E - COMMERCE

Computer System Security

Dedicated Computers

It’s advisablezzz to use only one computer to store important, sensitive information for a business. When several computers hold different pieces of important data, the possibility of someone or something gaining access to the information increases.

Defragging

It is quite basic really but the consistency of this will help your computer and help your wallet as well because your Laptop or Desktop will see less trips from a computer technician. Over time with all the files on the hard drive things get fragmented, kind of like a disorganized office with papers everywhere, so it takes a little while for the computer to find the file that was selected. But when the computer is constantly defragmented or organized, it is easier for the computer to find the files you are looking for.

Deleting cookies

Cookies are little files that help you load your favorite websites a lot quicker and sometimes if entered into the wrong type of website they would put cookies on your system and send you to pop-up hell, and what type of websites usually send that type of cookies your way. Thats right porn sites..

But by deleting your cookies every couple of days can help keep your computer running the way it should instead of being bogged down by a ton of tiny files.

Turn your computer off and disconnect it from the network when not in use.

A hacker can not attack your computer when you are not connected to the network or your computer is off.

Make a boot disk on a CD or floppy disk.

In case your computer is damaged or compromised by a malicious program you will at least be able to boot your computer with the boot disk. You will need to make this boot disk before you experience a hostile breach of your system.

Install additional basic threat counter-measures
In addition to the three universally needed security software programs discussed above, there are a couple of other software installations which can be basic necessities for you, depending upon your particular computer usage.

While securing your wifi router will help keep hackers from getting access to your network, what about the potential for harm from people who already have legitimate access to your network? Having a firewall will certainly help, but it may not be enough.

One of the best ways to limit your exposure to intra-network harms is by prohibiting file sharing access from foreign machines. This is especially important if you are on a large scale or open wifi network, such as at a college library or in an office building, where you do not know who could be potentially browsing through your PC.

While not all freeware is bad, the old saying that nothing worthwhile in life is free is generally true when it comes to free internet downloads. Spammers often hide dangerous malware in computer programs that they then offer for free on the internet. When you choose to download these free programs, not knowing they are infected, you circumvent your firewall and anti-virus protection, and as a result often open yourself up a serious malware infestation.

Often hackers setup free, seemingly unprotected wifi connections in convenient locations such as apartment complexes and airports. While these unsecured connections might just be an individual who hasn't taken the time to protect his network, they might also be "honeypots", or traps set by hackers to snag your personal details

You connect to the internet through your internet browser. And whether you use Firefox, Internet Explorer, Opera or anything else, this is a point of major weakness in any computer's defenses. Hackers often target their attacks on your computer by focusing on flaws in browsers or their plug-ins and using drive-by downloads, to get your computer to download malware through the browser without you even knowing that something was downloaded. Because of this threat, web browser security upgrades are an important early step in your PC security overhaul.

1. What is IT Outsourcing?
• Outsourcing of IT processes - this may range from infrastructure, to software development, maintenance and support.
• Outsourcing - also a subcontracting a process, such as product design or manufacturing, to a third-party company

The concept of taking internal company functions and paying an outside firm to handle them. Outsourcing is done to save money, improve quality, or free company resources for other activities. Outsourcing was first done in the data-processing industry and has spread to areas, including telemessaging and call centers. Outsourcing is the wave of the future.

•The definition of outsourcing, basically started in the late 80's, is certainly correct. frequently, the exact operations (people, equipment, etc.) were sold to an outside party to run. So in data processing for example, the entire computer department became owned/employed by say IBM who ran it at a fixed cost, or all accounting functions were taken over by an outside firm for a specified fee. It was thought the original company didn't have to deal with employee issues, benefits, etc. I would dispute it is the wave of the future. Like many ideas the promise frequently didn't live up to the reality. Many companies are bringing back in house the outsourced functions after finding: Others don't operate any cheaper, and are frequently more expensive. The loss of direct control over who handles their affairs, the caring of those people about the company, and effect on other stakeholders, wasn't worth it and was even a detriment. (For example, many of the customer service centers outsourced to India are being brought back as customers are unsatisfied, opportunities to benefit the company in accounting processes weren't pursued - things like a new report was only done at a high direct cost, etc.)

