Final Post

 The topic I chose to learn more about for my final blog past was network security. I chose this for a few reasons. One was that this is an area where there are plenty of career options available, so knowing more about it can be very beneficial once I finish my degree and start looking for opportunities. Another is that I have always been curious as how to possibly protect my own and possibly friend’s and family's networks. I know a little bit and I do use anti-virus protection software that has very high review scores. But if there are other secrets I can use to be more secure or possibly free, I will use them. 

Network security fits right along with everything we are learning in the fundamentals of information technology class as we were learning about how a packet travels through a network when we used a ping and traceroute. To really understand how some attackers will hijack your computer you have to have an understanding of how network traffic behaves. Knowing how computer hardware, programming and networks have evolved over the years can help you better protect yourself from possible attacks. Marin G.A (2005) says “Typical network traffic consists of millions of packets per second being exchanged among hosts on a LAN and between hosts on the LAN and other hosts on the Internet that can be reached via routers. Network intrusions consist of packets that are introduced specifically to cause problems for any of the following reasons:

• to consume resources uselessly

• to interfere with any system resource's intended function, or

• to gain system knowledge that can be exploited in later attacks.”

Having knowledge of these types of things can help with having some basic common sense while online and can help keep your information and your computer safe. 

The good thing about network security is that it relies very little on the level of hardware you are using. Protecting your network is needed if you are using anything from a cheap Chromebook all the way to a high end flashy gaming computer and everything in the spectrum. Now for most of the attacks that require a lot of protection a basic home user won't have to have much more than a good antivirus, malware and maybe ransomware to keep themselves protected. Oh and a lot of common sense. The attacks basic users will have to deal with are things like social engineering and phishing type attacks. Ones where they are going after personal information not really to damage or use your computer in massive malicious attacks. 

Canavan J. (2001) stated that “An annual survey conducted jointly by the FBI and the Computer Security Institute (CSI) yielded some interesting numbers. The FBI/CSI survey received 521 responses from individuals in the computer security field. Almost across the board, the numbers were up for various incidents. 

• Thirty percent of the respondents reported an intrusion from an outside source. 

• Fifty-five percent of the respondents reported unauthorized intrusion by a source inside the organization. 

• Of those respondents that reported a loss, the average loss from the theft of proprietary information increased from $1,677,000 in 1998 to $1,847,652 in 1999” 

And over the last 20 years this type of information just gets worse. This is why protecting yourself and having some sort of network security is very important. From big businesses to the individual sitting at home shopping on Amazon. 

Network security touches a little bit of everything I have read about and learned over these past 5 weeks. But there are some that are much more than others. Understanding how to protect your network programming languages are not super important. You do not need to know how to write a program to install antivirus protection software. But understanding programming languages gives you a better understanding on how some attackers might use a program to gain control of your computer. Database and database management are just items that may need the protection of network security, but you really do not need too much knowledge of what to do and how to protect your network. 

Overall I have enjoyed the last 5 weeks getting a little deeper into the basics and the history of some of the items included in information technology. I look forward to the next 2 years getting into the classes related to my major and the information I am going to learn. I plan to dig more into network security on my own and learn what I can. 

References

Canavan, J. (2001). Fundamentals of Network Security. Google Books. Retrieved from https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=bSPsPmtSMboC&oi=fnd&pg=PR17&dq=network+security&ots=H9PM0Vpyaq&sig=MhNwKvyrnTrJD_Qd3ObVuIU1P1k#v=onepage&q=network%20security&f=false.

Marin, G. (2005). Network security basics - IEEE Journals & Magazine. Ieeexplore.ieee.org. Retrieved 15 December 2020, from https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/1556540/citations#citations.

