Secure Email

I haven't received a response from the professor yet because I sent the email so late this evening, but I am determined to finish as much as possible tonight.

http://www.management-zone.com/technology-sarbanes.html

I found an interesting article that talked about the new need for email security in publicly traded companies. Ever since the passing the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 all publicly traded companies have been beat down by the government in every way imaginable. One of the ways that our politicians felt that they could leach a little more money out of the cooperations was by mandating the use of secure email. All publicly traded cooperations with a market cap of 75million or more have to comply with this new increase in the standards in relation to the email. Sarbanes-Oxley has guidelines for all electronic security in the cooperations including secure, and encrypted emails.

The web site that I found was suggesting the use of a particular program to conform to the regulations, and talked about the other aspects of electronic security that should also be addressed along with the secured email service.

week 14: Muddy

This week was particularly difficult with the culmination of the secure email project. I found that the encrypting of emails to be particularly difficult to figure out. This is a little embarrassing after I eventually figured out where the security drop down arrow was it is incredibly simple, but for quite a while I was completely lost on this one.
I think this new encryption deal is useless for me now, but I definitely see how this could be supremely valuable in the future when I have sensitive information that I am transferring to someone. Particularly in the case of a cooperation with financials or legal information traveling in the emails.

I am waiting at the moment for the teachers response, but I am fairly certain at this point that I have figured the digital signature and the encryption out.

Week 13: muddy

This week brought with it a few snags in the form of licensing. I was suprised to learn how complicated the single user agreement is. I always thought that the single user agreement was far more constrictive in nature than it turns out to be. I was under the impressio, before this lesson, that you were not allowed to use a program on another computer if one failed without breaking the law in some way. For example I would not have reused an old copy of windows on a new computer even if no longer used on another computer.

The more I looked into the single user agreement software contracts the more I felt that they were written to be fair to both the users and producers. I think, however, that the average person in college sees no problem with piracy because of the high costs involved in purchasing many of the products that they want. I think that much of this behavior is beginning to change because of the major companies like Microsoft releasing versions of necessary products like word in student and trial versions. I think that this will reduce piracy because it will give people an alternative when they can't afford a retail copy but need to use the program.

The single user agreement makes me feel that I am getting more than I previously thought for my money. I now feel that I have a much improved understanding of the purpose of a single user agreement.

Week: 12 Muddy

I really can't point to one thing in particular that was any muddier than the rest this week. I had a very hard time just getting rolling this week with the database project, because the program was so foreign to me. I think in particular I had the most difficulty getting the form fuction to cooperate and update the correct part of the members field. I found it very difficult to have it publish my inputs into the correct fields. I found that using a button and tasking it with the recording fuction to the members field was the easiest way that I could figure out to complete this task.

I also had an impressive amount of trouble getting the excel spreadsheet to import what I wanted it to. I had to revise the entire spreadsheet in excel first then save it to a different format. I could then import the data to a NEW field, adjust all of the data and add phone number, then I moved it successfully to my members field.

Database Project

Wow,

This database project has really opened my eyes to the power of these programs. I really learned about the process of assembling a database and how you can make it work for you by organizing your data into meaningful reports. I learned how to import excel spreadsheets, which turned out to be much more difficult than I thought it would be. I found that rearranging the delimited information in excel first made things much easier.

I really think that the skills and information that I learned in this project will help to serve me greatly in the future by enabling me to create more professional data presentations. I feel that the Query function in Access is incredibly powerful and I managed to do thing that I would never have imagined before with the data after finishing the project. I also feel that the "form" function would be incredibly valuable to a business that needed to be able to quickly enter information into a database. All-in-all I think it is amazing that this program is not more widely used through high school and in the normal business environment, because I feel that it takes the data and puts a finishing touch on it.

Week 10: Clear

Week 10 brought with it some topics that were very challenging. The most challenging topic or concept for me was of wireless security. I now know that there is basically no way that I will ever get my wireless network fully secure, but I also realized that I don't need to worry since I don't live anywhere near populated areas or a road or anything that might pose a threat to my internet security.

I found a relatively helpful site that further explained some of the steps required to secure the wireless networks.

http://www.practicallynetworked.com/support/wireless_secure.htm

I think that I understand some of the steps that are needed to help secure the networks, and I plan to look at my parents network next time I see them, because they are constantly complaining about problems with it.

Excel Project

This week has been particularly demanding with the excel project. I considered myself to have been of moderate abilities with excel and now my skills have been tested to the highest degree. I have developed a much greater understanding of the us of pivot tables and how they are useful for the presentation of data in a much more user friendly format. I used to argue with my sister that has an MBA about the usefulness of Pivot tables, but I really see how they make the presentation of findings that much stronger.

The "IF" function is something that I never used before this class and I feel that it also greatly enhances that power of the findings in a data set. The ability to categorize data quickly into a "Pass/Fail" or any other group using the "IF" function makes the data set much easier to navigate and efficient at presenting information to a user.

The final hitch in this project was getting the page layout set to take up the entire landscape legal size page. I had to revert back to my excel scavenger hunt assignment to figure that one out. I tried to fit the document another way, and managed to get it to work, but I knew it wasn't how the teacher had suggested. I adjusted it to take 1page wide and 2pages long and it fixed the document.