and Data Mining Implementation on Marketing Effort - ProQuest. Search.proquest.com. Retrieved 1 June 2019, from https://search.proquest.com/openview/e0d0b2045bfbf4a4052840cb88885e3f/1?pq-origsite=gscholar&cbl=2028729

Doug, A. (2019). Data Mining. Laits.utexas.edu. Retrieved 1 June 2019, from https://www.laits.utexas.edu/~anorman/BUS.FOR/course.mat/Alex/

Edureka, J. (2014). Importance and Benefits of Data Warehousing. Retrieved 1 June 2019, from https://www.edureka.co/blog/importance-and-benefits-of-data-warehousing/

Eiad, B. (2013). Data Warehouse Success and Strategic Oriented Business Intelligence: A Theoretical Framework. Arxiv.org. Retrieved 1 June 2019, from https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1307/1307.7328.pdf

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Madhuri, V. (2019). Significance of Data Warehousing and Data Mining in Business Applications. Pdfs.semanticscholar.org. Retrieved 1 June 2019, from https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/e13a/864d38c824cee9bce78b6d0d6750b53ec2c2.pdf

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Impact Of Social Media On New Product

Impact of social media on new product

[Name of the Writer]

[Name of the Institution]

Impact of social media on new product

Introduction

One of the best inventions that have come out of the twenty-first century has notably been the rise of social media. Social media has become a mean for sharing thoughts and perspectives of people regarding a specific thing with the whole community. It has also lead to greater connectivity between people by removing the constraints that used to plague the different forms of communication in times of old. Furthermore, it has also provided tools and a platform for sharing multimedia content and also provided such interfaces that are easy to use and understand. Over the years social media has become a powerful tool for improving the relationship between new products and consumers. Companies have used social media to create strategies regarding customer demands, their likes and their dislikes. Social media has greatly influenced the world in the business sense as well and this effect can be seen in small MNC’s to large corporations. In accordance with different resources and even common observations, it is found that there are different facts and figures that are responsible for directing marketing or consumer behaviour. Under the impact of social media, it is highlighted that the relationship between different brands and the attitude of consumers have changed over the course of time. It is found that companies and brands are using social media as one of the marketing strategies that can help them get more customers.

Moreover, this platform act as a platform that helps an organization to build its marketing portfolio in the long run, taking into account that the same product is used for the justification of the unsatisfactory response about the product. It is asserted that when a consumer buys a product online, feedback is taken which is then posted, it acts as a guideline for the other people such as consumers and audience to know if the product is good or not. There are a lot of people who made their decisions according to the responses that they get when they visit online or media profile of the brand. Moreover, it is highlighted that the same approach is used for knowing the negative approach of the people and consumers towards the products because it is found that there are a lot of people who do not prefer a brand because of the negative reviews. companies use social media to market their product, brands and services directly to their customers.

In a nutshell, social media is playing a central role in guiding and bringing people on the same platform of understanding and analyzing a brand from a different point of view that can guide either a positive or negative attitude towards that product. It is also asserted that social media is given specific significance in the justification of the facts that can help to increases consumer behaviour. The purpose of this piece of writing is to provide a literature review regarding the different literature out there regarding the effect that social media has on a new product.

Review Method

For new product introductions, social media can be powerful and a promising tool. Social media can help in broadening the reach and increase the rate of diffusion of information regarding the new product. This would be done through the facilitation of social interaction and spreading of word of mouth online. This highlights how the relationship between brand and consumer has changed rapidly and dramatically due to the advent of social media. Furthermore, because of social media large companies and corporations that were once thought of having an upper hand regarding marketing and advertising of their products is no longer the case. Keeping this view in mind there are a plethora of scholars who have long pieces of research to define the different ways that social media can impact a new product. Some even relate the success of a new product with the effective use of social media.

Discussion

The different researcher has conducted different platforms of research to know the impact that is caused by social media in the marketing of the new product. According to the research conducted by Baum, (2019), the main point was to analyses the impact of social media on the success of any new product. According to the results that were found by surveys, it was highlighted that social media campaigns can play a central role in guiding behaviour towards a specific product. The prime focus was the advertisement of the brand on social media by displaying the major products and determine what are the possible impact that can be calculated by the use of product on the other audience such as the advertisement of some high-quality binoculars. Research such as by Baum, (2019), determined the reaction of people in terms of product launch. He asserts that the articles and things that are sold by Apple and Samsung have got more value as compared to other brands because these brands are already famous for their products. This publicity has imparted a profile that has facilitated the purchasing of these article in a positive and quicker way, leaving behind a positive approach towards the market.

The research conducted by (Souiden, et, al, 2018) and his fellow colleagues highlighted the analytical approach towards marketing that signifies the role of social media that has changed in the past few years. It is asserted that there have been a lot of changes in the perception of product over time. The data collected and reviewed from 12 articles addressed the changes that have been brought over time, in terms of access to social media because in early times people were not having more access towards the social media so there was a less trend. Today, this trend is emphasized by the ease of approach towards purchasing on social media.

(Harb, et, al., 2019) used social media’s one of the features in order to define how social media has impacted the launching and marketing of the pricy. Although he used surrey techniques, he analyses the event pages that are created of the launching of nay of the product. It is highlighted that much like other marketing trends, one of the trends that are incorporated in that of creating event pages. It is an exegetical and exaggerated approach that is used nowadays in order to approach customers as it is used as a highlight. He determined the response of people by using the different platform of data collected and survey information. Kijpokin also used the same technique but the subject was to define the oversell approach towards the utilization of product as well as the perception of people towards any kind of product taking into account that people find it as one of the most effective ways of getting an insight and developing opinion toward the product.

EGilana used collection of approaches in order to know the subject, taking into account that he used different tools such as meta-analysis and systematic review so that he can get a deep insight into other impact and it was found that there are a direct impact of social media marketing strategies and the way people use social media to know about different products.

Methodology

There are different types of research methods that are used by the researchers in order to evaluate different research topic, taking into account the underlying context. It is asserted that, most the social spectra-oriented topics are followed by qualitative research which is used to analyse the quality of the content and on this basis, decision are made regarding the research topic. In the research of topic regarding the impact of social media on products, qualitative research is used. I used 6 articles and all of them are evaluated by using qualitative sources of information taking into account that it was companies by different types of surveys and systematic reviews that could help to get an insight into the facts and figures that are either in favour or against the central topic of research.

Daniela et al (2018), worked on the same premise and focused their research study on the impact of social media and its campaigns on the success of a new product. The form of the methodology chosen for this topic is in qualitative form. The data is collected using a survey and behavioural data. This survey is conducted on the basis of a social media campaign in progress. This is campaign was focused on promoting and introducing high-end binoculars. In this research, they used the behavioural data and the survey data that they had accumulated in order to analyze the impact social media can have on a new product. The limitation of this research was the lack of restrictions in data.

Authors such as Lipizzi, et al (2015), conducted qualitative research focused on finding out how customers are to react to a certain products launch. The data for this research was taken from twitter and generally focused on the early reactions consumers had regarding two new products sold by Apple and Samsung. The data was more specifically collected by the streams that were generated on twitter around the seventy two hour window encapsulating both product launches. Furthermore, the conversational analysis of the twitter streams by forming maps. These maps were further interpreted by the use of semantic and topological metrics in order to compare the different responses gathered in twitter feeds. The limitation of this research was lack of content centered information.

According to (Souiden, et, al, 2018) the idea of the impact of social media on product and services is determined by using qualitative research. In this research, information was collected by using 12 articles, theta was selected after several rounds of information. He used this method to get a deeper insight into the impact that is caused by social media in the product. The choice of articles is highly dependent on factors such as time and place that has played a direct role in maintaining the authenticity of research. It is found that the author limited his research to the places such as Marrakech and Morocco and the time was limited to April 2017. Moreover, the topics of the article were also oriented to the topic because he aimed at a highly content-oriented choice of articles and contents. The limitation of this research was the quantitative representation of data that would have added to the quality of research.

