A Research On How Social Networking - 2143 Words

Many people worldwide are affiliated with social networks everyday. Keith Wilcox and Andrew Stephan’s did a research on how social networking, particularly Facebook, was used to boost one’s self esteem with tie strengths. Tie strength can be defined as strong or weak. Strong ties can be described as the close connection to their friends, while weak ties are considered their â€Å"acquaintances that are distant friends† (Wilcox Stephan, 2013, p. 92). Wilcox is an assistant professor at Columbia University, teaching marketing. While Stephen, â€Å"is [an] assistant professor of business administration and Katz Fellow in marketing at the Joseph M. Katz Graduate School of Business† (Wilcox Stephan, 2013, p.90). The Journal of Consumer Research†¦show more content†¦Wilcox and Stephan’s hypothesis propose that the â€Å"enhanced self-esteem from browsing a social network will momentarily lower self-control, leading people to display less self- control after browsing a social network compared to those who did not browse a social network† (Wilcox Stephan, 2013, p.92). Since people care more about their image to strong ties, this effect will be on people who are focused on strong ties while browsing the social network. Wilcox and Stephan â€Å"expect social network use to have little effect on the self-control of those focused on weak ties while browsing a social network† (2013, p.92). This paper will help one understand their motives that take place while social networking. Five studies were done through out this paper, but only three were very supportive of their theory. The first study focused on proving â€Å"social networking use increases self esteem primarily for those focused on strong ties while browsing the network† (Wilcox Stephan, 2013, p. 93). They expected that those focused on strong ties would have a positive impact on self-esteem, but what they did not expect was the same for weak tie s as well. The methodology for this was done by design, survey and experimentation. They took 100 random US participants and put them into four different groups. The groups were â€Å"browsing: Facebook versus no Facebook† (Wilcox % Stephan, 2013,

Analysis Of Donald Barthelme s The School - 1724 Words

Maria Coquioco September 19, 2015 Greg Christensen New Criticism Essay â€Å"The School† is a short story written by Donald Barthelme and published in 1974 in The New Yorker. Donald Barthelme is a post-modernist writer known for his deceptively simple yet powerful and insightful short stories. â€Å"The School† is a story that takes a good hard look at the sensitive topic of death. The theme of this story is about the cycle of life and how death is an integral part of it. The story is written in first person narrative. The narrator here is the teacher and he talks about how he and his young students of 30 kids encountered death throughout their time together in class. He uses edgy humor and a conversational tone in his seemingly complex plot with a surprising effect that will stick with the reader long after they are done reading it. The context of the plot found in â€Å"The School† presents the readers with the timeless question of the meaning of life. However, this question does not seem to present itself immediately to the r eader. In order to appreciate Barthelme’s work in this piece, it is crucial that one utilizes the New Criticism’s approach to reading. New Criticism was first developed in the 20th century and it makes reading and interpreting literature a systematic activity. New Criticism as an analytical tool helps the readers to understand and gain insight into all forms of the written works through sheer understanding and by reading closely. This means that our focusShow MoreRelatedAnalysis Of Donald Barthelme s The School1308 Words   |  6 PagesThe Darkness That Lies Within Throughout life, death is an unavoidable circumstance. Although death may seem avoidable at times, no person is strong enough to withstand its grasp. In Donald Barthelme’s short story The School, he contrasts the essence between life and death using the innocence of children. Throughout the story this motif of death is masked by emotions such as happiness, fear, uncertainty, and sympathy. Therefore, the irony that develops throughout the story raises the question of

Abduction by Paloma Sapien Essay - 1273 Words

Abduction by Paloma Sapien Crunch. Heidi looked up, glancing from side to side. Crunch. She had thought she was alone. Crunch. Her heart beat faster and her hand clenched the heart on her necklace. Crunch. She quickened her pace as she heard footsteps coming from behind her. Her hand started to cramp up from holding the necklace so hard. Crunch. Heidi turned slowly. A dark figure stood about ten feet away from her. She panicked as she heard the footsteps behind her getting quicker. â€Å"Who’s there?† she said, still walking. The figure was silent. Only the sounds of heavy breathing came from its mouth. â€Å"What do you want?† The breathing got louder as the figure moved closer. Heidi let go of her necklace, and turned her head one†¦show more content†¦With a shaky hand, she went to grab for the necklace but before she reached it, everything went black. Her head throbbing with pain, Heidi regained her consciousness, startled. She was in the back of a van, speeding down a bumpy road. They took a sharp turn and Heidi flew against the side of the car. She started to cry, and curled up on the floor, wishing this was all a dream. Heidi was woken up by the van making a sudden jolt, throwing her against the car once again. It was pitch black and Heidi couldn’t see at all. She heard movement and realized she wasn’t alone. â€Å"H-Hello?† she said, her voice shaking with fear. The man grabbed her hand, wrapping it around a plastic bottle. â€Å"Drink. It’s water.† The voice was deep and slow. Thirsty and delirious, Heidi unscrewed the cap and downed the contents of the bottle. A weird feeling in her stomach immediately followed, and her vision started to fade. â€Å"Did you just poison me?† Heidi threw the bottle and grabbed the wall of the van, bracing herself. â€Å"Sleep tight.† the man said. Heidi woke up hours later to a huge slap in the face. Her face stinging, she sat up and saw the man in front of her. â€Å"Can I help you?† she mumbled. â€Å"We’re leaving,† the man put a black sack over her head and threw her out of the car. Heidi’s knees buckled from under her. She was still weak from the poison. â€Å"Walk!† the man shouted. Heidi tried hard, putting one foot in front of the other,

