Respond to Discussion Minimum 150 Words
1. E-Waste, or electronic waste, is an informal name for electronic products nearing the end of their "useful life." Many of these products include computers, televisions, VCRs, stereos, copiers, and even fax machines. The good news is that many of these products can be either be reused, refurbished, or recycled.
However, recycling these products has not yielded the results that many individuals have hoped for. This is due to the fact that these old pieces of technology are just dumped into a pile that then becomes toxic and recycling plants are simply not able to keep up with it.
2. Network effects are also referred to as Metcalfe's Law. Network effects appear when the value of a product or service increases as it's number of users expands.
A great example of this is Paypal. Paypal allows you to buy from different merchants all over the world and use their online payment services that are available in many different markets and currencies. Paypal has become increasingly popular and has increased its user base which has made its overall value increase.
Another great example is Facebook or really any social media platform. Facebook enables individuals to connect with other people who share the same likes or interests, or you can connect with someone in your profession as well as different family members. Facebook has also expanded globally which has increased Facebook's value and their demand has become much greater.
3. I found an article on Forbes titled, "It's Easy Enough To Solve The Problem Of E-Waste." The article summarizes e-waste in its most simple form which is easy to understand for most readers. The solution it mentioned was to convince people that recycling e-waste can be profitable. I mean, who is going to turn down doing something that actually makes them a profit?
4. SalesForce has had a great impact on my workplace. It has allowed our representatives to order their materials without having to wait to talk to someone on the phone or via email. It also gives them the flexibility to add items to or change their orders on their own time. SalesForce essentially automated a lot of our processes.
-Taylor
Respond to Discussion Minimum 150 Words
1. What is e-waste? E-waste is the result of cheap, rapidly improving technology. Discarded technology creates a huge amount of waste, some of which is potentially toxic. What is so dangerous about e-waste?
The problem is that much of this equipment contains substances such as cadmium, mercury, and lead, and the process of separating the materials is labor intensive and can be dangerous if the proper protective equipment isn't utilized.
Why hasn't e-waste recycling yielded the results hoped for? Since it is cheaper to export e-waste, as much as 80% is sent abroad to areas which do not have the same environmental and safety standards as might be found in the United States. Consequently, contaminated groundwater from waste sludge and the methods used to in the recovery of precious metals has created a shortage of locally-available drinking water.
2. What are network effects? Network effects or "Metcalfe's Law" refers to when a service or product's value increases proportionally to the number of users. What sorts of exchange do these products leverage? The best example of this that I can think of is the Windows Phone.
When I renewed my contract with AT&T several years ago, I was determined not to get an iPhone. I thought iPhone users were pretentious, so I accepted and offer of a $0.99 Windows Phone. Part of this was because I had bought a MacBook earlier that year. At the time, Mac's version of Windows office applications were kind of crappy.
The Windows Phone offered these applications as part of their operating system, and I didn't consider the fact that it's reeeeeally hard to put any of those applications to good use on a phone. Windows also didn't have the number of customers flocking to their phones as Apple or Android did, so finding comparable apps was next to impossible.
I have since bought an iPhone (because Windows decided to stop updating their phones for all the reasons listed) and have noticed that although I have applications such as Waze, which allows users to update traffic conditions, etc., apps that I have on my Amazon Fire tablet (such as Audible) are not iPhone-friendly. It turns out that Siri, Cortana, and Alexa aren't friends, either. I would love for all of my stuff to interact, but I'm also kind of cheap and lazy. Amazon Echo is really good at remotely operating my alarm system, telling me the weather, and probably allowing North Korea to listen in on my home life. Apple has a home system, too, but I'm not willing to pay for it.
I've learned the hard way that I shouldn't venture outside of Windows when it comes to laptops. But, since Windows and Amazon are both terrible at making phones, I guess I'll power my way through any minor inconveniences and hope that some day they'll settle their differences and make my life easier.
3. The article I read was about a more efficient way of e-waste recycling. Instead of using heat to separate the components of discarded technology, a grinder called a "cryo-mill" uses a freezing chamber to turn printed circuit boards into nanoparticles, which were then placed in water and sorted. This uses less energy than conventional methods, is less wasteful of the material being harvested, and less dangerous for those involved in the process. The problem with it is that it has not been tested on a large scale. It takes three hours just to recycle a computer mouse and might be less practical when executing it with bulkier equipment.
