Monday, January 27, 2020

Cybercrime Threat To E Commerce Information Technology Essay

Cybercrime Threat To E Commerce Information Technology Essay The growth of technology and the globalization of internet communication commerce have impacted significantly the way in which computer crimes are committed. However the widespread use of technology the internet for business transactions communications have exposed the industry to an increasing rate of cybercrime attacks. In this essay we analyze the security threats to e-commerce and look into the implications of cybercrime to online business. This essay also gives an overview of threat activity trends of the past years 2008-2009. Introduction Every era of business has yield new approaches and new ways of doing business. The internet has completely changed the way of doing business that the rules laid for corporate strategy from last 50 years have began to collapse. The role of internet has been vital and can be compared to that of the telephone. It is a technique for people to communicate with each other, a way for consumers to communicate with a service company without any human interference. The rapid growth of internet has opened many opportunities in every field in our daily life be it leisure, business, sports or education. However, internet also has its own disadvantages. One of the major disadvantages is cyber crime. It can be defined as illegal activity committed on the internet. There are several illegal activities that computer criminals carry out, i.e. e-mail spying, credit card fraud, spams, software piracy and others. In recent times companies have increasingly combine their systems with their vendors, suppliers customers. Thus, the risks they face increases. Companies prefer to shift toward self-service system within and among companies where they can get enormous opportunities for cost savings and other efficiencies in human resources, inventory, or billing. On the other side, this system makes the host companies increasingly vulnerable to security. Companies have become more conscious of maintaining their competitiveness and market leadership by giving more preference to e-commerce i.e. electronic way of doing business. The complexity of multinational companies, their reliance on technology, and the buildup interconnectivity among different system departments have led to the emergence of electronic-business: these are rapidly evolving developments that create widespread opportunities for theft, fraud, and other forms of exploitation by offenders both outside and inside and companies. The Definition of E-Commerce E-commerce deals with buying and selling of goods services by electronic means such as internet or other computer networks. E-commerce has captured the excitement and focus of todays emerging business. It is a paperless exchange of business information using electronic data interchange (EDI), electronic mail, electronic magazines, fax transmission and online fund transfer. It refers to online shopping, stock bond transactions, selling of software products, downloading (software, music, documents, applications etc) business to business transactions. Another example of e-commerce would be online banking, i.e. online bill payments, buying stocks, transferring funds from one account to another, and initiating wire payment to another country. Online shopping is widely famous as a part of e-commerce. Another hit business in the making over the vast world of internet is online shopping. This is done by companies that have the capacity to offer products to the public even if there are no actual shopping malls. Basically, the concept of e-commerce is all about using the internet to do business better and faster. Customers are given controlled access to company system and thus letting people serve themselves. As a result organizations are making a genuine online effort in integrating their website with the heart of business. In both regular commerce and e-commerce companies are always on the lookout for attracting potential buyers to their place of business. This is demonstrated by the organizations marketing tactics including advertising, word of mouth publicity etc. A companys website allows customers to find a good or service they desire. The customers pay accordingly and the product or service arrives at their doorstep a few days later. At such a high level of convenience more and more people are deserting high street shops to buy things on the Internet. This online shopping is essentially referred to be e-commerce. E-commerce sites mostly function in the same manner. Here customers search through lists and descriptions of products; they add items that they want to their Shopping Cart; they can remove unwanted items from their basket at any time; when they want to confirm their order, they click on a Checkout button; they must then enter their credit card details to pay for their order. Customers are then moved to a secure location to carry out online purchasing of their purchased order. To complete the transaction, they need to supply their shipping address and credit card number. E-commerce transactions generally take place through secure electronic connections and special merchant accounts for accepting payments. These are the fundamental processes of online shopping and online purchasing. Basically, the concept of e-commerce is all about using the internet to do business better and faster. The Definition of Cyber Crime Cyber crime can be defined as a crime committed over the internet by using computer as a tool or as a target. It is an illegal act committed by deception or misrepresentation by someone having a distinctive professional technical skill for the purpose of personal or professional gain or to gain an unfair advantage over other person. The rapid evolution of technology and internet among common masses has resulted in the growth of cyber crime. As business grows systems are becoming more and more sophisticated with less human interventions, although it is very important to monitor individual behaviors. Vulnerability to economic crime grows as organizations are still dependent on individuals as systems do not directly control. Lack of security enables criminals to disrupt the e-business process in several ways. Cyber criminals can be involved in denial of service attacks, fraudulent online applications for bank loans, extracting credit card information for resale or buying of more products etc. As internet has enabled doing business beyond or without borders it has become increasingly difficult to prevent investigate crimes. Like traditional crime, cybercrime can take many forms and can occur nearly anytime or anyplace. The only difference between traditional crime and cybercrime is that in cybercrime, computer or computer network are used to complete the crime, or is the target of the crime. The computer or device may be the agent of the crime, the co-coordinator of the crime, or the aim of the crime. The crime may take place on an individual computer or in addition to computers at other locations. Criminals committing cybercrime use a number of methods, depending on their skill-set and their goal. Cybercrime is, after all, merely crime with some sort of computer or cyber aspect. E-commerce threats The most significant issues of E-commerce threat are outlined as follows. Malware E-commerce operators have to be careful about worms, viruses other malicious software as they possess biggest threat to network systems. An infected system may affect the operations of the entire business services and may result in a revenue loss and may also possess the possible chances of identity thefts which happen to be of a greater concerned through customers perspective. An example of this was the Bugbear worm in September 2002; it had a keystroke logging capabilities which exposed the risk of capturing users personal details if a transaction was initiated from the infected system. A total of 28940 different malicious and potentially unwanted programs were detected on users computers in August 09. That is an increase of more than 8,000 on Julys figures and points to a significant increase in the number of in-the-wild threats. http://www.kaspersky.com/news?id=207575678 Denial-of-Service (DOS) It is the intentional breakage or blocking of legitimate access by unauthorized user by flooding the victim site with unwanted traffic. Perpetrators of DoS attacks typically target sites or services hosted on high-profile  web servers  such as banks,  credit card  payment gateways, and even  root name servers.  The most recent example was on 6th August 09 when millions of tweeter users were silenced by the DOS attacks which ultimately led to shutdown of Twitter for hours. Not only was the site down, but client applications that depend on the Twitter API could also not connect to the service, creating a complete Twitter blackout. Defacement An organizations website represents its E-business processes. It is always meant to convey the accurate information and to give the best impression to its users. Hence it is important to protect the site from vandalism unauthorized alteration of its content. Defacement have posed a significant threat to websites running unpatched Web server software, such websites have become a relatively easy target even for amateur hackers. The potential impact for an E-business could be greater for a site that is purely providing information services. For example, encountering a defaced site has the potential to cause lasting damages to the customers impression of the business, and in particular to the perception of its security. Datastreaming Datastreaming involves bulk theft of personal data (credit card details an individual) or groups hacking into specific systems which explicitly targets the E-commerce domain.