(Harb, et, al., 2019) and his colleagues conducted a research in order to understand that social media as a tool of marketing as a significant event, in order to conduct this research, the approach utilized was quantitative research method taking into account that it was facilitated by the used of online surveys. These questionnaires were distributed ion Qualtrics and the research was based on TPB. The research was considered by the followers of events pages that are created on Instagram, Facebook and twitter. The limitation of this research was the quantitative representation of data that would have added to the quality of research.

Kijpokin conducted research in terms of professional and business applications adhering to the social media platform. This research was conducted by using qualitative research taking into account that the centre of research was directed to defined and pinout the relationship that exist between digital age and the promotion of product. He used this research without any limitation to content or time frame because it was a qualitative research taking into account that diverse opinion and diverse sources of information was used to find out positive and adequate results that can help to get a deep insight into the topic and the other relevant features. The only limitation in this research was the lack of any restriction or constraint in research.

(Gilania, et, al., 2019) conducted research in order to find out the impact of social media on decision making. In accordance with the readers, he used qualitative research that was guided by using bibliometric analysis methods along with the review of papers that were published between 2008 till 2019. This research was highly selective in its content taking into account that there were about 1159 articles. He chooses only 733 articles in total and used them to proceed with the systematic review and meta-analysis taking into account the identification of the role of social media. Moreover, this research also included survey sections in which different people were surveyed in terms of the collaboration that exist between countries. This collaboration was centred on the role of social media and the aspects that have brought countries as well as the products that are either popularized and de-popularized by the use of social media. It would not be wrong to say that the researchers conducted research by using qualitative approach taking into account that it is one of the most used approach for the analyses of research topics in the social spectrum. There is no apparent limitation in this research.

Conclusion

Taking a look at the above the discussion, it could be concluded that with the advancement of time, technology is influencing all the fields of life. At present, social media is the latest form of the technology that revolutionized all the areas of life i.e. business and communication etc. considering the research of the various experts, it has been witnessed that there are two kinds of impacts that social media cast on the product. There are some researchers who claim that social media is an important source through which targeted audience could be approached easily. it has been seen that social media helps in reaching a targeted population of every kind. One of the most obvious positive point of social media in the marketing of a new product is that it is one of the fastest and cheapest sources of introducing new products in the market.

People are more active on social sites than another media source. There are various ideas that marketing managers could use for introducing a new product in the market. For each kind of audience, market managers could find different sites. Social media helps in making a product popular if it is benefitting people. Social media has been a trendsetter as well and help people so that they could easily search a product and information related to it. On the other, there are some analysts who believe that there are drastic negative impacts of social media on the product marketing, as on social sites it becomes easy for people to share their view regarding a product. This fact cannot be denied that most of the people make up their mind about a product by taking a look at the reviews being given on social sites. People could share their reviews easily that may cast negative impacts on the popularity of new products.

References

Baum, D., Spann, M., Füller, J., & Thürridl, C. (2019). The impact of social media campaigns on the success of new product introductions. Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, 50, 289-297 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0969698918305496

Gilani, E., Salimi, D., Jouyandeh, M., Tavasoli, K., & Wong, W. (2019). A trend study on the impact of social media on decision making. International Journal of Data and Network Science, 3(3), 201-222.http://growingscience.com/beta/ijds/3088-a-trend-study-on-the-impact-of-social-media-in-decision-making.html

Harb, A. A., Fowler, D., Chang, H. J., Blum, S. C., & Alakaleek, W. (2019). Social media as a marketing tool for events. Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Technology, 10(1), 28-44.

https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/JHTT-03-2017-0027/full/html

Kijpokin Kasemsap, K. (2019). Professional and business applications of social media platforms. In Social Entrepreneurship: Concepts, Methodologies, Tools, and Applications (pp. 824-847). IGI Global.https://www.igi-global.com/chapter/professional-and-business-applications-of-social-media-platforms/224786

Lipizzi, C., Iandoli, L., & Marquez, J. E. R. (2015). Extracting and evaluating conversational patterns in social media: A socio-semantic analysis of customers’ reactions to the launch of new products using Twitter streams. International Journal of Information Management, 35(4), 490-503. https://s3.amazonaws.com/academia.edu.documents/40642804/paper_apple.pdf?response-content-disposition=inline%3B%20filename%3DExtracting_and_evaluating_conversational.pdf&X-Amz-Algorithm=AWS4-HMAC-SHA256&X-Amz-Credential=AKIAIWOWYYGZ2Y53UL3A%2F20190825%2Fus-east-1%2Fs3%2Faws4_request&X-Amz-Date=20190825T181332Z&X-Amz-Expires=3600&X-Amz-SignedHeaders=host&X-Amz-Signature=98e9a80a1aa22cf7c5d260d27aa0eb165d19731bdbf8c9641bb33908032127d3

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Impact Of Social Media On People's Mental Health And Well-being

Impact of social media on people's mental health and well-being

[Name of the Writer]

[Name of the Institution]

Impact of social media on people's mental health and well-being

Introduction

Social media is a relatively new medium that interacts with the wellbeing and mental health of people. Over the course of the past 10 years, it is obarrrbserved that social media has brought several changes, taking into account that it is embedded in the daily life of people. Orben, et al. (2019) highlights that the greatest ratio of social media users are 16 to 22 years old. Observation by Berryman, et al., (2018) reveals that social media has changed our lives dramatically, ranging from access to general information and finding people to choose different services, products and other information avenues. Social media has facilitated access to diverse information. It would not be wrong to say that individuals and business have numerous options to promote services and products by reaching a wider audience and paving the way for targeting. According to Erfan, et al. (2018), there are a lot of applications that can assist in everyday task by providing both advice and support along with teaching new skills that can widen the horizon of thoughts. There are many other positive aspects of social media that can promote wellbeing. It includes facilitating self-expression and giving a voice that can connect an individual to people and resources out there in the world. O’Reily, et al. (2018), asserted that social media has imparted motivation, opportunities and inspiration for the people. Adhering to double-sided impacts of every phenomenon, there are some negative aspects of social media as well. According to Bell, et, al., (2015), social media has added false information, oversharing, cyberbullying and trolls that have doomed society to destruction. Moreover, there are increased cases of poor sleep, anxiety and depression in people along with an increased rate of addiction.

Review Method

In order to collect relative information, survey of articles was conducted by using the ProQuest Database. The search terms for survey of articles were, “social media”, “mental health” and wellbeing. The results were limited to “articles”, “sociology”, “psychology” and reviews only taking into account that only those articles were used that were published between 2019 to 2014. After that, the abstracts of the resulting matches, “83” were read and they were categorized in terms of research method and subject. Among the selected articles, 10 were rejected because they were not directly related to the topic. After analyzing the relevancy of content 6 articles were chosen that are used as representative of the topic.

Discussion

According to the research conducted by O’Reilly, et, al., (2018), it is asserted that social networking sites have gained significant popularity in the past few years where there is a direct relationship between mental health problems and web-based platforms. This study investigated this relationship by conducting research on the students of middle and high school living in Ottawa Canada. The data was collected by using 753 students in which 55% were female up to 14 years rest were above 14 years, the information was derived from Ontario Student Drug Use and Health Survey. The research used multinomial logistic regression analysis of determining the association. The results reveal that about 54.3% of students were using social networking sites for more than 2 hours each day while only 20% said that they don’t use it at all. The percentile of 54.3% of students were also reported to have unmet needs of mental health support. This study clearly asserts the negative impact of social media on human wellbeing. Although it was very informative research, still there are some gaps that are found such as this research only included female participants. The research would have been more informative if both male and female participants would be included because it is assumed that girls have a more self-oriented approach, they spend a lot of time at home so it can be one of the causes that they are found to be using more apps as compared to the male population. O’Reilly, et, al., (2018) has conducted research by treating social media and social and mental wellbeing as a variable, where one is affecting others. The comparative analysis has provided a greater insight into the facts and figures that are associated with this research. This research can be used in the long run because of its effective methodology, however, the inappropriate sample is the only gap that has questioned the validity and universality of research.

