Network Security

          Universally, computer systems are vulnerable to many types of threats. Security incidents such as application vulnerabilities, viruses, Email spam, phishing attacks, password cracking, and social engineering ploys can wreak havoc on individual computer programs, systems, or entire networks of servers, resulting in data theft, file corruption, and even complete loss of usability.   

Significant damage can be done even using simple ping commands to shut down entire servers. One cyber security company, Cyphere, describes how a distributed denial-of-service attack (DDOS) using ping commands from multiple computers can bring down entire networks by disrupting a website’s availability, oftentimes simultaneously infecting a network with viruses at the same time.  The article and linked video explain that these attacks often aim to extort money, take out competitors, or even just as a training platform for hackers to fine-tune their capabilities.  (Mirza)

While many methods can be used to help reduce the risk of ping attacks and other security risks, all threats cannot be eliminated entirely. Users need to be aware of potential threats that can have a burdensome impact on not only their individual computer systems but their entire lives. Let us examine the impacts and risk reduction techniques of viruses and social engineering in more depth.

For many reasons, systems are vulnerable to viruses, social engineering, and other threats. Applications on a computer may allow outside hackers in through backdoor methods where a hacker may release a virus or steal metadata from any number of files. Humans trust by nature and often believe they have anonymity or privacy when dealing with online websites, third-party applications, free games, and/or email. Many users are unaware of their privacy settings and believe all transactions or messages must be secure if they are within a firewall. However, no firewall, network, or antivirus software can protect against all threats. (Vahid, 2019)

Viruses can be introduced to a computer through different methods and are often embedded in other programs and applications. For example, a user installs a new program to edit digital images and unknowingly installs a virus simultaneously. They may never know this is installed and performing some task. A CSO article by Josh Fruhlinger explains, “This malicious software tries to do its damage in the background while your computer still limps along.” (Furlinger, 2022). He describes how the “virus” may spread via email or the direct installation of new software.  This article and the course text state that antivirus software is the most widely known product to help protect against all types of malware (malicious software), including viruses. These antivirus packages keep a repository of virus signatures to help identify and then quarantine or restrict access to common viruses and malware.

While antivirus software can reduce the risk of commonly known viruses, social engineering tactics like phishing are currently a bigger security threat. Writer for CNET, Elinor Mills, interviewed former jailed hacker Kevin Mitnick, and he “knows the weakest link in any security system is the person holding the information.” (Mills, 2008) Hackers use social engineering techniques to gain information and insights into the systems directly from the sources. Phishing is just one example of social engineering where emails ask “users to provide sensitive account information by posing a legitimate companies.” (Vahid, 2019).

Recognizing and verifying senders before responding to or clicking on any emailed attachments or links is the easiest protection method against social engineering schemes. The most sensitive information should be restricted to in-person confirmation. When in-person meetings are not available, then additional security methods must be used to make sure any private information is only available to others for legitimate purposes.

References

Fruhlinger, J. (2022, April 28). Computer viruses explained: Definition, types, and examples. CSO. Retrieved September 24, 2023, from

https://www.csoonline.com/article/567477/computer-viruses-explained-definition-types-and-examples.html

Mills, E. (2008, July 21). Social Engineering 101: Mitnick and other hackers show how it's done. CNET. Retrieved September 24, 2023, from

https://www.cnet.com/news/privacy/social-engineering-101-mitnick-and-other-hackers-show-how-its-done/

Mirza, S. (n.d.). Ping Flood Attacks. The Cyphere. Retrieved September 22, 2023, from

https://thecyphere.com/blog/ping-flood-attacks/

Vahid, F., & Lysecky, R. (2019). Computing technology for all. zyBooks.

 

 

Computers in the Workplace

       Computer literacy is an absolute must in the field of Business Intelligence & Analytics. While I will focus on specific computer functions within the healthcare insurance industry, the ability to capture, store, manage, and retrieve highly sensitive information is vital to any industry. I work for a third-party administrator that provides small businesses with health insurance option packages for their employees. The options we provide, require regulatory compliance with the state as well as maintain partnership requirements with multiple vendors, health plan providers, carriers, thousands of brokers, and hundreds of thousands of members we partner with or provide a service for. 

Using provable metrics to provide trends, forecasting, exhaustive analysis of a business, its departments, or its partners contribution to the business allows stakeholders to make data-driven business decisions. Since healthcare data is protected for the safety of the people, it is imperative that our company always maintains confidentiality, and that any partnerships operate with the same level of scrutiny.