2. Advantage and Disadvantage

Advantage
The benefits of Outsourcing are:
-Less capital expenditure - For example, by outsourcing information technology requirements, a company does not have to buy expensive hardware and software.
-Less management headache - For example, by outsourcing business process such as accounting, a company no longer has to hire and manage accounting personnel.
-Focus on core competencies - Outsourcing non-core related processes will allow a business to focus more on it's core competencies and strengths, giving it a competitive advantage.

Disadvantage
-Before deciding on outsourcing your company's business process, keep in mind the disadvantages of outsourcing:
-Less managerial control - It may be harder to manage the outsourcing service provider as compared to managing your own employees.
-Outsourcing company goes out of business - If your outsourcing service provide goes bankrupt or out of business, your company will have to quickly transition to a new service provider or take the process back in-house.
-May be more expensive - Sometimes it is cheaper to keep a process in-house as compared to outsourcing.
-Security and confidentiality issues - If your company is outsourcing business processes such as payroll, confidential information such as salary will be known to the outsourcing service provider.

3. Implication

•When the Dow Jones stock index recorded its largest single-day loss in late September 2008, many investors panicked. But billionaire investor Warren Buffet took a different stance – declaring the time was right to buy United States stocks. Buffet saw opportunity amidst chaos. That’s a lesson the electronics supply chain would do well to consider in current economic times, industry executives argue.

“When business starts to go bad, people panic. As a result, they tend to abandon their long-term strategic course, scrambling for short-term relief,” said Greg Frazier, executive vice president, supply chain business development worldwide, Avnet Electronics Marketing, Phoenix. For example, Frazier has recently fielded a flurry of calls from small and mid-size OEMs asking about outsourcing – customers that had previously decided that outsourcing was not the right fit for their company. And though under the right circumstances outsourcing can certainly provide an OEM with significant opportunities for savings, it is no panacea. “When they hear major OEMs like Sony announce plans to close 10 percent of its plants worldwide and shift more manufacturing to outsourcing, they question their (manufacturing) decisions,” Frazier noted.

Supply chain integrators like Avnet work closely with OEM customers to evaluate the pros and cons of outsourcing, said Frazier, who cautions companies to be particularly vigilant in their evaluation of suitability and financial stability of potential contract manufacturing partners. A recent report from electronics research firm iSuppli Corp. found that the global electronics contract manufacturing sector has begun to feel the impact of the slowdown.

Growth in 2008 for the contract manufacturing sector is estimated to be almost half of the 16.1 percent recorded in 2007. “As the end markets erode die to recession, the trickledown effect will cause less significant revenue growth for electronics supply chain participants, including electronic manufacturing service providers (EMS) and original design manufacturers (ODM),” said Adam Pick, principal analyst, EMS/ODM, for iSuppli, El Segundo, Calif.

OEMs must also carefully consider the regions in which they plan to outsource. “Everyone’s automatic assumption is that Asia is the go-to region. But when you factor in energy costs, which have only recently begun to come down again, and rising labor rates, local alternatives like Mexico can be very attractive,” said Frazier.

When selecting an EMS partner, it's also important to remember that one size does not fit all, said Craig LaBarge, chief executive officer and president of LaBarge, Inc., a St. Louis-based EMS provider. “Depending upon the nature of their business, OEMs will have different expectations for their outsourcing partners. Our core competencies are very different than those of a provider that's set up to produce large volumes of a consumer-oriented product, for example.”

LaBarge's niche is producing low volume, high-rate-of-change, high-complexity electronic assemblies, which may be used in applications ranging from military and aerospace to industrial and medical.

While the current economic environment presents an excellent opportunity for OEMs to further utilize outsourcing as a way to reduce their manufacturing and design costs, there are challenges and difficulties that come with this kind of change. “In our experience, the most successful situations are those where the customer understands that outsourcing is as much a cultural change as a strategic one for their organization,” LaBarge noted.