Orben, et, al., (2019) studied the association between digital use and adolescent wellbeing by using empirical evidence that was based on a secondary analysis of the information that was retrieved from large scale social datasets. In this research, data was retrieved from the Centre for Disease Control and Prevention Monitoring the Future and, UK data service. The collected data was analyzed by using correlational analysis. As there was a greater risk of methodological challenges so specification curve analysis was used to repress the probability of errors. After this research, it was concluded that the association between technological use, especially social media is negative but it is small, taking into account that the variation in well-being was found to be 0.4% only. Orben, et, al., (2019) conducted highly informative research but this research has no association with different features of research such as time limit such as that data was chosen randomly and the approach towards utilization of data changes with feasibility, accessibility and interest that is continuously reinforced. Orben, et, al., (2019) has conducted empirical evidence as an approach to define the relationship between the subjects. This research is errored or misfit in the context of sampling because using some defined sample such as information retrieved from CDCPM comprises of the varied population but restricting population and the past researchers to some time span would have added to the research. However, this research presents both qualitative and quantitative data that improve the effectiveness of research and it the best guide to understanding the influence of social media. It is asserted that a comparison of qualitative and quantitate data sources assert that qualitative data is most effective and authentic leaving behind ethical consideration that is equally found in two methods. A comparison infers that the researcher has made understanding easier by using two approaches simultaneously.

Berryman, et, al., (2018), conducted a research to find a relationship between use of social media and mental and social wellbeing of people that was proceeded by conducting a correlational study that examined 476 adults taking into account the time that was spent on social media. In accordance with the past studies, it was assumed that social media use is linked with negative health outcomes such as loneliness suicidal thoughts and decreased empathy. As a result of the correlational study, it was indicated that the use of social media is not actually predictive of causing any kind of mental illness however, it can cause and provoke particular negative behaviour that can affect social wellbeing. Moreover, it is asserted that vague booking was predictive of provoking suicidal thoughts and ideation. It suggests that this particular behaviour is actually a warning sign of some complex issues in the long run. In a nutshell, the overall results of the study revealed that the concerned of social media use can be misplaced. Research by Berryman, et, al., (2018) is more content-oriented but this research is limited by variable because the variable may undergo changes under the impact of vague booking. The result of his research is somehow complex because there are numerous themes that are indicated but there is no actual value that could defend the theme. Research by, Berryman, et, al., (2018) is appreciable in the context of sampling and the population that is used to conduct research. He used a correlational study that is one of the effective and informative approach to collect data. Moreover, he used correlation analysis that is authentic and appreciable.

Erfani, et, al., (2018) conducted research to investigate the use of social networking sites and social media websites. He analyzed that social media sites are becoming one of the major parts of the lives of people, taking into account that it is one of the issues to be discussed and investigated. He conducted a systematic review in order to set the foundation of groundwork meant for understanding the relationship between the users of the social networking sites and the psychological and sociological impact that is left on users. He reviewed the articles published between 2003 to 2016 and segregated them in terms of the context of abstracts. After an exegetical analysis, it was revealed that using Social Networking Sites casts both positive and negative impact on user’s social life as well as psychology adhering to the stance of “well-being”. Research by Erfani, et, al., (2018) is one of the efficient approach to analyze the relationship between social media and social and wellbeing of people. However, this research is limited by the equal support to two ideologies. A systematic approach can be defined by both qualitative and quantitative data so researcher could have supported his research with some quantitative data. Research by Erfani, et, al., (2018) is an informative source, that can give critical insight into the understanding of the topic, taking into account that this research stands all the requirements of good research, leaving behind representation of data.

Bell, et, al., (2015) conducted research to analyze the impact of social media on mental health and social wellbeing of adolescents. He used empirical research techniques in order to proceed with the research taking into account the impact that social media is causing on people. The central question was to defend how adolescents are perceiving social media especially as a resource that can help to gain knowledge. adhering to the social media and other sociological discourses, focus groups were used. The research included six focus groups that were used for the time period of about three months, including 54 adolescents who were from 11 to 18 years old. The selected population was recruited from the school in Leicester and London. After using thematic analysis, it was suggested that researchers find social media as a threat to their social and mental wellbeing. The research concluded in three different themes, anxiety disorders, a platform of cyberbullying and social media as an agent of promoting addiction. Although Bell, et, al., (2015) has imparted effective and thought-provoking research to demonstrate the relationship between social media and wellbeing but this research is limited by the multiplicity of themes. Adhering to a single theme and justifying it with a staunch approach could have resulted in a positive understanding and productive approach. Research by Bell, et, al., (2015) is another informative research that satisfies all the requirements of good research. However, this research could have been improved by revealing quantitative results, as well as adhering to a single theme because the research is guided more by prediction rather than justifications.

Verduyn, et, al., (2018) conducted research to know if social media is enhancing or diminishing the social and mental wellbeing of people or not. This research was guided by qualitative analysis that revealed that there is a negative relationship between the use of social media websites and the wellbeing of the one who is using it. However, it was also found that there is a positive relationship between the user and the social media websites taking into account that the positive relationship was more robust than negative relationship. The study ended by adhering to policy implications as both negative and positive aspects were found as a result of research. The research by Verduyn, et, al., (2018) is both, encouraging and informative but it is limited by time constraints and the insufficient selected population. In fact, this research lacked adequate sampling because of lack of selected population. The research conducted by Verduyn, (2018) is also effective and well-evaluated but there are some points to consider such as there is no well-justified fact or figure that supports some authenticity of figure, either in methodology nor in the result. However, this research asserts future research requirement that is one of the positive impacts because guiding future research facilitate research.

Methods

There are different methods of conducting research. The most frequently used methods are either qualitative and quantitative. Qualitative research deals with the analysis of data by adhering to a qualitative approach while the quantitative approach is the quantitative representation of data that is collected and processed. Review of literature and data analysis revealed that different researcher used different methods for processing data. Berryman, et, al., (2018) used regression analysis as a method for analyzing data, it is one of the quantitative approaches that use statistical data and quantification of data. This analysis is made by finding a relationship between different variables, defining them as dependent or independent. In contrast, Orben, et, al., (2019) and Berryman, et, al., (2018) used correlation analysis in order to analyze collected data, it is also one of the quantitative methods of data evaluation. this method uses statistical evaluation to find a relationship between variables. It is asserted that the only difference between two methods is regression analysis that indicates the changes casted on one of the variables while correlation analysis finds the synchronization of two variables.

Erfani, et, al., (2018) used a systematic review to analyze the relationship between social media and its impact on the life of people. It is proceeded by the collection of secondary data that is critically appraised by research studies. This method can be presented by both qualitative and quantitative ways. He used a qualitative approach to show the findings. Bell, et, al., (2015) and Verduyn, et, al., (2018) conducted qualitative research to find the relationship between social media websites and the social wellbeing and psychology of people. However, the most significant point is, this research is more confined to aspects such as time limit and content. Moreover, it is asserted that the research of Verduyn, et, al., (2018) ended on both positive and negative impact while Bell, et, al., (2015)'s research led him to a single justification only.

Conclusion

After an exegetical analysis of past researches, method and revealed results, it is asserted that social media influences social and psychological wellbeing. Each of the researchers has given different insight by highlighting different dimensions. Although there are some gaps and limitations, still each of the researches has played a central role in guiding research towards a strong conclusion that although it is understood that social media has both positive and negative impact on mental health and social wellbeing, still there are a lot of dimensions and areas of discussion to be considered as outcome. In future, a lot of research needs to be conducted in defining the difference of psychological impact of social media on males and females. Moreover, there have been different ethical and moral dilemmas that have been found as a result of great screen time. As the existence of both positive and negative impact is proved, a lot of research is required to analyze the facts and figures in terms of impact such as societal dimensions, how they are affected or benefited and how human psychology is enlightened or changed under the impression of social media. In a nutshell, an insight into the sub-features and minor impacts are required that can become major in the long run.

