Chapter 5: Network Application, Web2.0, Distance Learning and Telecommuting

 Network Application:

1-      Discovery : this allows users to browsing and searching for information on the web. It contents:

-          Search engines and metasearch engines.

-          Publication of material in foreign languages.

-          Portal: Commercial Portal, affinity Portal, Corporate  Portal and Industrywide Portal.

2-      Communication: this is the second major category in network applications:

-          Electronic Mail : e-mail.

-          Wed-Based call centers.

-          Electronic Chat Rooms.

-          Voice Communication: such as  internet telephony. Also called voice-over Internet Protocol.

-          Unified communications.

3-      Collaboration: efforts by two or more entities who work together to accomplish certain tasks. It contents:

-          Microsoft Office Groove.

-          Google Docs: is a web-based word processor, spread sheet and presentation application.

-          Microsoft sharepoint: it supports documents directories and has features to enable users to create and manage lots of applications.

-          IBM Lotus Quicker: provide online team where members can share their information through different collaboration tools.

-          Jive: this newest product allows people to share the information via discussion rooms, calendars and to-do lists.

-          Electronic Teleconferencing.

Web 2.0:

1-                  Web 2.0 Information Technologies and Applications: this includes:

-          AJAX : web development technique which allow portions of web pages to reload with fresh data instead of reload the whole page. This technique helps users to find the result in faster way.

-          Tagging : term which describes a piece of information such as a blog, picture or an article.

-          Blogs and Blogging: personal website for sharing information with other people.

-          Wikis: is a website for which people can edit or post information about different event.

-          Really Simple Syndication: (RSS) allow users to receive the information they want without having big number of websites.

-          Podcasts and Videocasts: audio and video files which received through the RSS.

Categories of Web 2.0 Sites:

1-      Social Networking: allows users to upload information in a form of text, images or videos. This provides easy and interactive way for communication and collaborates with other users on the web such as MySpace, Flicker and YouTube.

2-      Aggregators: collection of content from the web, for example, Bloglines, Digg and Simple Hired.

3-      Mashups: means to “mix and match”, it takes contents from different websites and mixes them together to create a new kind of content.

Chapter 3: Information Systems: Ethics, Privacy and Security

Ethical Issues

Ethics are principles of right and wrong that individual use to make choices to guide their behaviors. But to decide if these principles are right or wrong is very difficult, so many companies and organizations create their own codes of ethics.

Code of Ethics: collection of principles that is intended to guide decision making by members of the organization.

Ethics includes:

1-      Responsibility: accept the consequences of your decision.

2-      Accountability: determining who is responsible for an action.

3-      Liability: legal concept gives to individuals to recover the damage done to them by other individuals.

The ever-expanding use of IT has made many ethical issues. These issues fall in four categories:

1-      Privacy Issues: collect information about individuals.

2-      Accuracy Issues: accuracy information that has collected.

3-      Property issues: ownership and value of information.

4-      Accessibility Issues: who should access to information and whether they should have to pay for this access.

Protecting Privacy

Privacy is the right to be left alone and be free. Any privacy data can be integrated to produce a digital dossier (an electronic description of you and your habits). This process called Profiling.

Privacy can be done by many ways such as:

1-      - Electronic Surveillance.

2-      - Personal Information in Database.

3-      - Information on Internet Bulletin Boards, Newsgroups and Social Networking.

4-     -  Privacy Codes and Policies.

Threats to Information Security

There are several factors contribute to the increasing vulnerability of organizational information assets:

1-    1-   Evolution of the information technology resources from mainframe to today’s environment.

2-    2- Government legislation : many types of information must be protected by the low.

3-    3-  Computer components and devices are becoming now more smaller and cheaper.

4-   4-   Computing skills necessary to be hacker is decreasing.

5-   5-  Cyber-crime.

6-   6-    Downstream liability.

7-   7-  Increased employee use of unmanaged devices.

8-   8-  Management support.

Threats to Information Systems:

There are five main categories to help us better understand the complexity of the threat problem:

1-      Unintentional acts: which are: Human errors, social engineering , revers social engineering and Social data mining, Deviations in the quality of service by service providers and Environmental hazards.

2-      Natural disasters.

3-      Technical failures.

4-      Management failures.

5-      Deliberate acts:

-          Espionage or Trespass.

-          Information Extortion.

-          Sabotage or Vandalism.

-          Theft of equipment and information.

-          Identity Theft: such as stealing mails or information.

-          Compromises to intellectual property, which includes, patent, copyright, trade secret and piracy.

-          Software attacks: Viruses, Worm, Trojan Horse, Back Door, etc…

-          Alien Software: can be : adware, spyware, spam ware or cookies.