The bottom line is that even in the best of economic times, the decision to outsource should be made based on a careful cost/benefit analysis. “This is not a quick, short-term solution,” said Frazier. “Every OEM must consider their options based on their individual circumstances and goals, and not make a knee-jerk reaction based on what others are doing.”

1. What is facebook?
Facebook is a social networking website intended to connect friends, family, and business associates. It is the largest of the networking sites, with the runner up being MySpace. It began as a college networking website and has expanded to include anyone and everyone.
Facebook was founded by 2004 by Harvard student Mark Zuckerberg and originally called thefacebook. It was quickly successful on campus and expanded beyond Harvard into other Ivy League schools. With the phenomenon growing in popularity, Zuckerberg enlisted two other students, Duston Moskovitz and Chris Hughes, to assist. Within months, thefacebook became a nationwide college networking website.

2. What is the advantages and disadvantages of facebook?
Facebook - a popular name among those who are so into it. Individuals who have an account in Facebook are now using more of their time to socialize with other people amidst the distance and lack of time. And even if a community like Facebook serves numerous advantages, it also proves to have certain disadvantages as well. There are now series of improvements in the system just to make up with the shortcomings. Arguments regarding the different advantages and disadvantages of Facebook are stated below.

Advantages
• Allows user search for new and old friends
• Accessible to chosen universities having a high level of security
• Makes it less awkward when communicating with strangers or people you are not familiar with
• Love attraction - can be used as a dating service system
• Makes it easier to join groups having similar likes and dislikes
• Allows members to check students who are taking the same class, living within the same area, or coming from the same academy

Disadvantages
• Overcrowding
• Weakening long distance relationship
• Unsupported by physical adjacency
• Contributes wide-range procrastination
• Rampant addiction
• Stalking is possible
• Acquaintances be labeled as friends

3. What are the characteristic of facebook? Why people engage in this site?
• Facebook doesn’t begin the conversation, it enhances it
• They are non-interruptive ,
• They integrate multiple social mediums ,
• They don’t strive for 1:1 communication, but they are active ,
• They use Facebook to create evangelists

Poeple are engage in facebook because it is famus easy to use and very friendly to use for any people and everywhere in the world people are much attracted because of friends are always socializing in the internet speacialy when they are far and at home.
4. Can you use facebook in E-commece? How & Why?
Between music, virtual gifting, gaming and retail goods, Facebook is turning into a virtual online mall of sorts. E-commerce app is the ability to allow shoppers to carry their goods with them across thousands of Payvment-powered storefronts on Facebook. It makes shopping on Facebook almost like shopping at Target, where you can visit multiple departments and buy all of your diverse purchases at once. Users can also add comments and reviews to Payvment-enabled storefronts.

As retailers flock to Facebook for both brand awareness and e-commerce, Payyvment’s free offerings are attractive because the platform is a one-stop shop for both efforts. However, Payvment isn’t the first to implement this strategy; 1-800-Flowers started offering discounts to users who became fans of its page last July. The startup, which just raised $1.2 million in funding, faces competition from BigCommerce, Alvenda and others.

5. How important facebook in the society today?
In terms of creating a social network, the Facebook generation is likely to see the melding of online friends with friends in the local area as a natural part of developing a well-rounded circle of acquaintances. The online social network may or may not overlap with the local group of friends, but it will be considered just as important in terms of encouragement, support, and the exchange of knowledge. Tools built into sites such as Facebook allow users to convey emotions, share data, and interact in ways that are much more efficient than earlier online efforts. With visual, verbal, and oral capabilities now common on these sites, the interaction is very similar to a face-to-face conversation.

IO(Chef Information Officer)

The chief information officer (CIO), or information technology (IT) director, is a job title commonly given to the most senior executive in an enterprise responsible for the information technology and computer systems that support enterprise goals. The CIO typically reports to the chief executive officer, chief operations officer or chief financial officer. In military organizations, they report to the commanding officer.