Sunday, January 19, 2020

The Cooper Union College

Morphosis is an architectural firm in California which was founded in 1972 by Thom Mayne. Morphosis has to its credit worldwide projects which include educational, residential, commercial and huge urban projects. Morphosis is the result of a combined effort of more than 40 professionals, with each of them working simultaneously to give state of the art designs, which are not only unique but also innovative. They are not only specialists in designing buildings but also experts in designing unique furniture and various accessories and other functional objects. The firm has more than 50 awards to its credit and received many other honors. The founder of this firm Thom Mayne did his Bachelors in Architecture from the University of South California and a Masters from the Harvard University, the Southern California Institute of Architecture was founded by him. Thom Mayne also won the Pritzker Architecture Prize for the year 2005, which is the topmost award in the field of architecture. Some of the other well known projects that the firm has worked on are the International Elementary School in Long Beach, California, the Diamond Ranch High School in Pomona, California, the Hypo Alpe-Adria Center in Klagenfurt, Austria and the Graduate House at the University of Toronto in Ontario, Canada. The latest project that the firm is currently working on is the new academic building for the Cooper Union Colleges, in New York, which is going to house the Albert Nerken School of Engineering, and which is expected to be completed by 2008. All eyes are on this project, as the transparent faà §ade of the building is already attracting a lot of people, and this is also supposed to be the first green academic building in New York. The whole project will be coming up in a site area of 18,000 sq ft., and the project size was estimated to be around 180,000 sq ft. The building would include various facilities which include approximately 15,000 sq.ft of classrooms, 40,000 sq.ft of laboratories, 15,000 sq.ft of administrative and faculty offices, 4,000 sq.ft of centralized computer center other than a 200-seater auditorium, an exhibition gallery, lounge and multi purpose space, Art Teaching Studios and workspaces and student activity spaces. The new building is visualized as a vertical element which has a semi-transparent faà §ade that speaks clearly of the classrooms, laboratory and art studio spaces. The whole building is planned around a centrally located atrium, which goes all the way up to the height of the building. The whole building is connected with sky bridges and has many corridors with a clear view of the Foundation Building to the left. The whole building is designed for energy efficiency, sustainability and environment friendly. The technology used to build the building will not only conserve energy but also increase its effectiveness. The semi-transparent screen used on the outside of the building, helps keep the interiors cool in summer and warm in winter. The whole building is equipped with carbon dioxide detectors which can detect if the room is occupied or not, and will automatically dim the lights in those rooms which are not occupied, thus saving energy and electricity costs. The roof is also filled with greenery which does not require much maintenance, therefore keeping the building cool. The entire building is filled with lots of natural ventilation, which keeps the building airy and pleasant. This building is a perfect example of modern contemporary architecture with all modern amenities including the label of the first green building in New York. This project is a good example of the excellent design methodology and creative thinking of the whole design team of Morphosis. All the above features of the Cooper Union building is evidence enough of the aesthetic and creative sense of Morphosis. The fact that the firm has received so many awards shows the respect people have towards good design and architecture. Works Cited New Academic Building, Cooper Union,   Architecture-Page, 12 December 2007. Green Features, The Cooper Union Builds, 12 December 2007, < http://www.cooper.edu/cubuilds/green.html>. American Institute of Architects Announces Two Firm of the Year Recipients;   RATCLIFF and Morphosis Architectural Firms Take Top Honors, Find Articles, 12 December 2007, .                                 

