Group Work 7

Question 1: Assume you are the manager of a retail store and need to hire a CIO to run your new computer system. What characteristics would you want in a new CIO?

The characteristics are:

1.       Have a background with significant management experience in non-IT business functions.

2.       Exploit the opportunities to have informal interactions with other business executives.

3.       Know the company's business strategy and learn what drives value.

4.       Know and clear about their role and have formal objectives -- and yet they also have "a greater appetite for risk" to achieve business goals.

5.       Must allocate more time to talent development than to any other activity.

6.       Must learn about company operations in preparation for broader, non-IT opportunities.

Question 2: What are the advantages of using virtual organizational structure? What are the disadvantages?

Advantages:

•        This structure leads to more autonomy as employees can choose and manage their own personal infrastructure and expenses.

•        It also leads to more meritocracy as personal infrastructure is separated from a hierarchical position in the formal organizational structure.

•        This leads to a better decentralization-centralization balance, as employees can make their own decisions on selection and acquiring of the personal infrastructure and other personal expenses, whilst the company can have a very efficient corporate infrastructure.

•        This speeds up the process and reduces the cost of approving requests for and acquiring of personal infrastructure.

•        Cost savings are achieved by improving the efficiency of the corporate infrastructure and allowing greater flexibility with their personal infrastructure and business expenses.

Disadvantages:

•        The managing infrastructure produces diseconomies in the Knowledge Age.

•        The practice of controlling personal technology has resulted in high costs and high employee frustration in most large organizations

•        Infrastructure related decision are usually based more on status rather than on expertise or the needs of those who have to work with it.

•        This structure leads to over-controlling the use of personal technologies.  This is both frustrating to employees and expensive for employers.

•        Standard expense management. Individuals are largely incented to spend up to their budget (and negotiate for continually higher budgets).

References
Vlatka Hlupic (2012) Using "Traditionally Virtual" organizational structure
Available from: http://www.managementexchange.com/hack/using-traditionally-virtual-organizational-structure, [Accessed on 25th June 2012]

Group Work 6

Question 1: Form a team to identify the public locations (such as an airport, public library, or café) in your area where wireless LAN connections are available. Visit at least two locations and write a brief paragraph discussing your experience at each location trying to connect to the Internet.

The first location that we want to discuss is the cafe named Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf. It has many branches in Brunei Darussalam. The one that I am going to discuss located at Brunei Capital District, Bandar Seri Begawan along the Jalan Sultan. Once we try to access the internet, we notice that there are Wireless LAN connections available with a password protected. So we ask the staff about the WIFI password. Later, we are able to access through the WIFI.  The WIFI required our IP address just in case for security.  For a few second, we are already able to access through the internet. The connection is about 5mbps which is the fastest and expensive package in Brunei named ESPEED.

Second location is Twelve Cafe at Kiulap, Brunei Muara. It is a really high standard restaurant. This café also has WIRELESS LAN connection. The staff didn’t tell us that one password is for one user where is is very high level in security.  I did realize that when sharing the WIFI password, the other cannot use it again.  The connection was only 3.5mbps. The router was so strong as user can reach the WIFI signal outside the café.

In conclusion, the Wireless connection at the first location was very fast compared to second location. But wireless connection at was very secure when compare to first location.

Question 2: Do a research on the Web on wireless communications standards for MAN’s often called WiMAX. What is it current status of the various standards and what are the current major issues? Write a short report on what you found.

WiMAX, which stands for Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access is a next generation open standard that seeks to serve users' increasing demands for high data throughput (broadband) services such as streaming media on the internet, live video conferencing, and mobile TV on computers as well as handsets and PDAs.

WiMAX is considered as one of the most promising 4G technologies, an IP based core network which is an open system suitable for Greenfield operators and has been deployed world over. Industry analysts judge that the spectrum allocation for WiMAX is easy and cheaper than the existing 3G technologies.

 

Some existing facts:

•         According to WiMAX forum there are 430 million people or Points-of-Presence (POPs) globally, and are on a path to nearly double to 800 million people by the end of 2010, suggesting that there is significant potential for WiMAX to transform wireless broadband communications

•         Revenue from mobile games (from 10,485m in 2009 to 17,593m in 2009) and sports (7,873m in 2009 to 9,498m in 2011) in particular is forecasted to grow significantly. This is an opportunity for WiMAX incumbents as it will allow them to create a market and achieve customer lock-in, creating a challenge to 3G/HSPA.

Major wireless service providers are already planning to roll out WiMAX, and Intel is enabling mass market adoption of WiMAX in notebooks and other mobile Internet devices similar to the way it enabled Wi-Fi in notebooks. WiMAX is a global, standards-based technology that is being adopted and deployed in many countries around the world. For example, Clear* began deploying WiMAX services in the U.S. in 2008, and over 100 carriers are currently trialing Mobile WiMAX around the world.

Authentication

A fundamental principle in 802.16 networks is that each subscriber station (SS) must have a X.509 certificate that will uniquely identify the subscriber. The use of X.509 certificates makes it difficult for an attacker to spoof the identity of legitimate subscribers, providing ample protection against theft of service. A fundamental flaw in the authentication mechanism used by WiMAX's privacy and key management (PKM) protocol is the lack of base station (BS) or service provider authentication. This makes WiMAX networks susceptible to man-in-the-middle attacks, exposing subscribers to various confidentiality and availability attacks. The 802.16e amendment added support for the Extensible Authentication Protocol (EAP) to WiMAX networks. Support for EAP protocols is currently optional for service providers.