Computers are used to enter, store, and transmit sensitive data to our carrier partners daily. If these systems are interrupted at all by malicious attacks or viruses, this will negatively impact working people’s ability to obtain healthcare services they are rightly allowed.  Our company employs multiple safeguards to ensure our business is not vulnerable to outside attacks. We require password and user authentication through various systems, network drives, and only authorized personnel are allowed in server areas. We have a backup stored offsite in the event of a catastrophic event or natural disaster so we can resume business as quickly as possible if something occurs.

My team focuses on analyzing and providing insights to executive leadership regarding the business trends affecting membership, sales, territory analyses, preferred plans in the marketplace, and staffing allocations. While the business has been operating for quite a long time, several areas were unable to be reviewed efficiently until the data that has been stored because accessible to query. Once data is accessible via a data management system, then we are able to join datasets together to see discrepancies or impactful trends in all types of areas. The ability to retrieve and query all data pertaining to the business is the direction of the future. With the continued evolution of technology, my focus ins business intelligence and analytics will only increase as more and more businesses realize they do not yet have a full picture of their business. These insights can help reduce costs and identify areas of improvement as well as providing the full scope of the business to stakeholders and board members consistently.

The need for healthcare is not going away  and will only continue to increase, so the use of computer systems to track information accurately and communicate across various networks to multiple systems will also continue to increase. 

Traveling Through a Network

Ping Activity

Traceroute Activity

Traveling Through a Network 

When using the ping commands results, it took longer to receive a result from an Australian website versus Google. However, that was only slightly slower. However, pinging the Mexican website took almost 3.5 times longer to receive the echo.  During the traceroute exercise, I was not surprised to see how many different routes were needed to send packets to the Mexican website as many more attempts were needed than to pass the data to the US or to Australia. Honestly, I am not entirely sure why it would take so much longer to reach a geographical location that is closer than another website farther in distance. The only conclusion I can make is that since the Mexican website timed out at multiple points, it had to find an alternate route to complete the transaction, and that took more time than if the original points were received successfully.

The ping command checks if a website is available and how fast I can reach it with the machine and network I am starting on. The traceroute command maps a message's full path as it hits the different routers onto its final destination. Both can be used to troubleshoot internet connectivity issues. Hostinger Tutorials lists three possible reasons why a ping request or traceroute command might time out or return with an error are as follows:

• The target’s firewall or security devices block traceroute requests.
• An issue with the return path from the destination computer.
• Possible connection issue at the target address.

The tutorial goes on to explain that the top two scenarios likely will "not affect your connection to the destination computer, but the last one may result in a failed connection." (Prasati, 2023)

 

References

Prasati, P. (2023, August 11). Traceroute Command: How to Use and Interpret It. Hostinger Tutorials. Retrieved September 14, 2023, from

https://www.hostinger.com/tutorials/traceroute-command#Timeouts_at_Beginning_Hops

Links to an external site.

Documenting a Day

        Chapter 5. Computer Applications in the course text written by Frank Vahid and Roman Lysecky provides a concise overview of the most commonly used computer programs categorized as the following:

 

According to an SJCC Marketing & PR article, “Digital literacy is essential for every professional. That’s why an understanding of basic computer applications is key — no matter who you are.” (SJCC Marketing & PR, 2021) I could not agree with that statement more. Understanding the different functions of each type of program and gaining skills using each has allowed me to excel in my career. Knowing what computer program is most efficient to use for a specific purpose and then maintaining my skills allows me to be more productive and provide my audience or end-user with high-quality work.  

Below is a comparison of each application's purposes, disadvantages, and advantages as stated in the text and based on my own experiences with each.

Reflecting on this week’s assignments using each computer program type, the program I would use to document my day would be a word processing or presentation application. However, which program I use depends on the purpose of the documentation. For example, creating a journal entry would be perfect if I just wanted to track my own progress or provide others with details. However, if the purpose is to train others, I may choose to use a presentation program instead. If the purpose were to determine how much of my day is spent doing a specific task, then using formulas within a spreadsheet application would be most appropriate. Lastly, if the purpose were to forecast how much time is spent over my lifetime on a specific task, I would want that information stored in a database since birth to determine trends and forecasting predictions.