Information Technology and Security

Question: Develop an effective research plan considering context, research questions, sources, timeline, and larger implications for writing a formal research report; Also to practice working with the Research Proposal as an academic genre and to provide an opportunity for working on stylistics and effective academic discourse. Answer: 1 Introduction The aim of this report is to present a research proposal on the topic of Information Technology and Security. Today we live in a technological era. Every event of our lives are connected to and affected by technologies, especially information technologies. With the technical advancement of digital technologies and communication technologies, now information technology has become more than computers and internets. So the span of security in information technology has also expanded its span. (Andress, 2014) In the next sections of this report, it will discuss different facets of security in the context of information technology. 2 Why to Study Information Technology Security? We need to study information technology security to grow the awareness about the topic among us and making our lives secure from information security attacks, hackers, theft of information, privacy breaches etc. If we focus on the statistics of cybercrime, we can check how those are increasing day by day. Over the online platforms, through the mobile devices and in many information systems we share our personal and professional details every day. There are important details like credit card number, banking details etc. that are shared through internet also. For example sharing of banking details over online banking platforms. But these data are at high risks. There are several examples of hacking and stealing of the information of individuals, defence of country etc. (Bidgoli, 2006) Study on security in information technology will help to understand these issues in details, it will help to take precautions before sharing data over the Internet. However, it wont make our data over the online platforms fully secure but we can understand the risks and that may reduce the risks to some extent. 3 Definitions Information security or InfoSec is a practice that helps to build defense against unauthorized access, disclosure, inspection, modification, capture, disruption, perusal and destruction of information. The form of data may be physical or digital. (Bishop, 2003) IT security is a part of information security that is mostly focused on computer security and network security. When information security is applied to the information technologies then that is termed as IT security. These information technologies are mostly related to computers and networks. Currently, smartphones and other smart gadgets are also considered in this class. There are IT security specialists who secures information from attacks, thefts and other kind of unauthorized access. (Ciampa, 2011) When data is under some attack already, then it is needed to be assured that the information is not lost due to the attack. This is called information assurance process. There may be different kinds of attack on information like natural calamities to hacker attack, physical damage of storage etc. As data is stored in servers and computers in most of the cases. So, this topic also comes under information security. The possible attacks and risks that can harm data are called threats to the data. There are different kind of threats in information security domain. Some of the threat are, Software based attacks by hackers. Theft of data and intellectual property. Theft of identity of some individual or system. Sabotage Extortion of information. Theft of software Under software based attacks, there are different kind of attacks. Those are, worms, virus, Trojans etc. Under the theft of data and intellectual property type of attack there are issues related to ownership on information. Identity theft issue is related to masquerading some other persons identity to get access to data in an unauthorized way. Sabotage is related to intentional destruction of information belonging to others. Extortion is modifying some information by stealing it and then sending the modified one to the receiver. Theft of software is physical theft of software. 3.1 Sources of Information An attacker can target any kind of information. But generally they tends to target defense, government, financial institutional, universities, businesses etc. as these organizations contains tons of information about individuals and in almost all cases information are collected and stored electronically, transmitted over networks and internet. (Symantec Corporation, 2014) Protection of such information are responsibility of the organization that collects and stores the same. For an individual, loss of any personal information or misuse of any, may become fatal. It is a breach of their privacy. Information security deals with these areas, protecting information and right to that information. It secures information technology infrastructure, databases, networks, etc. 4 Principles of information security The three core principles of information security are, confidentiality, integrity and availability of information. These three are collectively called CIA triad. There are other principles like non-repudiation, atomicity etc. but these three are the basic. Any information technology infrastructure will be called secure if and only if it conforms to these three principles. (Bidgoli, 2006) 4.1 Confidentiality Confidentiality ensures that the data will be kept confidential. No person without proper access privilege will be able to access the information. 4.2 Integrity Integrity ensures, data will be stored in correct format and form. There will be no unauthorized modification to the data. In the context of information security, integrity of data refers to the manitance of the data in a way that the consistency and accuracy of the data will be maintained. Data will not be modified by any kind of unauthorized access. (Bishop, 2003) 4.3 Availability Availability ensures data will be available to the right users always. There will be no interrupt in this case. At the same time data will not be available to the unauthorized or unintended users. Usually some information system or computer will process some kind of data and will store the same. The information security controls must be designed in a ways that those will be able to protect data from unauthorized access at the same time, will be able to differentiate authorized accesses and will make data available to the authorized users. (David Solomon, 2010) A system can be unavailable for various reasons. For example, there may be power failure like issues, also there may be security attacks like denial of services etc. 4.4 Non-repudiation It ensures that no communicating party will be able to deny the instance of communication in future. Cryptography based systems are used to ensure non-repudiation. 