References

Bell, V., Bishop, D. V., & Przybylski, A. K. (2015). The debate over digital technology and young people.

Berryman, C., Ferguson, C. J., & Negy, C. (2018). Social media use and mental health among young adults. Psychiatric quarterly, 89(2), 307-314.

Erfani, S. S., & Abedin, B. (2018). Impacts of the use of social network sites on users' psychological well‐being: A systematic review. Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology, 69(7), 900-912.

O’Reilly, M., Dogra, N., Whiteman, N., Hughes, J., Eruyar, S., & Reilly, P. (2018). Is social media bad for mental health and wellbeing? Exploring the perspectives of adolescents. Clinical child psychology and psychiatry, 23(4), 601-613.

Orben, A., & Przybylski, A. K. (2019). The association between adolescent well-being and digital technology use. Nature Human Behaviour, 3(2), 173.

Verduyn, P., Ybarra, O., Résibois, M., Jonides, J., & Kross, E. (2017). Do social network sites enhance or undermine subjective well‐being? A critical review. Social Issues and Policy Review, 11(1), 274-302.

Implementation Strategies

Information System Deployment

[Name of the Writer]

[Name of the Institution]

Information System Deployment

Competitive Advantage for Business

One of the key competitive advantages that the Information system is going to give is that it is going to aid the requirements that are needed to carry out the data intelligence project that organization intends to work upon. The idea on their part is to make sure that better insights about the industry are developed and by developing the information system, they have a competitive advantage in a sense that they have more key customer insight (Porter & Millar, 2018). The other thing that it tends to do in the broader spectrum is that it helps the organization to understand the strategic spectrum they intend to work with at the given point of time (Delone & McLean, 2016). This strategic spectrum then in turn is the strategic advantage that the organization can make use of. The idea is to make sure that the information interface that has been developed can be used to make sure that the better response mechanism can be setup to ensure coordination at the greater level (Delone & McLean, 2016). The other thing that it is going to provide is the enhanced security that they are going to be getting in their web interface that is another major advantage that it can use against some of the other rivals that are part of the industry (Delone & McLean, 2016).

Information System and Strategic Importance

The key thing that has to be kept in mind is that how the functionality of the organization is going to change with the passage of time (Delone & McLean, 2016). With the information overload and many back-end data projects being run by the management, there is a need to ensure that the information system should be robust enough to take care of the sensibilities of the business specially when it moves towards the bigger data integration. Keeping in mind this fact, and the competitive advantage that it is going to be giving to the organization, it is fair to assume that the effort is needed. The other thing that the information system is going to be doing is that it would ensure better data transition that could also work to the advantage of the organization. Thus, there are many benefits that the organization might get if they want to opt for the new information system.

New Product Offering and Information System

Whenever any new product is going to be introduced, the first thing that has to be done is to make sure that the new product is designed keeping in mind the sensibility of the target market at the given point of time (Delone & McLean, 2016). The other thing that is very important when the product development is carried out is to make sure that the reference discipline system is needed to be setup to make sure that the particulars of the product are being setup in an appropriate manner (Delone & McLean, 2016). The idea is to ensure that with the presence of the better information system, it is going to be ensured that the long-term strategic advantages that the organization intend to achieve (Delone & McLean, 2016). The problem with having an incomprehensive information system is that it is not going to give new insight about the effectiveness of the new initiative (Delone & McLean, 2016). The ideal thing that has to be done in this regard is to make sure that the correspondence among all the stakeholders is carried out so that the completely information is available about the product, if the information is not setup appropriately, it is going to go a long way towards providing inconclusive information with regards to the success prospect of the product at the given point of time (Delone & McLean, 2016). The quality assurance and management could also be done in a much better manner with the presence of such a system and thus (Delone & McLean, 2016). The other thing that is critical to the success of any information system is to eventually make sure that how the product deployment can be aided with the help of the better information augmentation (Delone & McLean, 2016). The information augmentation is such that it allows the organization to make sure that the clear perspective can be developed in this regard (Delone & McLean, 2016). The other thing that it is going to do is to make sure that the element of integration among all the platforms is going to be taken care off in the appropriate manner (Delone & McLean, 2016).

Capabilities of the New Information System and Its eventual Integration

There are various perspectives whether the new initiatives and the shadow projects that are carried out by the organization should be integrated with the new setup (Delone & McLean, 2016). The idea is that the running of the new projects must work around independently to ensure better integration at all the levels (Porter & Millar, 2018). The rationale might be there not really halting the running projects but there is a need to make sure that the long-term perspective is needed to be kept in mind (Delone & McLean, 2016). When the new information system is going to be deployed, the whole system would eventually shift at that new information centre. When that happens, there are going to be serous compatibility issues (Ragowsky et al, 2016) . Whenever there is going to be the deputation of the new information system, there is a likelihood that the new system is going to have its fair share of interfaces and the computability becomes one of the biggest problems when you are faced with such situation (Ragowsky et al, 2016). Thus, it is not advised to opt for the new development and shadow projects using the older information systems and instead effort must be made to ensure that the integration should be used (Porter & Millar, 2018). The good thing is that the integration has become much easier these days in the presence of the new solutions (Kia et al, 2017). The newer solutions that are quite common these days tend to ensure that the better data management is being done as well as handling the massive data load that is quite common and is not possible in some of the earlier information systems (Delone & McLean, 2016). The good thing is that the integration has become much easier these days in the presence of the new solutions (Kia et al, 2017). The newer solutions that are quite common these days tend to ensure that the better data management is being done as well as handling the massive data load that is quite common and is not possible in some of the earlier information systems (Delone & McLean, 2016). Thus, there are many reasons that the argument can be made that the integration has to be made for the new possible backdrop solutions that are used at the end of the organizations. One thing that can be done for the time being is to make sure that the some of the flagship protocols and the regular processes are needed to be run on the parallel system to make sure that the better reflection is achieved in this regard (Delone & McLean, 2016).

References

Delone, W. H., & McLean, E. R. (2016). The DeLone and McLean model of information systems success: a ten-year update. Journal of management information systems, 19(4), 9-30.

Kia, M., Shayan, E., & Ghotb, F. (2017). The importance of information technology in port terminal operations. International Journal of Physical Distribution & Logistics Management, 30(3/4), 331-344.

Porter, M. E., & Millar, V. E. (2018). How information gives you competitive advantage.

Ragowsky, A., Ahituv, N., & Neumann, S. (2016). Identifying the value and importance of an information system application. Information & Management, 31(2), 89-102.

Implementing Network And Personnel Security Measures

James Grey

Essay

Implementing network and security measures

Introduction

Securing your network requires continuous work and close attention to detail. A security service may consist of a typical set of services:

The first direction is legal protection of entrepreneurial activity, which is a legally competent registration of duties, rights and conditions for doing business (property rights to a patent, license, property, maintaining accounting documents, registration documents, agreements, leases, charters and other documents). The implementation and implementation of this protection for the safety of business is obvious, since the regulatory framework in these conditions is unstable and requires some legal protection (Denning, D. E. R. (1999).

The second direction is the physical security of entrepreneurs. In this case, not only entrepreneurs, but also the resources they use — material, financial, and information — can be participants or business entities. Intellectual resource security is also included in this category. These are service personnel, employees of the enterprise, shareholders.

The third area is information and commercial security, which is the protection of the information resources of an entrepreneur and his intellectual property.

The fourth area is the safety and security of personnel and people working at the enterprise. This is compliance with safety, labor protections, the environment, sanitation, business relationships, personal safety of employees. Based on this information, it can be concluded that a universal or ideal method of protection does not exist today, although the need for quality security is obvious, and in some cases is critically necessary.

Problem statement

The paper discusses the problematic issues of applying security measures in relation to participants within the local government facility. This study addresses the problematic issues of applying security measures to participants in cyber security.

Management plan

“Top management should establish a clear policy direction in line with business objectives and demonstrate support and commitment to information security through the development and support of an information security policy within the organization”. If necessary, you should provide for a contact person dealing with information security issues within the organization, which interested employees can contact.

