Week 14: Clear

This week we studied Enterprise computing which elaborated on RAID, Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks. There are many differnt levels of RAID ranging from the most simple RAID1 to the most complex RAID6. RAID 1, or mirroring is simply the use of a pair of drives which mirror each other. If one drive were to fail, the second drive keeps right on moving at full speed with no data loss. The most complex to date is the RAID6 which is any form of RAID that can continue in the event of two concurrent disk failures.

RAID is very important in the business environment because it can severly limit the risk of data loss in the event of disk failure. Whether you are a small business keeping data on your individual customers or a massive corporation keeping data on thousands of employees, it can be catastrophic if your system fails and all of your data needs to be recovered (assuming it can be). RAID is much quicker than using standard backup devices such as tape or external hard drives.

In an attempt to learn more about RAID I came across an article titled Beginners Guides: Installing RAID on a desktop PC located at http://www.pcstats.com/articleview.cfm?articleID=830 . This artcile really helped to elaborate on the benefits of RAID and the process involved with setting them up.

 

Secure Email Project

http://www.techiwarehouse.com/cms/engine.php?page_id=ee2ef23b

The article I found about businesses using encryption was titled SafeData Helps Companies Comply with New Data Privacy Laws. In todays electronic age personal data is transmitted over the internet millions of times a day which sets up a dangerous situation. Recently Massachusetts and Nevada passed legislation which prohibits businesses from electronically transferring personally identifiable information which is not encrypted outside of their secure system. I personally think this is an excellent idea. When you think about all of the financial information our banks and financial advisors have the ability to email, or our medical professionals with all of our personal medical history. This could be something as harmless as me calling the bank and asking them to email me a recent statement. If this were to be sent un-encrypted, it could very easily fall into the wrong hands. The article goes on to mention that many other states are expected to follow suit in the very near future.

Week 13: Clear

During this weeks lectures and reading, the topic I found to be most clear was computer security risks. During my studies I was very interested to learn that their are 7 categories of perpetrators of cyber crimes: hacker, cracker, script kittie, corporate spy, unethical employee, cyberextortionist, and cyberterrorist. All of the different classifications work in differnet ways but are all dangerous to the computing world.

It is very important for the business world to understand these different types of security risks. Knowledge of these predators allows them to boost up security to block hackers, crackers, and script kiddies. Internally they will be able to prevent corporate spies, unethical employees, cyberextortionists, and cyberterrorists.

While doing additional research on the topic of Hackers versus Crackers, I came across an article located at http://www.techiwarehouse.com/cms/engine.php?page_id=ee2ef23b which does a really good job of seperating the two classifications.