Global Warming

Global warming is the increase in the average temperature of Earth's near-surface air and oceans since the mid-20th century and its projected continuation. Most of the observed temperature increase since the middle of the 20th century was caused by increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases, which results from human activity such as fossil fuel burning and deforestation. Global dimming, a result of increasing concentrations of atmospheric aerosols that block sunlight from reaching the surface, has partially countered the effects of greenhouse gas induced warming.

Effect Of Computers

The state of knowledge of global warming will be presented and two aspects examined: observational evidence and a review of the state of computer modeling of climate change due to anthropogenic increases in greenhouse gases. Observational evidence, indeed, shows global warming, but it is difficult to prove that the changes are unequivocally due to the greenhouse-gas effect. Although observational measurements of global warming are subject to "correction," researchers are showing consistent patterns in their interpretation of the data. Since the 1960s, climate scientists have been making their computer models of the climate system more realistic. Models started as atmospheric models and, through the addition of oceans, surface hydrology, and sea-ice components, they then became climate-system models. Because of computer limitations and the limited understanding of the degree of interaction of the various components, present models require substantial simplification. Nevertheless, in their present state of development climate models can reproduce most of the observed large-scale features of the real system, such as wind, temperature, precipitation, ocean current, and sea-ice distribution. The use of supercomputers to advance the spatial resolution and realism of Earth-system models will also be discussed.

Effect of Computers in a Certain Company and in Our Planet

As our technology grows and more people using computers and it can cause so much heat to our planet. In any company computers are more important. Data center in a company is used to facilitate computer systems and associated components, such as telecommunications and storage systems. It generally includes redundant or backup power supplies, redundant data communications connections, environmental controls (e.g., air conditioning, fire suppression) and security devices. IT department in a company is a major source of negative environmental impacts. The best way to reduce heat in our planet is to less consume of power because the IT is the biggest consumer of power.

According to Senior Editor Stephanie writes that Data Centers consume between 1.5% and 3% of all the power generated annualy in the United States. A certain Company called VistaPrint, where the IT departments does manage its data center facilities, discovered that its electric bill was projected to skyrocket if the comapny, which sells custom printed products online grew as predicted. Data Centers of VistaPrints hosted by "Cable and Wireless". The use of "hydropower" provides a renewable lower-emmisions of source electricity. The company replace its blade servers with virtul machines that use more server capacity and consume less power.

Using efficient coolong systems, or simply sealing holesin your data center's floor, can reduce energy consumption and ultimately , greenhous gas emmission.

Data Center Server that Consume Less Energy

Startup server maker SeaMicro today unveiled a new low-power server that promises to slash power costs for companies running large Internet services and cloud computing platforms. SeaMicro’s multi-core x86 server runs on Intel’s low-power Atom chips, whose energy efficiency has made them the processor of choice for many mobile phones and laptops.


The Green Advantage

Generally, the shift to green IT is of multiple benefits. Those benefits can positively affect your return of investment making the switch all worth it. And just what are those benefits?


•First and foremost, green IT is a help to the environment. The use of them reduces the already big pile of e-waste. For instance, a simple move of replacing fluorescent bulbs with energy-efficient lights will lessen the number of burnt bulbs dumped into landfills. How? Well, high-efficiency light bulbs tend to last longer which means they require lesser replacements.

•Green IT helps you save money. Most eco-friendly technology devices are energy- efficient which means that they consume lesser energy. And in a business, that translates to less electricity to pay for.

•The first two benefits leads to this third benefit. This refers to personal fulfillment. Knowing that you have helped save the planet while earning something out of it is a very wise move that creates a sense of nobility and fulfillment.

Google is a highly successful internet business. Recently they have broaden their scope with multitude new tool. Research Google business model and answer the following questions below. You may add additional information not included in this question.

1. Who are their competitors?

We face competition in every aspect of our rapidly evolving business, particularly from other companies that seek to connect people with online information and provide them with relevant advertising. Currently we consider our primary competitors to be Microsoft and Yahoo.

