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.

Database Project

The database project using Microsoft Access was a challenging, yet interesting, project. While completing this project I learned how to successfully create a database by either manually inputing data or by importing external data. Once my database was created I learned how to change the format to fit my purpose and desire. Now that I had my data just they way I wanted it, I learned how to complete queries and present my queried data in a report or form view. By completing this project I feel that I have learned the necessary skills to work with Access in the future.

If I were given the option to modify this database, I would set the membership type to auto fill when you begin typing. Since you only have two options, Individual and Family, this would save a great deal of extra typing. This would be accomplished by setting up a combobox and adding a dropdown list which contained your default values. In addition to this I would setup the gender field to only allow Male or Female. This would be accompished by setting up a validation rule in the design view. I would also add validation text to pop up if any other data was input. This would let the user know what error was being made.

Excel Project

When I first sat down and read through the 5 full pages of instructions it was a bit daunting thinking about starting this project. After re-watching the Excel lectures and opening up my Excel Bible I was ready to jump in head first and to my surprise this project was really fun and educational. The two steps which I think I learned the most from, and will use most in work life, were the use of formulas and the use of pivot tables.
Working with the formula functions while completing this project gave me a glimpse into the endless amount of formulas Excel has to offer. I was very surprised to learn that the formulas are not difficult to use. After playing around with manually entering the formulas, I met my new best friend; the formula wizard in the task bar. This made the formula process very simple and almost error proof.

In addition to the formulas, I also learned a great deal about the PivotTables. This is a feature I have never heard about prior to this class. Once I was able to grasp which data fields to drag where, it really was an easy task. This is a function which I feel will be used a great deal in my professional life. It really simplified the process of analyzing large amounts of data.

In my opinion this has been a very useful project which I think will carry over to my professional career. Thanks for making it fun.