Network Security

 

Computers in the Workplace

 In today's age the amount of careers out there that do not require at least a small bit of computer literacy is dwindling. Some careers that just 15-20 years ago did not require someone to ever touch a PC, now heavily rely on computers. Take working in a car dealership as a service writer or a technician for example. Back 15-20 years ago there may have been only a few computers throughout the entire dealership. Now just about every employee has a computer in their workspace. Service writers used to meet you at your car with a clipboard, paper and a pen. They would write everything down and submit everything via paper forms.Now a lot of them have tablets and are checking you in online. They type in everything and do almost their whole job on computer type items. Technicians would never touch a computer. They would log all their time with a time clock, an actual one hung on the wall or on paper repair order. Now for a lot of cars they are diagnosing the problems with a computer. They have to clock their time working on the cars on a computer. This means that to do even the basics such as clocking in someone now needs to have at least a small amount of computer literacy. And more jobs now need at least a moderate level of computer literacy. 

 

Car dealerships are one of the industries that are being taken over by computers. Over the next ten or so years, car dealership repair facilities will be taken over by computers. They will be used for more and more for diagnosing issues with people's vehicles. It is already getting to the point that people are dropping off and getting their cars repaired without ever face to face speaking with a service writer. 10 years from now that might be the norm. We may schedule the appointment, drop the car off, pay for the repair, and pick the vehicle up all from our computers or mobile devices. No human interactions at all through the whole process.

Traveling Through a Network

 I chose to ping and trace a couple sites in Australia, a news site and the Australian government site. First was the ping of the new site. 

All four packets were sent and received, there was no loss at all. So that means the site is up and running well. Had I had one or more packets that timed out it might mean that maybe the destination device could be offline, not configured right, or may just be powered off. 

I tried another ping test with the Australian government’s page. I received the same results all four packets sent and all four received. 

Even with these servers possibly being pretty much on the other side of the earth they still were sent and received rather quickly. 

Next was the traceroute command. This one will show all the nodes the packets hit on its way to its destination. This test can help identify if there may be an issue with an ISP’s server or network in between yourself and the website you are trying to connect to. Here the news sites traceroute was successful and shows where it went. 

But the Australian governments website shows some weird activity after a few hops on its trip. 

It shows there were some hops where it seems there was an issue and the requests timed out. But after a few hops that timed out it shows a successful hop at the end. Some people may look at this and think there was an issue and maybe some of the ISPs or maybe servers were having problems. But there could also be something like a firewall or maybe even a VPN that is blocking the traceroute at that hop. Seeing something like this does not immediately mean there is a problem. It just means that maybe some more research or troubleshooting might be needed. 

Documenting a Day

 

Microsoft has some very useful products included in their Office suite. Some of the most common are Word. Excel and PowerPoint. Microsoft Word is probably the most used program in the suite. Word is the most versatile program out of all of them if you were to ask me. With Word you can write school reports, write books, create lists, create storyboards and much much more. I myself use it almost every day to create something like a storyboard for my product team to follow to assist them in finding, duplicating and fixing issues. Word has many advantages such as its ease of use and multitude of options it has for you to customize your work. But that can be a double edged sword for people who are not very computer savvy, too much to choose from. Now Word differs from the other programs in Office like Excel. This program is used to create spreadsheets for entering, saving, categorizing, calculating or graphing information. I will admit I know how to use the very basics of excel currently and I only use it for entering information in my everyday life. But I am now excited to learn more about the more complex inner workings of Excel now that I have seen some of the beginner levels of how to manipulate the program. The major disadvantage of Excel is with as much as it can do it can be very daunting to learn. It has a very steep learning curve to it. But once you do learn how to use a majority of its functions it can be a very powerful tool for people needing to store and categorize information. This leaves the Office program PowerPoint. A program used to create presentations with slides, photos, animations and motion. This one is the program I have the least experience with. Mainly because my mind is a technical mind and not a creative mind. And PowerPoint is a tool for people who need to create interesting and visually entertaining presentations. To me that is the biggest disadvantage to the program, not being creative enough to make something that might not be visually appealing to others. If you are a creative type person the advantage to this program is you can use it to create very visually appealing presentations.