Encryption

With the 802.16e amendment, support for the AES cipher is available, providing strong support for confidentiality of data traffic. Like the 802.11 specification, management frames are not encrypted, allowing an attacker to collect information about subscribers in the area and other potentially sensitive network characteristics.

Availability

WiMAX deployments will use licensed RF spectrum, giving them some measure of protection from unintentional interference. It is reasonably simple, however, for an attacker to use readily available tools to jam the spectrum for all planned WiMAX deployments. In addition to physical layer denial of service attacks, an attacker can use legacy management frames to forcibly disconnect legitimate stations. This is similar to the deauthenticate flood attacks used against 802.11 networks.

WiMAX Threats

Despite good intentions for WiMAX security, there are several potential attacks open to adversaries, including:

• Rogue Base Stations
• DoS Attacks
• Man-in-the-Middle Attacks
• Network manipulation with spoofed management frames

The real test of WiMAX security will come when providers begin wide-scale network deployments, and researchers and attackers have access to commodity CPE equipment. Other attacks including WiMAX protocol fuzzing may enable attackers to further manipulate BSs or SSs. Until then, the security of WiMAX is limited to speculation.

 

Reference:

Gaddi Blumrosen (2009) The Future of Things
Available from: http://thefutureofthings.com/articles/6361/the-future-of-wimax.html, [Accessed on 20th June 2012]

Priyesh (2010) WIMAX and its future Available from: http://4gwirelessjobs.com/articles/article-detail.php?WiMAX-and-its-future-&Arid=MTE3&Auid=NjI=, [Accessed on 20th June 2012]

Joshua Wright (2006) WIMAX security issuesAvailable from: http://www.networkworld.com/columnists/2006/121106-wireless-security.html, [Accessed on 20th June 2012]

Group Work 5

Question 1: How did Google’s stance provide the company with an advantage over its competition?

Google maintains huge databases filled with information on billions of Web sites. Google also maintains databases of search statistics that can be mined to learn about user interests and general search trends. Google and the other search companies also maintain private detailed information that includes the specific searches made by specific IP addresses. IP addresses can be connected to actual users through information provided by Internet service providers. All of the statements above are the commonly used in a company.

Question 2: What risk did Google take in not initially complying with government request?

In the global war on terror, and with government efforts to find terrorists, many businesses have been placed in that exact position. The United States Patriot Act provides the US government with wide-reaching authority to request information from businesses regarding the activities of suspected terrorists. Privacy advocates are working to limit that reach. In 2006, the Web search Company Google found itself stuck between corporation with US government requests for information and its commitment to preserving its user’s privacy. Its refusal to release database records to the federal government landed Google in Court.

Question 3: Do you feel Google was supporting or obstructing justice in its refusal to give up private information to its government? Why?

Google is multinational publicly traded organization built around company which popular search, cloud computing, advertising technologies and Web app, browser and operating system development. Google was chosen for its resemblance to the word googol a number consisting of a numeral one followed by a hundred zeroes as a reference to the vast amount of information in the world. Google's stated the mission is "to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful." This mission and the means used to accomplish it have raised concerns among the company's critics.

While competitors are targeting the individual applications Google has deployed, Google is building a massive, general purpose computing platform for web-scale programming. Criticism of Google includes possible misuse and manipulation of search results, its use of others' intellectual property, concerns that its compilation of data may violate people's privacy, censorship of search results and content, and the energy consumption of its servers as well as concerns over traditional business issues such as antitrust, monopoly, and restraint of trade.

Therefore in my opinion, Google was supporting and obstructing justice because they have a lot of user includes us that we used every time when we doing research. Google and the other search companies also maintain private detailed information that includes the specific searches. The customer put a lot of trust on them. If the government knows all about this, our privacy will not save the government will knows everything our details. They won’t to give the privacy information to the government, but the government has the rights to get the information from Google. By getting information from Google it can help the government to find the terrorist or criminals by using IP addresses.

In conclusion, it is better that Google won’t give any information to the government because if it happen some companies will give the information to the government but with condition the government have to pay the information that the companies give and it will make some profit for that companies. Well, if this happen the customer will not trust to keep their information to Google because they can’t keep the private information.

References

Margaret Rouse (2011) Google
Available from: http://searchcio-midmarket.techtarget.com/definition/Google, [Accessed on 22nd June 2012]

Question 4: Should government have the right to force a legitimate business to take an action that might damage its relationship with its customers? What does this imply about the action of the government and support of its citizens?

The U.S government with all due respect is trying their best to handle the global war on terror and so far doing a good job at it. Although, sometimes people tend to use extra force, more than they should be using. In this case, although the government is trying to tackle the problem but certain policies such as customers’ privacy should be kept that way; private.

The government has no rights to force a legitimate business to breach their “contract” with their customers. This, not only can jeopardize the relationship between the business and the customer, but can also cause Google to lose their customers or worst get sued for breaking the customers’ privacy.

This action shows that the government is doing all within their power to stop terror, and to avoid the same incident from happening again. Even if they get support from their citizens, majority of them will probably still want their privacy thus disallowing the government to proceed with their intentions.