4. The IS I chose was MilPDS. As I have mentioned before, it is essential to my job, because in both training and deployment processing, MilPDS must be updated for it to be fed into other systems.
For example, when we receive a new troop, their first day back from tech school is spent processing into the unit. My part of this involves enrolling them in their career development courses (CDCs), and creating an account which tracks their deployment availability.
CDC enrollment is accomplished on MilPDS, and the new member has one year to complete the tests, unless a three-month extension is filed. If they fail to complete or pass these tests, they are required to either retrain to another career field, or they are separated from the military. The problem with a system outage, is that they can't be enrolled otherwise, and are in limbo until it's back online.
The system also isn't set up to remind you when their time is about to lapse, so (most) training managers will set up a spreadsheet or a calendar to alert them when this is about to happen. Most of the MilPDS training is also self-administered, which can be frustrating.
In general, the users of this system know how to do one or two things, but when it is added as part of one or multiple additional duties, it takes some research and an endless amount of phone calls to different subject matter experts (who aren't always friendly about it) to troubleshoot the issues you run into when you don't always know the technical language behind it. I have a 3-inch binder full of MilPDS user guides, but it doesn't contain any information regarding the various regulations you have to follow before changing anything in the system.
Another issue I run into is the lag in the transfer of information from MilPDS to the systems it feeds into. I address this by keeping paper records with essential information and updating them at the same time as I do MilPDS. That way, in the event of an outage, emergency contacts and records are accessible, and can be used to check that the information fed into other systems is correct.
Hope you all are having a great week!
Jenny
References:
Dockrill, P. (2017). "Scientists Say We Can Fix the E-Waste Problem by Pulverising Electronics into Nanodust. Science Alert.
Respond to Discussion Minimum 150 Words
Risk Assessment Tools
If you were tasked with assembling a 'toolkit' using only free or open source tools to perform network security assessment.
1. What software applications or "tools" would you use?
To start out Nmap seems to be the best and most reliable tool to preform "alive scans" to determine which hosts on which given networks are online. This tool is also useful in that it allows for router ACL or firewall rule discovery via ACK flag probe scanning and other techniques. Next there is Nikto which is a widely used to scan websites, mainly because it supports HTTP and HTTPS, and provides findings in an interactive fashion.
2.What platform (Operating System) would you use?
I would recommend Linux Ubuntu as the operating system as it is the most widely used free system in the world. It also has the most vastly populated free programs and is the easiest to back and forth integrate. Enum is also a great way for someone who is comfortable with Windows but wants to test drive Linux.
3.How does this toolkit differ from that you would use for an application security assessment, wireless security assessment? You can list other types of related assessments if you know if how you might adjust for the given scenario.
You can list other types of related assessments if you know if how you might adjust for the given scenario. The toolkit does not really differ from what I would use when conducting an assessment. Kali Linux is what I would use to conduct an application security assessment and a wireless security assessment.
There are tools built into the release that the admin can use to conduct these assessments, for instance, while conducting a wireless security assessment I would use a tool like Airmon to identify networks and Fern to break into the Network.
Reference Work:
Chapple, M. (n.d.). Free network security toolkit. Tech Target . Windows 7. Tech Target
Respond to Discussion Minimum 150 Words
The open source tool that I would use to conduct one network assessment is Wireshark. Wireshark works to capture all traffic broadcast in in TCP broadcast domain. This would give us a clear picture of what is going on in the network. The software allows you to set filters that will intercept specific traffic. This traffic data will be loaded into a capture file that can be reviewed later. Wireshark gives a broad and clear picture of the traffic. The only downside is that you will need to know what to look for. Another tool that has a few smarter abilities and can detect remote devices is Nmap. It will also tell you which network ports are open.
The OS that I would use is Kali Linux. Kali Linux is a Linux distribution that is built with security in mind. It comes preloaded with the tools mentioned area and a lot of other network security tools that would be valuable in conducting the assessment. Furthermore, it was released as a Windows store app, so it can be deployed within a Windows environment. Sticking with the question though it can also be deployed as a stand-alone OS. With over 600 pre-installed penetration testing programs. It is an ideal tool or OS for a network security assessment.
For the other assessments I would use tools that are specific to the one I'm trying to do. Regarding wireless security there are several open source programs that are available that can be easily obtained, and I do believe you can find them within Kali Linux.
Phatak, P. (2016, June 09). Top 10 Security Assessment Tools.