Business Intelligence - Data Types & Mechanism

Produce a table of examples for unstructured and semi-structured data

Semi-structured data

• Is the information that is not reside in a rational database but have some organizational properties which is easier to analyze
• By performing some process, we can store the data in the relation database, but this semi-structured exist to make the space more easier

Unstructured data

• The data is not organized in a pre-defined manner or it does not have any pre-defined data model
• This is not good for any mainstream relational database
• There are alternative platforms to store and manage the data 
• Used by organizations in variety of business intelligence and analytical applications (Word, PDF)

Explain each type of decision in business and give example (strategic, tactical, operational)

Strategic Decisions

• It is the most major choices of actions or part in a business enterprise
• They contribute directly to the achievement goals of the enterprise
• They have long term implications on the business enterprise
• Might involve major departures from the procedures 
• Is unstructured and the manager must apply his business judgement, evaluation, and intuition into defining the problem
• The decision will be taken to the higher level of management 

Tactical Decisions

• Relate to the implementation of strategic decisions
• Directed to developing divisional plans, structuring workflows, establishing distribution channels, acquisition of resources (men, materials, money)
• This decision will be taken at the middle level of management

Operational Decisions

• Relate to the day-to-day operations of the enterprise
• Have short term horizon because they are taken repetitively
• The decisions are based on the facts regarding to the events and does not need much of the business judgement
• Taken at lower levels of management
• The information is needed to help the manager to take rational, well informed decisions, information systems that need to focus on the process of the managerial decision making

Discuss the functionality of business intelligence

Give the advantages and disadvantages of using an application software as a mechanism for business processing

• Meet the needs of the user because they are designed for only use one specific software to accomplished the task
• Cannot restrict any access as this can protect their network due to the viruses threat that can be custom made the application is very small
• The application software that has licensed has a regular updates from the developer in order to have security purposes. The developer will frequently send personnel to correct if the application software has problems that may arise

References:

Your Article Library. (2013). Decisions Making: Strategic, Tactical and Operational Decisions | Business Management. [online] Available at: http://www.yourarticlelibrary.com/information-technology/decisions-making-strategic-tactical-and-operational-decisions-business-management/10271 [Accessed 17 Oct. 2019].

Techspirited. (2019). Advantages And Disadvantages of Application Software You Didn't Know. [online] Available at: https://techspirited.com/advantages-disadvantages-of-application-software [Accessed 17 Oct. 2019].

GeeksforGeeks. (2018). Difference between Structured, Semi-structured and Unstructured data - GeeksforGeeks. [online] Available at: https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/difference-between-structured-semi-structured-and-unstructured-data/ [Accessed 21 Oct. 2019].

Network Security - Type of hacker

Academic Hacker

It is an action of hacking the academic or any institution. This is mostly done by either by the student or anyone in order to get what they want (to change their grades, or to know what is on the exam paper).

Below is the article of academy hacker:

A few short decades ago, the archetypal hacker was a bored teenager breaking into his school's network to change grades, à la Ferris Bueller. So today, when cybersecurity has become the domain of state-sponsored spy agencies and multibillion-dollar companies, it may be refreshing to know that the high school hacker lives on—as do the glaring vulnerabilities in school software.

At the Defcon hacker conference in Las Vegas today, 18-year-old Bill Demirkapi presented his findings from three years of after-school hacking that began when he was a high school freshman. Demirkapi poked around the web interfaces of two common pieces of software, sold by tech firms Blackboard and Follett and used by his own school. In both cases, he found serious bugs that would allow a hacker to gain deep access to student data. In Blackboard's case in particular, Demirkapi found 5 million vulnerable records for students and teachers, including student grades, immunization records, cafeteria balance, schedules, cryptographically hashed passwords, and photos.

Demirkapi points out that if he, then a bored 16-year-old motivated only by his own curiosity, could so easily access these corporate databases, his story doesn't reflect well on the broader security of the companies holding millions of students' personal information."The access I had was pretty much anything the school had," Demirkapi says. "The state of cybersecurity in education software is really bad, and not enough people are paying attention to it."

References:

Nast, C. (2019). Teen Hacker Finds Bugs in School Software That Exposed Millions of Records. [online] Wired. Available at: https://www.wired.com/story/teen-hacker-school-software-blackboard-follett/ [Accessed 13 Oct. 2019].

Business Intelligence - Data Input / Data Output

Produce and I/O for the following scenario:
- Enrolling HND in Micronet
Data Input

• Full name
• Address
• Postcode
• Date of birth
• Phone number
• Email address
• Nationality
• Religion
• I.C Number
• Signature 
• Parents information

Data Capture

• Gender
• Course
• Campus 
• I.C Color
• Status 

Data Process Activity

• Storing
• Communication

- Creating an Email
Data Input

• First name
• Last name
• Password
• Confirm password
• Another alternative email
• Username that will appear

Data Capture

• Date of birth
• Gender

Data Process Activity

• Collect
• Storing

- Registering on Facebook
Data Input

• First name
• Last name
• Name that will appear 
• Password
• Email
• Phone number 

Data Capture

• Gender
• Date of birth

Data Process Activity

• Storing
• Collect

Business Intelligence - Flowchart

Write the process of registering to MIC for HND

Write the process of buying and owning a car in Brunei

Write the process of opening a bank account

Network Security - Breaches

Two (2) network security breaches

Phishing
Definition

• It is a fraud action that make use of the electronic communications to get what they want from the current user that they target
• This is to attempt taking the sensitive, confidential information (passwords, credit cart information)

How it work? And what happen

• The person who wants to get the information might act like a legitimate individual or institution from a phone call or email 
• Example by email. They send a link to the person and if the person click on the link it will automatically directing the person who send the email to get any information that they want from the user. 