Saturday, January 11, 2020

Economics Effects of Monopoly.Docx Uploaded Successfully

Economics effects of monopoly. In pure monopoly, a monopolist will charge a higher price compared to the firms in purely competitive industry. They also sell a smaller level of output than the firms that involve in pure competition. Compared to pure competition, monopoly is inefficient in both productive and allocative efficiency. In purely competitive industry, the entry and exit of the firms will ensure that the P = MC + min. ATC. However, for pure monopoly industry there is no entry and exit of firms as it is conquer by only one party.The marginal revenue (MR) curve lies below the demand and the produces output where MR = MC, so, the price exceeds the marginal costs (MC) and also exceeds the lowest average total cost (ATC). Pure Competition Pure Monopoly Price Price Quantity Quantity Pc D D Qc S = MC Pc MC Qc MR Qm Pm P = MC = min. ATC MR = MC Figure [ 1 ]: Comparison of pure competition and pure monopoly. Looking at the chosen firm which is TNB, as In pure monopoly, there is an e fficiency loss which is called dead weight loss (also known as excess burden and allocative efficiency).This situation occurs because the sum of consumer surplus + producer surplus is less than the maximum. In other words, this situation occurs either because of the people who have more marginal benefit than marginal cost are not buying the product, or those who have more marginal cost than marginal benefit are buying the product. Income transfer Monopoly wills increases income inequality because the profits are not equally distributed. Monopoly will cause the transfer of income from consumers to the stockholders who own monopoly.This can be seen through levy of â€Å"private tax† on consumers. The owners will gain benefit at the expense of consumers. Cost complications In pure monopoly, the costs may vary because of four factors: 1. Economies of scale According to www. bized. co. uk , economies of scale is the advantages of large scale production that result in lower unit (a verage) costs (cost per unit). Some firms reach large economies of scale because of specialized input, the spreading of product developing costs, simultaneous consumption and network effects.Simultaneous consumption is the ability of product to satisfy a big numbers of consumers at the same time and network effects are increase of value of product to each consumer. 2. X-Inefficiency X-Ineffiency is when the firms produce level of output that is higher than the lowest ATC. X-Inefficiency occurs due to poor management decisions, principal agent problem, poor worker motivation or ineffective supervision as the results of reliance on â€Å"rules of thumb† instead of real costs or revenue decision. Figure [ 2 ]: X-Inefficiency 3. Rent seeking expenditures

Thursday, January 2, 2020

Developmental Milestones Physical, Cognitive, Social,...

A1: Developmental milestones describe physical skills or behaviors observed in children as they grow and develop at certain ages.1 These milestones include physical (gross and fine motor), cognitive, social, emotional, language and nonverbal communication skills. To ensure that children meet these developmental milestones, parents, early childhood and school teachers, general practitioners and pediatricians use checklists as a guide to ensure that children are roughly â€Å"on track† for their age.2 Developmental milestones are useful to highlight any areas in which a child might be delayed as early detection and intervention is essential in minimizing the effects of developmental â€Å"hiccups†.3 An example of a developmental milestone is†¦show more content†¦Teratogens such as alcohol and tobacco could potentially affect normal fetal developmental causing developmental disorders and diseases.5,6 Pregnant women who drink alcohol put their child at risk for fetal alcohol syndrome. This is because alcohol can quickly cross the placenta, entering the fetal bloodstream. Fetal Alcohol Syndrome (FAS) is a lifelong condition which significantly affects the development of a baby’s brain and central nervous system.7 The spectrum of this syndrome depends on the quantity of alcohol consumed during the period of pregnancy. Babies born with FAS may have some or all of the physical facial characteristics including a thin upper lip, smooth, wide philtrum and small eye openings depending on the period of exposure to alcohol. Since babies with FAS are usually born with low birth weight, some children may have defects in the heart or suffer anomalies to the ears, liver, eyes or joints.8 Many infants with FAS are diagnosed with Sensory Integration Disorder and Central Auditory Processing Disorder. The characteristic features of children with FAS are usually noticed when around school ag e when behavioral and learning difficulties become more evident. 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