A year ago, Google named just two competitors -- Microsoft and Yahoo -- in its annual report to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. This year, Google lists 10 competitors by name in its recently filed 10-K report for 2009, including social sites Facebook, Twitter, and Yelp; and specialty search engines that dive deep into a specific category, such as travel site Kayak and health inquiry site WebMD.

With the explosive growth of social networks acting as the door to people's online world, Google does face increased competition. But with the Mountain View, Calif.-based search giant facing a surge of antitrust and anticompetition lawsuits and allegations in the U.S. and Europe, observers and critics say the change shows Google's pressing need to make the case to regulators that it has viable competitors, and has not become too dominant an Internet force.

"There aren't a flood of new companies that have entered the market that are suddenly Google competitors that weren't there last year, but they are calling them out in a more direct way," said Greg Sterling, principal of Sterling Market Intelligence, adding that if regulators see Google as a company without legitimate competition, "that perception is a big problem for them politically."

Nevertheless, he said the rapid growth of Facebook and Twitter during 2009, and the effectiveness of specialty search engines like job site Monster.com, show that Google's "competition is broader than simply Yahoo and (Microsoft's search engine) Bing."

• Google Lively was a web-based virtual environment that allowed as many as 20 people to sit in a virtual room and chat with each other. The offering debuted in July 2008 only to have Google pull the plug a mere four months later.

• Google Print Ads was dropped earlier this year after the company’s vision of bringing web-like automation to the world of traditional media failed to materialize. The effort went belly-up just three weeks before the death of Google Audio Ads, which ended a three-year run in February after the company failed to gain traction in the radio ad game.

• Google Answers spent a year in beta before a full-blown launch in May 2003, but the effort to create a fee-based knowledge market never gained much traction outside a small base of users and the service was dropped in late 2006.

• The social networking site Orkut launched early in 2004 as an independent project of noted Google developer Orkut Büyükkökten and has caught fire in Brazil, a market that accounts for roughly 50 percent of its membership. The site reportedly claims roughly 100 million users, which is impressive, but Google can’t be happy that its effort is virtually unknown in Europe and North America while Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace and others have gained such impressive traction.

• Google Catalog Search debuted in 2001 as a way for consumers to go online to check out their favorite print catalogs that had been scanned and uploaded. Of course, retailers were already taking their inventories online themselves, and the effort was put to rest earlier this year.

• Google Health was released as a beta test in May 2008, but the service has yet to find much of an audience among insurers or the general public. Which may have something to do with the combination of the words “health” and “beta test.”

• The location-based service Dodgeball was shut down in 2009 after Google had acquired it four years earlier, and while Google continues to operate Jaiku – a social networking service it picked up in 2007 — the company has effectively abandoned the project. The technologies and expertise from both startups is being incorporated into other Google businesses and projects, however.

Needless to say, it all adds up to a lot of Google on the brain. Google, at the moment, is held up as the gold standard of software companies. They have achieved massive success and are the company almost every developer wants to work for. Ask someone in the software industry which company they want to emulate and they will likely say Google.

Obviously, if it was easy to emulate Google, everyone would have done it or would be doing it by now. The more I think about Google, the more and more I think it is going to be impossible to emulate them. Certainly you can steal some of their ideas and what they’ve pioneered and put it to use in your company, but outright copying Google is going to be near impossible.

Having touched on Google’s corporate culture, let’s look at something else that makes Google even more unique: how it grows.

One thing that has become evident to me is that Google grows in an organic fashion, unlike any other company I know of. Google develops tools that are internally useful and then releases them to the world. Google does not develop products to sell to the world. Google does not have external contracts, at least in the traditional sense, as far as I can tell.

Let me elaborate on this. Google is obviously best known for search and for ads associated with search. This is in essence Google’s one true product. It is the one feature Google developed for the outside world. When Google developed search it was no different from a small company. It is what Google has done since then that makes Google different.