How to prevent?

• Organizations can train the employee on how to recognize any suspicious email, links or attachments.
• The person who are doing this breach are always refining their techniques, in order to deal with this, continued education is imperative
• Some tell-tale signs of a phishing email include:

1. Poor spelling and grammar
2. Threats of account shutdown
3. Unexpected attachments that usually ends with ".exe" files

• Additional technical security measures:

1. Two factor authentication (two methods of identifying confirmation i.e password)
2. Have other password logins (using personal images, security skins)

Password Attacks/Cracking
Definition

• Refers to the several measures to discover the computer passwords
• Usually accomplished by the recovering passwords from the data that are stored in or transported from the computer system

How it works?

• This is done by guessing the password repeatedly usually through a algorithm of the computer where the computer tries numerous combinations until the password are correctly discovered

How to prevent?

• The user must make sure that they password are strong, which must have at least eight (8) characters long
• The password must contain a combination of mixed-case random letters, digits or symbols
• Strong password must not be an actual words 

References:

Forcepoint. (2018). What is Phishing?. [online] Available at: https://www.forcepoint.com/cyber-edu/phishing-attack [Accessed 8 Oct. 2019].

Techopedia.com. (2019). What is Password Cracking? - Definition from Techopedia. [online] Available at: https://www.techopedia.com/definition/4044/password-cracking [Accessed 8 Oct. 2019].

Network Security

Network Security

• It is a term that covers the multitude of technologies, devices, and processes.
• In a simple term, a set of rules and configurations designed to protect the integrity, confidentiality and accessibility of the computer networks and data using both software and hardware technologies. 

Advantages

• Protection from malicious attacks on the network
• Prevents users from unauthorized access to the network
• Protect the confidential information

Disadvantages

• Strict regulations
• Difficult to work with the non-technical users
• Easy to be attacked

Importance
This network security is important especially for home networks but also in business world. Most homes that has high speed internet connections will have wireless routers, not one but more, which this can be exploited or hack if it is not properly secured. By this, a solid network security system can help to reduce the data loss, theft, or even sabotage.

Basically network security is to protect the data from being lost and to protect the network from being hack.


Example of network security breach 

Date: May 2014
Impact: 145 million users compromised
Details: The online auction giant reported a cyberattack in May 2014 that it said exposed names, addresses, dates of birth and encrypted passwords of all of its 145 million users. The company said hackers got into the company network using the credentials of three corporate employees, and had complete inside access for 229 days, during which time they were able to make their way to the user database.

It asked its customers to change their passwords, but said financial information, such as credit card numbers, was stored separately and was not compromised. The company was criticized at the time for a lack of communication informing its users and poor implementation of the password-renewal process.

CEO John Donahue said the breach resulted in a decline in user activity, but had little impact on the bottom line – its Q2 revenue was up 13 percent and earnings up 6 percent, in line with analyst expectations.

How did this happen?

According to eBay, attackers compromised employee log-in credentials. This gave the attackers access to the corporate network and the systems on it.

As is the case with most attacks that result in credential theft, the attackers likely used a socially-based attack of some kind. The best bet is Phishing. However, eBay isn't discussing how the credentials were compromised, so it could be Phishing, or it could be malware. The public may never know.

References:

Forcepoint. (2018). What is Network Security?. [online] Available at: https://www.forcepoint.com/cyber-edu/network-security [Accessed 8 Oct. 2019].

profile, V. (2009). Internet Security : Advantages and Disadvantages. [online] Crush64.blogspot.com. Available at: http://crush64.blogspot.com/2009/10/internet-security-laws-advantages-and.html [Accessed 8 Oct. 2019].

Herzing University. (2017). What is Network Security and Why is it Important?. [online] Available at: https://www.herzing.edu/blog/what-network-security-and-why-it-important [Accessed 8 Oct. 2019].

Armerding, T. (2019). The 18 biggest data breaches of the 21st century. [online] CSO Online. Available at: https://www.csoonline.com/article/2130877/the-biggest-data-breaches-of-the-21st-century.html [Accessed 15 Oct. 2019].

Ragan, S. (2019). Raising awareness quickly: The eBay data breach. [online] CSO Online. Available at: https://www.csoonline.com/article/2157782/security-awareness-raising-awareness-quickly-the-ebay-database-compromise.html [Accessed 15 Oct. 2019].

Business Intelligence

LO1 Exercise:

Explain Business Intelligence and its purpose

Business Intelligence refers to the tools, technologies, applications, and practices, that is used to collect and analyze and present the organization's raw data to create actionable business information.

Purpose:

• To help corporate executives, business managers, and other operational workers to make a better and more informed business decisions. 
• Companies use business intelligence to identify new business opportunities, and spot inefficient business process

Discuss "Business Process" with example

1. Finance - billing process, risk management process
2. Health - medical assessment, drug approval
3. Banking - credit check
4. Public Sector - application for a government service
5. Travel - trip booking, agent billing

Identify and describe the business process model

• Business process model is a graphical representation of a company's business process or workflows (identifying the potential improvements)
• Usually done through different graphing methods (flowcharts, data flow diagram)

References:

Financesonline.com. (2017). What Is the Purpose of Business Intelligence in a Business? - Financesonline.com. [online] Available at: https://financesonline.com/purpose-business-intelligence-business/#bi [Accessed 7 Oct. 2019].

PNMsoft. (2019). Business Processes - Explanation and Examples. [online] Available at: http://www.pnmsoft.com/resources/bpm-tutorial/business-process/ [Accessed 7 Oct. 2019].

Kothari, A. (2017). Business Process Modeling: Definition, Benefits and Techniques. [online] Tallyfy. Available at: https://tallyfy.com/business-process-modeling/ [Accessed 7 Oct. 2019].