Measure and means of control and management

“The information security policy should be approved by management, published and brought to the attention of all employees of the organization and relevant third-party organizations”.

Risk Management

The risk assessment process consists of the following steps:1. Security Risk Assessment

Safety requirements are determined using a systematic risk assessment. The costs of measures and means of control and management should be commensurate with the possible damage to the business as a result of the refusal to provide security.

a) Inventory and categorization of communication network resources:

1) The inventory involves the compilation of a list of all resources (assets) requiring protection (information, software, hardware and service);

2) Categorization consists in assigning to each resource a qualitative or quantitative parameter of its importance in terms of its impact on the overall functioning of the communication network;

b) Identification of the main threats;

c) Identification of vulnerabilities.

d) Analysis of the possible impacts of threats during the implementation of vulnerabilities in network resources, calculation of the probability of these impacts and the risk of damage to the network, analysis of existing security measures;

e) Determination of additional (recommended) security measures that can counteract possible impacts;

e) Documentation of the results.                                                     Main security categories

Each major security category includes:

a) The goal of management, which formulates what, should be achieved;

b) More detailed information is provided to support the implementation of measures and means of control and management and achieve the management goal.

c) Additional information is provided that may be considered, such as legal issues and references to other standards

Physical activity

The following methods are used to ensure information security:

1) Obstacle. The method is the use of physical force in order to protect information from criminal acts by intruders by banning access to information media and equipment.

2) Access control - a method that is based on the use of regulatory resources of an automated system that prevents access to information media. Access control is carried out using functions such as:

a)      Identification of the identity of the user, working personnel and information resource systems by such measures as the assignment of a personal identifier to each user and object;

b)      Authentication, which establishes the affiliation of a subject or object to the identifier declared by him;

c)      Checking the compliance of authorities, which consists in establishing the exact time of day, day of the week and resources for carrying out the procedures scheduled by the regulation;

d)     Access to carry out work established by the regulations and create the necessary conditions for their implementation;

e)      Registration in the form of written recording of access to protective resources;

f)       Responding to an attempt of unauthorized actions in the form of a noise alarm, shutdown, refusal of a request and a delay in work

3) Regulation - a method of information protection in which access to the storage and transmission of data in case of an unauthorized request is minimized.

4) Coercion is a method that forces users to access certain information when accessing sensitive information. Violation of the established protocol leads to penalties, administrative and criminal liability.

Physical security vendors

1. Physical means of protection are used as external security for monitoring the territory of the facility and protecting the automated information system in the form of special devices. Along with conventional mechanical systems, for the operation of which human participation is required electronic fully automated physical protection systems are being introduced in parallel. Using an electronic system, territorial protection of an object is carried out, access control, security of premises, surveillance, fire safety, and signaling devices are organized Bishop, M. (2003).

2. The most elementary electronic protection system consists of sensors whose signals are processed by microprocessors, electronic keys, biometric devices for identifying people and other intelligent systems. The protection of equipment included in the general automated information security system and portable devices (magnetic tapes or flash drives) is carried out using such mechanisms as:

a)      Lock systems (mechanical, radio-controlled, code, with microprocessor), which are installed on safes, doors, shutters, system units and other devices;

b)      Microswitches with which the opening and closing of windows and doors is fixed;

c)      Inertial sensors, which are used in the power supply network, telephone wires, telecommunication antennas;

d)     Stickers made of special foil are glued to devices, documents, system units, nodes, which serves as protection against removal from the territory of the organization or premises. Any attempt to transfer documents or devices with a protective stickers through the access devices will be alerted.

e)      Metal cabinets and special safes, which are used to install individual devices of the information automated system - file servers, printers and portable information carriers.

Safety of human resources

It is  a set of measures aimed at preventing and eliminating threats and risks, as well as negative economic aspects for the the organization, related to the work and behavior of the staff, it's intellectual potential, socio-psychological component, maintaining the health and dignity of the individual. It is clear that the security of human resources is central to other elements of the organization’s security system, since personnel ensure the functioning of all business processes.

All areas of personnel work (search, selection, reception, adaptation, development, staff motivation, etc.) are more or less connected with ensuring safety. And each decision made by the HR manager either enhances or weakens the security of the organization as a whole.

The human resources security policy includes the following technologies.

1. Management of information about employees (information management of personnel). A modern, especially large organization is impossible without establishing systematic dissemination of information using computer systems and technologies. At the same time, the task of personnel management is to receive in the optimal volume and disseminate the necessary information.

2. Legal regulation of ensuring the safety of human resources, ensuring the safety of personnel, which is based on the use of labor legislation and organizational norms, usually fixed in regulatory documents in the field of ensuring labor safety and life.

3. Establishing partnerships and cooperation with trade unions, councils of labor collectives and other organizations affecting personnel.

This implies both monitoring the situation at workplaces and taking into account individual requests and wishes of workers related to their state of health, for example, transferring to easier work or part-time for the period of final labor adaptation after an illness.

Flow diagram

Government agency network

Firewall

Internet

Internet router

Remote users

II

 The remote users are connected to government agencies through different internet security measures.

Government agency network

Firewall

Internet

Internet router

Remote users

II

 In this second diagram show that the patch of network devices travel beck to the remote users

Best practices in Cyber security

Cyber security is the protection of data that is located in electronic form and it is also related to determining the most important data, where they are located, and what technologies should be used to protect them. We all live in a world that is connected by a network and information technologies, from internet banking to the state infrastructure and that is why cyber security is a necessity. Planners and strategists are concerned about cyber attacks which are on the rise and their effects are global in nature. Hacker’s attacks are capable to undermine the world economy or inflict huge damage to the image of a country.

Ethical concern

 The Internet is increasingly entering the life of modern society and brings many benefits, but, on the other hand, it opens up the possibility for cybercriminals to spread malicious content and commit attacks on individuals, organizations and even the government. The cross-border nature of the Internet allows criminals, while in any place where there is a connection; to hit any unprotected sections of networks (Von Solms, R., & Van Niekerk, J. (2013). That is why ITU is taking steps to find a global solution that would help to combat this global threat. Military hackers have the right to broadcast some computer code to the network of another country. With its help you can track the quality of communication.

In one particular case, you will have to make a special emphasis (but in no way at the expense of protecting other components of the IT system), say, on protecting the website, in another - on protecting the workstation park, and somewhere will have to allocate additional funds for the creation of a fault-tolerant data store. In the end, it all depends on which type of cyber threat is the most dangerous for this particular company.

Conclusion

It is not easy to answer the question of how much the security of the critical infrastructure facilities are adequate at the moment because of unknown information or techniques that can be used by cybercriminals, and therefore cannot be 100% safe. What can be improved is protection against known attacks, for the prevention of which it is necessary to apply a number of effective measures:

Recommendations

a)      Checking systems for vulnerabilities, especially those systems where security holes have already been fixed and they have been known for some time.

b)      Adequately monitor the networks used to monitor critical infrastructure objects and, if necessary, completely isolate them from external connections, which will detect external attacks and prevent access to systems controlled from the internal network.

c)      Control of removable devices, which is important in any infrastructure, not only because they are the direction of such attacks, as in the case of Stuxnet.

d)     After having discussed the various aspects of Cyber Warfare and threat perception, the following recommendations, are offered.

References

Denning, D. E. R. (1999). Information warfare and security (Vol. 4). Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.

Bishop, M. (2003). What is computer security?. IEEE Security & Privacy, 1(1), 67-69.

Tipton, H. F., & Nozaki, M. K. (2007). Information security management handbook. CRC press.

Von Solms, R., & Van Niekerk, J. (2013). From information security to cyber security. computers & security, 38, 97-102.

Teixeira, A., Amin, S., Sandberg, H., Johansson, K. H., & Sastry, S. S. (2010, December). Cyber security analysis of state estimators in electric power systems. In 49th IEEE conference on decision and control (CDC) (pp. 5991-5998). IEEE.