References

Melendez, S. (n.d.). Advantages and Disadvantages of Word Processors. Techwalla. Retrieved September 10, 2023, from

https://www.techwalla.com/articles/advantages-and-disadvantages-of-word-processors

SJCC Marketing & PR (2021, January 4). Study Computer Applications to Boost Your Career Options. The ROAR. Retrieved September 9, 2023, from

https://the-roar.net/?p=4729

Vahid, F., & Lysecky, R. (2019). Computing technology for all. zyBooks.

Web/Mobile App Critique: Wellnesscoach

 

            I use many apps daily but decided to review one that many classmates may not be familiar with called Wellness Coach.  While the app was developed in 2018, in the aftermath of uncertainty and instability brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic, the program rebranded and received a sizable investment from the Zoom Apps Fund. (Dahlberg, 2021).  The timing was perfect as employee burnout was all too common, and employers needed to provide additional benefits to help retain their top performers.  D Sharma points out the many reasons this is an attractive benefit an employer can offer and how the employee experience can be vastly improved by making overall health and wellness a priority. (Sharma, 2021)

Wellness Coach is an enterprise all-encompassing wellness app that provides various tools to help employees deal with stress, grief, anxiety, fitness, and even sleep issues. The app is available as a stand-alone web and mobile app and is also available as a plug-in for many common workplace collaboration tools, such as Microsoft Teams. Let’s review the app’s usability, design, and functionality and explore three recommendations to improve this product.

                While I use it more frequently on my computer to allow a larger screen to browse the content, the mobile app offers the same excellent content. The app design is simple, and most content can be found from links directly on the home page, allowing users to click and play any content instantly.  All content can be favorited for easy accessibility, and much of the content can be downloaded for offline access. There are a couple of additional menu paths in addition to the main home page that allow access to explore/search by topic, view Favorites, and view History provided.  The Home Page is broken into ten sections:

1.       Daily Wellness is a short audio meditation automatically selected each day on the top of the page.

2.       Ruth, a personalized coaching experience AI functionality that allows users to ask questions or make statements regarding their mental or physical health.  Upon asking a question, Ruth will make some recommendations for improving the issue and provide relevant mindfulness sessions that can help.

3.       Today’s Progress allows end users to connect to Apple Health or Fitbit applications that will track steps taken, minutes spent reviewing or listening to wellness sessions, and allows users to track water consumption. These three areas tend to be universally recognized as contributing to the overall good health of all people.

4.       The Challenges section allows users to start a challenge with friends and coworkers to promote and reinforce healthy activities through comradery and connectedness. These challenges can be company-wide, team-specific, or amongst the entire Wellness Coach app community.

5.       Quick Links allow users to go to the content they are looking for specifically, including the following categories:

a.       Focus Music

b.       Meditation

c.       Audiobooks

d.       Fitness

e.       Breathing Bubble

f.        Recents

g.       Challenges

h.       Live Class replays

6.       Personal Coaching section allows users to schedule one-on-one coaching sessions with a professional coach specializing in specific topics as desired.

7.       Group Coaching are live sessions provided on specific dates and times.

8.       Recommendations provided specifically by the user's employer.

9.       Programs are collections of sessions designed to help users achieve their goals. Programs offer a learning and practice path for anyone having trouble picking a session, meditation, book, or exercise, and typically encompass all modalities.

10.   The last section of the app is a link to share access with up to 5 friends and family members so they can join users in their wellness journeys.

The following three recommendations would make this already valuable tool even more beneficial:

1. Make the app available on the Apple Watch. With the ever-increasing popularity of smartwatches, a condensed watch app would be extremely useful. I do not carry my phone while exercising and could consume more content if this feature was enabled.
   
   
2. Enable community groups or some form of social collaboration that would allow users to provide helpful advice, exercises, or recipes to help others who are tackling a similar issue. This could be custom functionality or just embedded links to other social networking /sharing platforms.
   
   
3. Allow individual memberships without the requirement of an employer. While this app benefits employees, some team members hesitate to invest time in the product when they think they may be moving on to a different employer.  Allowing some type of transition option would increase brand awareness, and users would act as brand ambassadors to their new employer.

