Homework #3

10 Security Trends To Watch In 2012: By Matthew J. Schwartz: January 17, 2012

            This article mainly talked about the security changes that we will most likely see in 2012.  A lot of these problems were discussed in our last class.  We talked about hacking, phishing, cyber espionage and malware in our last class, which were all topics in the article as security issues.  Something that I thought was interesting was how they talked about more protection for cell phones.  Cell phones usually contain a lot of personal information on them and are vulnerable to attack or getting hacked.  Even if they aren’t under attack you could easily just lose it.  In the article they talked about a cell phone tracking system and something that could erase the data in a cell phone from anywhere.  This could prevent people from using private information on your cell phone.  Another thing that grabbed my attention was the risk of social networks.  Hackers usually set up fake paypal accounts that people use and put their valuable information in.  This caught my attention because a few months ago I got a virus that crashed my whole laptop and the only thing I could bring up was something for google chrome and it wanted me to buy something.  It looked real and authentic but I knew something was wrong because it was the only thing I could do so I didn’t fall for it and got it fixed. The information on spear-phishing was also interesting.  It said it is impossible to block these attacks because a good amount of them are employees opening emails from unknown sources. I think every company should educate employees on subjects like this to reduce the chance of them opening it.  I think they should make this part of their training because it isn’t worth the damage if the company’s whole system gets infected by a virus or something.  I learned the dangers that could potentially happen on the web, but more importantly I learned how to avoid them.  Cyber-attacks are growing and I think will only continue to grow so it is important to handle them in the safest way possible.    

      

Homework #3

FBI To Get More Cyber Crime Agents. December 20th, 2011Information Week

This article caught my eye right from the beginning because I am potentially interested in going into the FBI later in life. While reading the article I was very interested to see what the up and coming fields in the FBI were. Although they did request a minor budget increase for white collar crime and child exploitation cases the FBI's main focus this year is hiring more cybercrime investigators. The FBI is stressing how important the 13% pay increase, amounting to $166.5 million, for cyber investigators really is. As quoted "the FBI is in a unique position to counter cyber threats, as it is the only agency with the statutory authority, expertise, and ability to combine counterterrorism, counterintelligence, and criminal resources to neutralize, mitigate, and disrupt illegal computer-supported operations domestically." This quote really stuck with me while reading the article because it is now being brought to the average person’s attention that terrorism and counterintelligence issues are now being brought to the attention of people on the internet. The FBI would ideally like to hire about 14 new people to fill the positions with an intense training program that they would allot $5 million to. Currently the FBI has 1,000 specially trained cyber agents, analysts, and digital forensic examiners. Throughout this article they remained to the main subject stressing how the internet is going to become more and more of an issue and that the increase in pay now is still leaving them on the low level compared to where they would ideally like to be. This leaves me to thinking I should become an IT minor if I want any chance in the FBI! In class we talked about things such as people identities being stolen through channels when they may order something off of an insecure website that does not encrypt their information and that is an example that I was thinking of when reading this as well. It could be an issue for the U.S. government in a much bigger way though. If they are sharing important information through channels that are intercepted and the wrong person gets their hands of the files that could lead to major problems for the people of the U.S. as well.

HW #3

          In the Article "Google Launches Marketing Campaign on Security and Privacy is about how google has launched a multi-million dollar advertising blits to help with the security for users own personal information. As stated in the article "The campaign is clearly geared towards the most digital illiterate, with definitions for things like "cookies," "malware," and "two-step authentication.""

        This was all done because "the search giant has been blasted by journalists, security experts, politicians, and privacy watchdogs for violating, sometimes unlawfully, its users' online privacy." another big mistake that Google made was that they "accidentally exposed the contacts of its Gmail users when it launched the now now-defunct Google Buzz social networking site back in 2010, resulting in a class action lawsuit and Federal Trade Commission settlements."  This is because they are the largest search engine company and it is going to have problems so this is why they are having a multi-million dollar outlook on their security and privacy sections of their company so it is safe for both them as well as their users, which is most of the world.

As stated in the article that as of right now Google's grade for privacy protection at the moment would be a D PLUS. I believe that because Google is starting to invest millions of dollars into its Security and Privacy parts of their company that we will see an eventual turn around in this section of the company. Being safe as a company and being able to protect their users is something that they should have worried about in the past, but at least they are starting to deal with it now before it gets any worse.

For Mobile Commerce: The Year Of Convergence And Context (HW3)

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1/16/2012 @ 8:52PM 2,987 views

For Mobile Commerce: The Year of Convergence and Context

            In this article John Caron a senior Vice President of Marketing at Modiv Media, a mobile shopper marketing company based in Quincy, Mass., explains the difference between mobile     e-commerce, mobile payment, and mobile commerce (in stores) a few comments from the writer about the situation is that consumers have not been buying billions of dollars of products via mobile commerce. The majority of purchases, 90% or more, have actually been mobile related e-commerce.  Not mobile commerce. There is a difference. While it might be fine, it’s very important for seller’s to recognize the difference because it’s going to change quickly. A brief description of each three are:

·         Mobile e-commerce: Transacting with an e=commerce site via a mobile device. Examples include: eBay mobile, Amazon mobile, the Tesco app in Korea, and the majority of mobile commerce “apps.”

·         Mobile payment: Payment using the Smartphone as the conduit. Examples include: Google Wallet, PayPal, and LevelUp.