Implementing Risk Management Strategies

Implementing Risk Management Strategies

[Author’s name]

[Institute’s name]

Implementing Risk Management Strategies

Selection of the Policy Implementation Document

           Appropriate consideration of the broad idea of risk management is necessary to timely identify all the potential risks. This form of consideration also helps to adopt suitable strategies to avoid different forms of risks. The approach of DHS Risk Management Fundamentals is selected to ensure correct implementation of different risk management strategies. It is important to consider that there are different available strategies that can be used to effectively enforce the idea of risk management in an organizational setting. The role of main stakeholders is important to select the most accurate practical strategy according to the requirements of the situation (HHS, 2007). The broad idea of DHS has multiple strategies which are associated with the application of risk management. Homeland security risk management doctrine comprises of different and crucial risk management fundamentals. The idea of homeland security risk is eventually linked with the identification of different forms of internal and external risks that exist. It is vital to consider that the comprehensive approach of homeland security risk management is closely associated with different tenets and principles. 

Brief Overview of the Context of the Company

           Adoption of the risk management approach is essential in the context of Red Clay Renovations Company. This practical prospect is essential to correctly deal with the issue of security risk (Nist, 2011). The formal risk management structure of the company needs to be properly aligned with the specific principles of risk management set by the DHS Risk Management Fundamentals. Proper integration of the IT security program of the company and basic principles of the risk management is necessary. 

The Approach of DHS Risk Management Fundamentals

           The successful policy implementation in case of DHS risk management fundamentals requires consideration of specific risk management strategies within an organizational context. In case of DHS risk management fundamentals, application of the specific business procedure is important. It is crucial for the management of the company to actively focus on the requirements of proper training and doctrine to identify potential risk. This form of consideration is also reflected as the establishment of a risk management strategy. The domain of DHS risk management fundamentals offers the utilization of single risk management procedure across all the different corporate operations. It is essential to examine how the adoption of a single risk management approach can be beneficial for successfully acquiring the objectives of risk management. 

           The idea of risk management in the form of homeland security management supports the consideration of one process that needs to be aligned with other documented procedures. The combination of these processes can be characterized as risk management frameworks and specific standards. Defining the context of the risk management approach is important to determine the entire spectrum of risk management security decision. The process of risk management involves various integrated steps recognized as strategic planning, standards and proper doctrine development (DHS, 2011). It is noteworthy to mention that the consideration of the risk management process eventually supports the idea of decision making concerning the aspects of proper training and doctrine. Therefore, every proposal in the form of a risk management process consists of some of the advantages and disadvantages. Identification of both these aspects is essential to ensure proper application of the process according to the actual requirements of the situation. The major disadvantage of applying a single risk security method across all the business operations is that it involves a variety of risks that can negatively influence the prospect of decision-making. The core advantage of applying a single risk management process is that it comprises of the approach of risk management cycle that assures detailed consideration of all the aligned aspects. 

References

ADDIN ZOTERO_BIBL {"uncited":[],"omitted":[],"custom":[]} CSL_BIBLIOGRAPHY DHS. (2011). Risk Management Fundamentals. Retrieved from:

https://www.dhs.gov/xlibrary/assets/rma-risk-management-fundamentals.pdf

HHS. (2007). 6 Basics of Risk Analysis and Risk Management. Retrieved from:

https://www.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/ocr/privacy/hipaa/administrative/securityrule/riskassessment.pdf

Nist. (2011). Managing Infomration Security Risk Organization, Mission, and Information System View. Retrieved from:

https://nvlpubs.nist.gov/nistpubs/Legacy/SP/nistspecialpublication800-39.pdf

Incident Report

Incident Report

Your Name

Institution

Executive Summary

Purpose of this paper is to provide Cyber Incident Report (CIR) for major media and entertainment company. Company has initiated a Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) policy which results in many security incidents. The BYOD policy of the company has increased the vulnerability of the company's network infrastructure. This paper will also provide the recommendation and new security policy which will ensure the overall safety of the company's network. Using a guideline by National Institute of Standard and Technology (NIST) for securing a Wide Area Network is used for designing wireless and BYOD security plan. In wireless and BYOD security plan, the standard configuration of each component of the company's WLAN network will be used. In addition to standardized configuration, the cyber kill chain framework is analyzed while designing the network security plan for the company. Next, a mechanism is designed to track the location of the company's assets. Layered security will be installed in the company's network infrastructure to slow down the attacker's penetration. MAC spoofing is a big threat as it is used by most individual who wants to damage the company. Sequence number analysis can be used to identify MAC spoofing or identity theft. The sequence number field of 802.11 frame header has a number field of 12 bits CITATION Heg16 \l 1033 (Hegde, 2016).

Company has an option of installing both wired and wireless network, both have their pros and cons. A wireless network gives ease of mobility and provides compatibility with the latest devices. A wired connection has no wireless access point, it difficult for an intruder to penetrate the system. The company's wireless network can be easily configured to shared keys using the WPA PSK protocol which offers 256 characters generated key for the access points. The company's network infrastructure can be easily made FIPS-1040-2 compliant, by using the WPA2 security protocol. The company's wireless traffic will be monitored by introducing intelligent monitoring of the system. intelligent monitoring will ensure the overall safety of the company's wireless network.

Cyber Security Incident Report

Cybersecurity incident report used to identify security threats with the network of the company. Moreover, the effects of these threats are also discussed in detail in CIR. There are six steps in CIR, each is explained in detail in this paper.

Wireless and BYOD Security Plan

The first step in CIR is to develop a wireless security plan for the company. The company's policy of BYOD will also be address in this wireless security plan. Guidelines for securing WAN by NIST in their publication 800-153 will be used in designing a company's security plan. According to BYOD, the devices that most employees will be connecting to the company's WLAN network are either laptops or smartphones. WLAN contains several components; Access Points (AP), Distribution System (DS), switches, company's devices, and client/employee devices. There should be a standardized security configuration for all of the WLAN components CITATION Mur12 \l 1033 (Murugiah Souppaya, 2012). A standardized security configuration will reduce the time of securing the system, reduce vulnerabilities in the network, improve system security, and will reduce effort while performing Security Assessment Report (SAR) and security audit.

Cyber-attacks are one of the key areas of network vulnerabilities. Using malicious or poor code may result in cyber-attack which can change system code or data. This will lead to an interruption, exposing system and data open to cybercrimes. A weak unmonitored system that lacks basic network security protocols is a prime target for cybercriminals (Skinner, 2000). An attacker can easily penetrate such a network and a data source. The cyber kill chain framework will be introduced in the network security plan to detect the level of threat and take necessary action against it. There are 8 stages in the cyber kill chain, each is associated with a different type of cyber-attack. In the first stage, the attackers assess the network to plan his attack. This stage of attack can be avoided by using a standardized security configuration CITATION TYa15 \l 1033 (T Yadav, 2015). In the next stage, the attacker intrudes the system and by taking advantage of security vulnerabilities. This step can be avoided by designing a secure WAN network with proper firewalls and security assessing software. The third stage in the cyber kill chain is exploitation, in this stage, the attackers make his moves by exploiting assessed vulnerabilities. The attacker sends malicious code to get a better grip on the system. In the next stage, the attacker needs extra privileges so that he can further take control of the system. It involves the user's interaction by manipulating them into breaking the security of a network. This can be avoided by educating employee who has excess to the company's network. A special protocol of communication will be introduced in the company's wireless security plan which avoids any incident of social engineering attack. In the next stage, the attacker got access to the network and he can easily penetrate within the system. This stage can be avoided by monitoring the system traffic at hubs, and gateways CITATION TYa15 \l 1033 (T Yadav, 2015). A network security tool can also be used to monitor and stops suspicious traffic within the network. The sixth stage is very important and requires a skilled person to counter the attacker’s moves. In this stage, the attacker leaves his false trails to confuse the IT team. There are testing mechanisms (black box, white box testing) available which will ensure that the system is secured cannot be fooled. In the seventh stages, the attackers jam the network traffic by Distributed Denial of Services (DDoS). The attacker creates a bot within the network and then send enough request by bots to overflow network capacity. This can be avoided by securing Ethernet connections within the company's network. The last and final stage of the cyber kill chain framework is the extraction of data from the compromised system. The company's wireless network and BYOD security will be designed in a way that will always prevent the attacker from getting to the last stage. Layered security will be installed in the company's network infrastructure to slow down the attacker’s penetration.