If I were to recommend what I thought was the most versatile and best program to use out of the bunch for documenting a day, I would say that would be Microsoft Word for most people. It gives you plenty of options to spice up the journal entry with photos, different text styles/sizes/colors, bulleted lists etc to make your journal entry a little more visually appealing. It is the one that I believe is the easiest to learn how to use and has the lowest learning curve.

Web/Mobile App Critique

 Samsung Smartthings, this is one of my favorite and most used mobile apps. I literally use this app every single day. This app is used to control smart home devices around your house such as light bulbs, TVs, thermostats, security devices and much more. It works with a large variety of different hardware items from many different manufacturers. Smartthings can be configured and set up a multitude of different ways. Such as when using door sensors combined with smart light bulbs you can set it up so when a door opens the light turns on. As well as when one of those door sensors are tripped to send a notification to a cell phone. This could be used by parents to know when a child gets home from school or from a friend's house or used in combination with security cameras for home security. With the amount of hardware items this app works with the possibilities are endless. Anyone looking to start building or to expand their smart home options really needs to look into what Samsung Smartthings can do for you. 

Even though I praise this app, give the app very high marks and use it every single day it still it’s not without its faults and things I think could have been done better or think that should be changed. The current design of the app is pretty straight forward. As you add an item you want to control to the app, a new block is added to the main screen for that item under the specific room you added it to. Nothing too fancy or spectacular looking. And there is my first part that I would like to see changed. There is a hint of customizability like being able to put the items on the main screen in the order you choose. But everything is the same color and size. There is no ability to change the backgrounds or any of the colors inside the app. Real customization is almost non-existent within the app. There are a couple places where you can change the background image, but I am almost never in those screens. I do not think it counts. 

Beyond the customization there are a couple of other improvements I would like to see. For instance, yes I can move the rooms around on the main screen up or down but everything in that room moves up or down with the other items in the room. I would really like to see a favorites option added. One where I can add some of my most used items like my TV, bedroom and living room lights. Something like this would make the app almost perfect. Another suggestion I would have for the developers of the app would be native voice control. Now the app can be controlled by voice with other apps such as Bixby or Google Home. But since it is using a 3rd party app when using voice control there is a slight delay before it will complete the action. Built in voice control I think would eliminate most if not all that delay. I think with more customization options, a favorites option and a native voice control option would make this app pretty much perfect to me.

Programming Languages

 

Due to having some friends that have their degrees in programming, having some knowledge of programming languages already and with the week 1 assignment being labeled Programming Languages I thought the website Scratch was going to be a lot different than it actually was. But after logging into the website and skimming over some of the instructions and some of the completed programs, I familiarized myself with it and how it works and I began to add and remove blocks. It took some trial and error to find out how each block will work with the next block and how fast the program will run and switch to the next block. I think the biggest issue I had was the timing between blocks. It took me a few times creating a chain of blocks, deleting them and starting over before I realized that some wait blocks needed to be added to really get something that is starting to resemble an animation. I know what I created is not the most appealing thing, but I was able to complete a chain of blocks.

 I thought that Scratch would introduce and let us play around with programming in something like Python or Java. From what I know those are two of the most popular languages people program with these days. Scratch I guess is like other programming languages because in Python, Java, or even down to machine language, you have to know what each of  the “blocks” or sections of code do. You need to understand how one part of your code or block works with the next.

 It was interesting learning about machine language and to see how programs work at a very basic level. Learning about the ones and zeros are used to run programs. I was not aware of assembly language and that it made it so machine language was a more human understandable level of programming. Learning about it and how it works with the high level programming I already knew of was very interesting. After being able to do some activities with each of these programming languages I think I am more partial to high level programming. I am actually excited to get a little deeper into how programming is done in things like Python.

 And finally here is the link to the program I was able to make on Scratch. https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/447535789