·         Mobile commerce (in-store): The ability to purchase physical goods in the store via an app that interacts with the store’s point-of-sale system (and bypass the checkout process). Examples include SCAN IT! Mobile from Stop & Shop, Starbucks Card Mobile app, and Chipotle Mobile Ordering App.

These three definitions I got right off the article. M-commerce would have to be the highest of the three because you’re actually interacting with the customers face to face. They physicality of the customer coming in and touching and seeing the device in person, it’s more likely he/she will be spend their money right then in there. M-commerce is meant to influence the customer and boost them into buying something. Overall things are changing in how we purchase items, either it be in stores or over our mobile devices. Stores and other seller’s have to recognize this and accommodate to what the buyer’s needs are. Otherwise the buyers will go somewhere else.

HW #3

Review Done by Jarred Stuczynski

“FBI to Get More Cyber Crime Agents”

December 20, 2011

Article written by Matthew Schwartz

This article related to cyber protection goes into depth concerning cyber safety in the United States. According to the draft of the Departments of Commerce and Justice, and Science, and Related Agencies Appropriations Bill for 2012 the FBI will be seeing an increased funding for a number of different types of investigations including, computer intrusions and cyber investigations. This is extremely important for the FBI to receive because “the FBI is in a unique position to counter cyber threats, as it is the only agency with the statutory authority, expertise, and ability to combine counterterrorism, counterintelligence, and criminal resources to neutralize, mitigate, and disrupt illegal computer-supported operations domestically," according to the House committee's appropriations bill. The FBI will be granted its $166.5 million, which is an increase of 13% from 2011. This increase in funding will result in 42 new positions, including 14 new special agents with cyber expertise. The FBI has a total of 30,000 people in cyber protection. The FBI now has cyber squads in all of its 56 offices across the country. As well as 1,000 trained cyber agents, analysts, and digital forensic examiners. There will also be an additional $5 million set aside for training new FBI agents to help in its field of cyber safety. Finally although it has not been done yet, the FBI is being encouraged to expand its FBI cyber agents into eastern European police services. This would be a good idea for the FBI because a lot of the cyber threats that have occurred in the United States over the years have been traced back to Eastern Europe.

            I think that an increase in funding for the FBI’s cyber protection program is a good investment to make. With technology rapidly increasing and the business world becoming more and more popular over the internet, cyber safety for U.S. companies and government facilities is extremely important. If information gets in the hands of the wrong person/people this could be extremely harmful and could cause a serious threat to the United States.

Homework Number 3

The article I selected to read, pertained to Google spending millions of dollars on marketing for security and privacy. It is very common for fraud and other acts of malicious behavior to occur online. One of the most common viruses I have seen are pop-up programs informing you that your computer has a virus. Then you are prompted to purchase what is recommended as antivirus to solve the problem. However, the ad itself is the virus, and people who aren't familiar with these begin entering their credit card information. Thus resulting in identity fraud and potential credit score discrepancies.

Google's prior reputation when it comes to protecting the information of its users is not one to be proud of.   In 2010, Google exposed the information of all their users who had Gmail Accounts. For those who are not familiar with Google, Gmail is their mail service that you can create and have e-mails directed there.

The ad's in which Google are paying for their campaign direct users to page that contains tips and ways in staying safe on the internet. I feel that this is a great investment opportunity for Google, because with their prior reputation for securing users personal information, this can help to rebuild their reputation.

In my winter intersession class this past winter, we worked a lot with Google. For example, we used Google Analytics. At the time, I did not know what this was, but learned that if you own a website, through Google Analytics you can monitor your demographics, tendencies, page views and so on. I was always under the assumption that Google was just another search engine no different than Yahoo or Bing.   This was not the case though, because Google has many features that aren't highly advertised.

Overall, I strongly feel that Google is genuine when it comes to their policies and procedures. Granted the situation in 2010 was a blow to the company. However last year, the company ran a similar campaign to save energy. Aside from 2010, with the continuous steps towards providing a service that can help inform people, Google's reputation will be back to where it originally was.

http://securitywatch.pcmag.com/privacy/292931-google-launches-marketing-campaign-on-security-and-privacy

Review done by Oliver Allen

Google Launches Marketing Campaign on Security and Privacy

January 17^th, 2012

Article by Sara Yin

Summary:

Google has presented a new feature to help the Internet run safer. The article I read about is “Google Launches Marketing Campaign on Security and Privacy” by Sara Yin in which Google establishes its new plan to protect the search engine. This article talks about the change in Google’s ideas and wants for protecting the countries identities and personal information from the search engine. Google will come out with a new search protection on Google, alone with other ways to safely browse the Internet from Google itself. With hackers all over accessing information from Google, with new advances, people will be protected from hackers and other stalker type personalities. Although this will cause Google to lose millions upon millions of dollars it will help restore its tarnished status among the protection of Internet users. They are also creating a Wi-Fi opt out system so that people cannot be tracked by location. By illuminating this, people will not be able to be located when searching on Google, allowing hackers and virus creators to find it more difficult to interfere with everyday individuals. The Internet world will be safer as long as Google helps protect the people themselves, the search engine in strong enough to create a powerful protector of identity and theft. The ads that Google created will help those who know less about the Internet due to the definition assistant with vocabulary such as “Malware”, “Cookies” and “Two-step authentication”.  These ads are said to run for several weeks all over the media world, from Newspapers to Subways to many other parts of the media world.  The cost of these ads will add to the already staggering price of just designing the software to help protect the search engine and those who use it.