Security risks associated with the network are the shutting down of a system, and the loss of sensitive data. These losses can be caused by computer viruses, rogue security software, Trojan horse, adware or spyware, network worm, DDoS attack, Rootkit, and SQL Injection attack. To address all security threats, the following key actions at stage 1 will be taken under the wireless security network plan.

Understand common attacks. Good knowledge of cyber-attacks which targets weak network can be very helpful.

Establish a list of potential vulnerabilities, and look for anything suspicious or unknown to your network

Use vulnerability and network scanning tool

In case of an attack, the company should be able to access the risk and should be able to take reliable actions in such events CITATION WSt12 \l 1033 (W Stallings, 2012).

Once the key security measures are established, a layered security strategy will be used to install or protect the company’s network. Followings are the measure which will help develop network defense plan.

Every Component of the system should use VPN cable.

Secure cables with a firewall

Install a firewall in every layer of the network. Separate firewall for each server, and each layer.

Install network security tool which will monitor the traffic within the server

Create strong passwords for every network devices

Only allow data to travel within the network in encrypted form

Install firewall management software

Strong authentication parameters, either Net Screen or F5 employ user-based authentication

For added security, access control and authentication should be as close to network as possible

Install NIC at the maximum number of junctions possible

Use network gateways even at endpoint access

These parameters/ measures are listed after careful understanding of NIST security testing guidelines publication 800-115All the parameters mentioned above a crucial for enterprise network security

Tracking Suspicious Behavior

It notified that an employee is showing suspicious behavior, his MAC address is showing irregular traffic in the network. Both the employee and the company's secure network are the company's assets. There are many solutions available to track an employee or company’s asset. If the employee is using the device provided by the company, it quite easy to track that device and customer's behavior. The problem arises in the current situation is the company's BYOD policy, an employee may be using his device to connect to the company's network. The company tracks its employee's location and his time stamps, but the employee must know that the company is tracking his device. There is an ethical and legal constraint that does not allow this kind of tracking. So what can be done to overcome these constraints is to add tracking policy in employee and employer agreement. And signing this agreement is mandatory to get a job. Once the tacking policy is agreed upon, a company can easily track its employee or asset. Employees activities which a company can monitor include his emails, internet browsing, apps usage, location tracking by access card, GPS tracking by vehicle, video/ audio surveillance within the facility, phone usage, and even computer screen recording. Computer screen monitor is used almost by every organization to monitor employee’s performance and his/ her hours of work. If the customer doing anything suspicious, a company can easily identify that by following a monitoring policy. According to the contract/ agreement, a company has a complete right to take any legal action against the client.

The technique used for changing the Media Access Control (MAC) address of the device is called MAC spoofing. In this technique, an Operating System (OS) and the network is fooled in believing the wrong MAC address of the device. There are many techniques and software available to serve this purpose in which a person can select a MAC address of his/ her choice. By changing a MAC address an individual can bypass company’s network router, servers, or access control list. For example, an employee has registered one of his devices to the company's network by giving its MAC address to an IT personal. An employee can use another device with a forged MAC address (same as his registered device) to the company’s network for harmful purposes. Network switches allow communication between two devices by using MAC address tables. If any MAC address is not present in the table, switches deny the transfer of data. An attacker can use a known MAC address to get access to the secured network using MAC spoofing. MAC spoofing is a kind of computer identity theft which can be used either for good or harmful purposes.

Sequence number analysis can be used to identify MAC spoofing or identity theft. The sequence number field of 802.11 frame header has a number field of 12 bits CITATION Heg16 \l 1033 (Hegde, 2016). Securing sequence number field and store their values in the TCP header will protect the network from MAC spoofing. In addition, Multiple Input Multiple Output (MIMO) antenna technology along with Channel State CITATION Heg16 \l 1033 (Hegde, 2016) Information (CSI) can be used to prevent identity theft like MAC spoofing. Although it is more expensive to apply MIMO antenna technology, it is a more effective solution against identity theft incidents.

Continuous Improvement Plan

Previously it was believed that the wired network is more secure as compared to their wireless counterpart. This is because in a wired network the attacker has to physically temper the system to penetrate through the network. Radio transmission is used for carrying data in a wireless network which makes it difficult to contain. This makes easy for an individual to peak through a network while sitting in the range of the wireless network. Pros and Cons of both network will be discussed in this section. One of the biggest advantages of a wired network is that it cannot be easily penetrated by an intruder. As there is no wireless access point available for this kind of connection, an external intrusion is impossible. Moreover, it is easy to monitor and manage the number of connected devices. The biggest cons of a wired network are installing cables, jumpers, connectors, and no mobility. A wireless network gives ease of mobility and provides compatibility with the latest devices. The following table will further explain the pro and cons of both network types.

Sr. No

Category

Wired Network

Wireless network

1.

Setup

Can be difficult and expensive to setup

Upgrading to wireless can also be expensive and difficult

2.

Security

More secure as compare to wireless

Less secure. Information and bandwidth can be accessed by an intruder

3.

Connection Speed

Mostly faster than wireless

Usually slower than wired

4.

Business

Not convenient for employee, can be accepted for traditional office with limited usage

Easily mobility not only helps employees but also clients in business dealings.

5.

Cables

Lots of ports and cables are needed

Fewer cables and no untidy cabling issues

6.

Sharing files

Transfer speed is fast but file sharing is limited to a certain number of devices

Much easier sharing of files as no need to be connected to a network via cable

7.

Freedom of movement for the user

Limitation in movement due to connection is established using cables and ports

Freedom of movement within the range of the network

There are various types of network parameters; Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP), Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA), and, Wi-Fi Protected Access II (WPA2). WEP is the most common type of security protocol for a wireless network. WEP had many vulnerabilities, with an increase in computing power exploiting those vulnerabilities becomes easier. WPA was the replacement of the old WEP protocol providing more security and customizability. Temporal Key Integrity Protocol (TKIP) and message integrity check is the most significant security feature of WPA protocol. Like WEP, WPA also became vulnerable with time. The most significant improvement of WPA2 is the mandatory usage of Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) algorithms and Counter Cipher Mode with Block Chaining Message Authentication Code Protocol (CCMP). It usually requires 2 to 14 hours of effort to penetrate through a WPA2 security protocol.

Company's wireless network can be easily configured to shared keys using the WPA PSK protocol which offers 256 characters generated key for the access points. This Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) publication 140-2 issued by NIST is used to approve cryptography modules. According to FIPS 140-2 publication, it is necessary for a company to secure cryptographic modules for added security within their network. Wi-Fi network with the ability of 802.11i/ WPA2 can be complied with FIPS-140-2 standards by using AES and CCMP. The company's network infrastructure can be easily made FIPS-1040-2 compliant, by using the WPA2 security protocol. The hardware already supports WPA2, no additional equipment needs to be installed for the purpose.

There are many wireless protocols which include Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and Ultra-wideband (UWB). Wi-Fi is a type of WLAN that uses 802.11 specifications. The biggest pro of this technology is its high speed and mobility. Due to being visible and has a range of access in 3D space, Wi-Fi can be vulnerable to cyber-attacks. The next protocol for wireless communication is Bluetooth technology. It is a wireless protocol that helps in exchanging data between mobile and fixed devices using short-wavelength over a short distance CITATION SDh07 \l 1033 (Dhawan, 2007). One of the biggest advantages of Bluetooth technology is its portability. The biggest con of this technology is it's short-range, the connected devices have to be in distance with each other. UWB is also wireless protocol which allows transfer of data over short distance. Advantage of this technology is wide spectrum of frequency band, high speed, and low power consumption. Although the range of UWB is wider than a Bluetooth technology but it is still short as compared to Wi-Fi CITATION SDh07 \l 1033 (Dhawan, 2007). Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) is also a type of wireless technology. Wi-Fi and UWB can be suitable for the company, combination of both can be used in the network infrastructure.