4.5 Authenticity It ensures the authorization process. When entered in a system, it checks whether the data is from authentic source of not. This is mostly related to ecommerce and ebusiness platforms. Where confirmation of the transactions and sharing of data are needed to be authenticated about their genuineness. There are technologies and methods like digital signatures to ensure authenticity. 5 Defenses Information security defenses can be of the following types. 5.1 Access controls Setting and implementing access controls ensures security from unauthorized access to some degree. A risk assessment should be done before implementing access control on data. The access controls help in implementation of access to protect sensitive information. There are typically three stages in the access control implantation method. Those are, identification, authentication and authorization. (Benantar, 2006) In the first step, identification helps in ascertaining that who the person who want access to the information is. A typical example is asking about the userid during login process. Then, in the second step authentication process helps to verify the claim in the identification step. For example, if someone has provided his identification as John to the system, the system will check whether the person is john or not. For that purpose, it may ask for password that is supposed to be known by John only. There are other authentication mechanisms like biometrics etc. however, no process is beyond risks and attacks. In the final and third step, the system will authenticate whether the information collected from previous two steps are authentic or not and then it will give permission for access to the information. For example, if the person John has only READ access right to a piece of data , and John has asked permission for WRITE access then the system will reject the request even if the userid and password are correctly supplied. There are different kind of access control mechanisms like mandatory, discretionary etc. 5.2 Cryptography Cryptography is a very useful defense mechanism in information security. Cryptography helps in changing the form of information so that the original information is hidden. The scrambled information will be understandable to the intended user only. So if anyone else receive the information who is not intended user, then the information will not be readable to them. The process of changing a piece of information based on some key is called encryption. The reverse is called decryption. The changed form of information is called cipher text. (William, 2008) Cryptography has a wide range of security algorithms. Information systems can implement those algorithms to implement security features like authentication, non-repudiation etc. 5.3 Software like Antivirus, Firewall There are wide range of antivirus software for dealing with virus issues in computers. These also ensures information security by protecting data from potential damages by viruses. There are systems and software like firewall, IDS etc. that helps in detecting unauthorized access from network to a system. (David Solomon, 2010) 5.4 Awareness and Best practices Implementation of security controls is not enough to ensure information security if the users are not aware of the risks and the consequences. So, the first thing is to increase awareness among the users. Then making them aware of the best practices to avoid risks of security attacks to some degree. 6 Future Research IT security and information security is a vast topic. There are number of sub topics to work on in future. There are enough case studies to uncover reasons behind security attacks over time, also there are scopes to implement new protocols or standards for ensuring security. In future, based on literature and case studies, the IT security will be explored in details. Data for the research on IT security will be collected from different case studies, literatures papers, journals, surveys, statistics etc. available from Internet. 7 Conclusion In the research proposal on IT security, it has described the term from the broader perspective of information security. It will help to understand the role and significance of IT security in the span of information security. In the proposal, it has discussed about basic security principles for information security, different kind of attacks, different kind of defenses, future scope of research etc. References Andress, J. (2014). The Basics of Information Security: Understanding the Fundamentals of InfoSec in Theory and Practice. Syngress. Beachboard, J., Cole, A., Mellor, M., Hernandez, S., Aytes, K. (2008). Improving Information Security Risk Analysis Practices for Small- and Medium-Sized Enterprises: A Research Agenda. Florida. Benantar, M. (2006). Access Control Systems: Security, Identity Management and Trust Models. Springer. Bidgoli, H. (2006). Handbook of Information Security, Key Concepts, Infrastructure, Standards, and Protocols . John Wiley and Sons. Bishop, M. (2003). Computer Security: Art and Science. Addison-Wesley Professional. Bosworth, S., Kabay, M. E. (2002). Computer Security Handbook. John Wiley Sons. Ciampa, M. (2011). Security+ Guide to Network Security Fundamentals. Cengage Learning.K., Solomon, M. (2010). Fundamentals of Information Systems Security. Jones Bartlett Learning. Symantec Corporation. (2014). Internet Security Threat Report 2014. Symantec Corporation. Vacca, J. R. (2012). Computer and Information Security Handbook. Newnes. Whitman, M., Mattord, H. (2011). Principles of Information Security. Cengage Learning. William, S. (2008). Computer Security: Principles and Practice. Pearson . Xiao, Y., Li, F. H., Chen, H. (2011). Handbook of Security and Networks. World Scientific.