References

Dahlberg, N. (2021, December 9). Boom! Zoom Invests in Wellness Coach Amid Year of Record Growth for the Miami Startup. Refresh Miami. Retrieved September 5, 2023, from

https://refreshmiami.com/boom-zoom-invests-in-wellness-coach-amid-year-of-record-growth-for-the-miami-startup/ 

Sharma, D. (2021, September 30). How Prioritizing Wellness Can Improve the Employee Experience. WellnessCoach. Retrieved September 5, 2023, from

https://research.wellnesscoach.live/press/how-prioritizing-wellness-can-improve-the-employee-experience

Programming Languages

 As Frank Vahid and Roman Lysecky describe in Chapter 2 of the text, programming languages can be categorized as machine, assembly, or high-level. (Vahid & Lysecky, 2019) While hundreds or even thousands of programming languages are available, I will describe my experience creating a program in one high-level programming language called Scratch and examine the definitions, use cases, and preferred programming languages across different user populations.

            The program website states, “Scratch is a coding language and online community where you can create your own interactive stories, games, and animations -- and share your creations with others around the world. As young people create and share Scratch projects, they learn to think creatively, reason systematically, and work collaboratively. Scratch is a project of the Scratch Foundation in collaboration with the Lifelong Kindergarten group at the MIT Media Lab. It is available for free at https://scratch.mit.edu". I created my first program, “Halloween Friends,” accessible at ☝ https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/888734428/.     

             

        This short, interactive introduction was a bit more difficult than I had anticipated. However, it was easy to see the correlation between the steps in Chapter 2’s participation activities and the steps required to make the characters (sprites) perform the actions desired and in the correct order. Scratch was easy to navigate once I knew what I wanted to achieve. Two challenges I faced were first getting a branched scenario to successfully execute based on a specific response from the end user and then second figuring out how to restart my interaction from the beginning. I found a great YouTube video posted by Kim Karnes demonstrating a simple yes/no scenario. (Kim Karnes, 2021) Once I reviewed the video, it gave me ideas that allowed me to complete the animation. As for resetting the characters to the original starting point, I had a lot of trial-and-error scenarios until I got it where I wanted it to be.

            Creating a Scratch program helped me solidify the importance of order and practice of providing explicit commands. Understanding how to use variables to store and trigger other events was particularly helpful in relating the practice activities in the book to an actual programming language in real time.  

While Scratch is categorized as a high-level programming language, creating my program also helped solidify my understanding of the other two language types referenced in the book. Machine language is programming instructions the CPU needs to execute a program, and assembly language is a textual representation of those instructions in a more natural human method.  Assembly language translates text into machine language to execute a program.

I am unsure which language type is easiest to use since they are all intuitive once I know the order of operations and the syntax.  I definitely prefer high-level programming languages because it seems easier to use compilers to perform commands than to write out each command in 1s and 0s.

The text, along with other articles and websites online, calls out popular high-level languages that are used today, “each with different strengths/weaknesses and for different purposes.” (Vahid & Lysecky, 2019) For example, Python would be most efficient for data-processing and visualization, whereas JavaScript would be more efficient for web applications. (Oses, 2022).

Since the popularity of programming languages varies greatly depending on the user and purpose, it is impossible to say exactly which one is most popular. However, since Python is free and used for relatively easy to use for data analysis and JavaScript use is in very high demand due to the need to develop effective web applications, I would say they are tied for the number one spot. A Forbes article by Alejandro Oses places Python in first, with JavaScript coming in second place, while a survey referenced in a Codica article puts JavaScript first and Python in fifth, as shown in the diagram below. (Oses, 2022)

             In conclusion, while there are three main types of programming languages, it appears the front runner is high-level programming languages, such as Scratch, for their ability to allow greater “programmer productivity” by creating a type of shorthand to execute programs efficiently.

References

[Kim Karnes]. Karnes, K. (2021, January 25). Programming yes/no questions in Scratch [Video]. You Tube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6UMvSh7jOYo

D., & O. (2023, March 23). Top Programming Languages in 2023: Tech Trends for Business. :Codica. Retrieved September 3, 2023, from

https://www.codica.com/blog/top-programming-languages-2023/  

Oses, A. (2022, December 28). What Your Software Partner Should Know: The Top Programming Languages ​​Of 2023. Retrieved September 3, 2023, from

https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbestechcouncil/2022/12/28/what-your-software-partner-should-know-the-top-programming-languages-of-2023/?sh=64f1c50a182b

Vahid, F., & Lysecky, R. (2019). Computing technology for all. zyBooks.

Scratch. (n.d.). Retrieved September 1, 2023 from

            https://scratch.mit.edu/