Remote Configuration Management (550)

Process of maintaining and organizing information of all the components of company’s network is called remote configuration management. Network management database helps the company to upgrade, modify, expand, and repair company’s network remotely. The data base has network address, IP address, and location of hardware devices CITATION CEP92 \l 1033 (Perkins, 1992). Moreover, information about updates, versions, programs and setting of hardware devices which are installed within the network infrastructure of the company. Keeping above in mind, the company can use remote network managers in its network infrastructure to increase productivity of the system. Any failure in the network can also be monitored easily using remote network configuration. As there is a different format for every network device, network configuration can ease the process of saving different configurations. To fix a certain hardware or software failure within the network, remote network configuration manager can save time and effort. The data is mostly stored in central servers for the purpose of remote configuration manager. There are many tools available for the remote network configure management, vendor-specific tool will be more suitable for our company’s network. In remote configure management, system administration can be used to reduce downtime of a network. Moreover, the accountability and visibility of network also improves with remote configuration management. Following are the benefits our company can achieve by installing remote network configuration:

Easily archiving of details in network configuration changes.

If the system updating causes system to shutdown, it can easily be downgraded to previous settings and software.

Changes made in one hardware does not affect other device.

Network security will be optimized.

Configuration and change management generally causes error; this can be reduced by using remote configuration management.

Systematic process of upgrading, expansion, repair, and maintenance in the network

It is observed that there is an unknown device connected to the company’s network. This can be detected by either by Sequence number analysis or from Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) client tables. If any unknown device’s IP address or MAC address is detected in the DHCP table, MAC address of the device can be easily blocked by simply using access point configuration. Advance network securing tools which are suggested earlier can also be used for this purpose. Once the MAC address is blocked, the device will no longer show in DHCP client table. This will ensure that the user or the device has been completely removed from the network. In addition, IP scan of the network will also show the list of the IP addresses connected to the network. If the fixed IP addresses are assigned to each device and its information is store configuration database, an unknown IP address will be easily detected. Remote configuration management can be used to obtain the MAC address of that IP user. Once the MAC address is obtained, it can also be blocked using remote configuration management.

Employ Misconduct (488)

There is a report of an employee using an ad-hoc wireless network within the company’s network. Furthermore, there has been multiple logins during unofficial duty hours. As the motive of this particular employee is not known, in this section ad-hoc network will be explained and how they can be a threat to a WAN network of the company. An ad-hoc network can help number of devices to directly communicate with each other. An ad-hoc network can easily bypass network gateways and routers. In an ad-hoc network devices can send data using single access point. Now to explain how an employ can use ad-hoc to threaten the company WAN. Using Windows 7 or other latest operating systems, a user has an option to create his laptop an access point using option of ad-hoc or hotspot connections CITATION CEP01 \l 1033 (Perkins, Ad hoc networking, 2001). An employ has been using his laptop to create a wireless access point. And more untrusted devices can be connected to the company’s network using his laptop as an access point. This has happened due to company’s BYOD program; the device an employee is using is not the property of the company. We will give an employ a benefit of doubt, maybe be just want to connect his other device to have an excess to internet connection. In this case any external hacker can first penetrate virtual Wi-Fi created by an employ, and eventually the intruder will have excess to company’s network. As the device is the property of an employee, company cannot simply block ad-hoc connection and put administrative password on the employee’s device. To prevent this from happening, company’s network should have correct IDS/IPS system installed which will deny ad-hoc networks. Each wireless adapter of the network should be configured for infrastructure mode. In infrastructure mode only a central device and server manages the traffic. In addition, a wireless ad-hoc network requires same Service Set Identifier (SSID) and channel. To prevent an employee form creating an ad-hoc connection, each network adopter in WAN of the company should have unique SSID. Traffic of a suspicious employee’s laptop can be observed to detect if there is any ad-hoc connection created by that employee or not. If the employ has created an ad-hoc connection, there will be other devices attached to his network and unusual pattern of traffic can confirm the presence of ad-hoc connection even if the employee is hiding his signals. In case of hidden SSID, most devices will show that there is a hidden wireless connection in the region. Getting a SSID of a hidden network is not a difficult task. And if there are no hidden networks detected which means that SSID is not broadcasting, similar technique of monitoring a traffic of devices to detect any unusual behavior can be used. It can easily be validating that the user is using his device as an ad-hoc connection during unofficial duty hours by just looking at his traffic at those hours

Analyze Wireless Traffic

The last step CIR is to analyze traffic of wireless network. Pre-captured files of wireless traffic from company’s network is provided to analyze the network. These pre-captured files can be used to monitor employee activities. By comparing pre-captured files with the current traffic will helps detect and suspicious or malicious behavior. Analyzing traffic of the network. Main purpose of analyzing wireless traffic is to ensure that data is secured and no intruder is infiltrating through company’s traffic. Most effective way to monitor wireless traffic is to use network configuration management and authenticated access. This will ensure reliable monitoring of the traffic and will secure data transmission. Authentication access also allows the company to keep record of the logins and addresses of the devices which are connected to the company’s network. Adding secure logins will further enhance the security of the network. Most companies encrypt their data before transferring between different devices which ensures the safety of wireless traffic. Virtual Private Network (VPN) and point to point encryption are used serving the purpose disguising the traffic from the attacker. Last frontier of securing a wireless network and its traffic is company’s administration. Administration has to maintain the security of the network by taking various steps after the installation of secure wireless network CITATION Bau04 \l 1033 (Bauer, 2004). The steps include regular monitoring of the access logs and regular monitoring of the network traffic. Regular monitoring can help in detecting any fault in system, network penetration, data breach, unwanted access logs, and MAC spoofing. Moreover, careful monitoring can also help in identifying an employ who is violating the company’s network policy. To install an intelligent traffic monitoring system in the company’s network, thee different components has to be installed. First component is the monitoring unit which monitors the traffic at different points within the network. Next component in intelligent monitoring system is the storing unit. Company’s storage servers can be used for the purpose of storing traffic logs. The most important part of the monitoring system is to install an intelligent forecasting unit. This forecasting will help in identifying a threat or fault within the system and will also enhances the performance of the system. Forecasting unit has complete access to the stored logs, it can predict that what can go wrong or what kind of demand is needed at specific time. Installing this kind of smart system will require efforts and time. There are many vendors who are providing such an intelligent monitoring solution which can be very expensive.

References

BIBLIOGRAPHY Bauer, B. (2004). Network traffic monitoring. Google Patent. Retrieved from https://patents.google.com/patent/US20040047356A1/en

Dhawan, S. (2007). Analogy of promising wireless technologies on different frequencies: Bluetooth, wifi, and wimax. IEEE.

Hegde, A. (2016, January 1). MAC Spoofing Detection and Prevention. International Journal of Advanced Research in Computer and Communication Engineering, 5(1), 230,231. Retrieved from https://ijarcce.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/IJARCCE-55.pdf

Murugiah Souppaya, K. S. (2012). Guidelines for Securing. Gaithersburg: National Institute of Standards and Technologies. Retrieved from https://content.umuc.edu/file/86d36d98-d23a-4001-ac03-91ab25dd1b47/1/NISTGuidelinesforSecuringWirelessLocalAreaNetworksWLANsSpecialPublication800-153.pdf

Perkins, C. (1992). Network address management for a wired network supporting wireless communication to a plurality of mobile users. Google Patents.

Perkins, C. (2001). Ad hoc networking.

T Yadav, A. R. (2015). Technical Aspects of Cyber Kill Chain. International Symposium on Security in Computing and Communication.

W Stallings, L. B. (2012). Computer security: principles and practice.