A Journey Through a Bachelor of Information Technology Degree

     During our fourth week of class, we were asked to explain the importance of information and system security for individuals and organizations.      Keeping information secure is vital for any person or company.   If personal data is not secure, a person will have to worry about have portions of their identity potentially stolen.   If a company does not make sure that its data is secure, then they will have to worry about many different factors that will affect their customers, suppliers, employees, etc.   When examining information security, there are many different methods that can be used to gain access to data that would be otherwise secured.   In a previous assignment, we used the ping and tracert commands to determine the connectivity of different websites.   These commands can also be used in nefarious ways to attack personal or commercial technological infrastructure.   In addition to those two comma...

During the fourth week of our class we were directed to choose a specific industry and describe the functions of computers for that industry. I chose the Corporate Office as my industry.   Corporate computing does not really change much from industry to industry and so you can classify the Corporate Office as its own industry.   In each corporate office, there are usually many different types of computers that are necessary for the business to maintain functionality and profit.   On the low end of the spectrum, a corporate office has entry-level workers that use desktop PCs to complete the tasks for their jobs.   The function of these computers are mostly for document editing and creation.   In the finance department, the workers are using Microsoft Excel on their Windows PCs to manipulate earnings statements, customer invoices, materials invoices, etc.   The sales teams use CRM tools to document leads and track inventories.   The HR team has acce...

During our third week of class, we had a very brief introduction into networking.   Our assignment was to investigate and experiment with the ping and tracert commands.   We needed a sample of different geographical locations to test with.   Another part of our assignment was to explain how packets travel through a network. When a person makes a query on the internet, the computer they are on creates packets to request the data from wherever they are looking.  At home, the packet path starts at the computer and travels through the Network Interface Card (nic) into the router.  From the router, the packet travels to the modem.  From the modem, the packet travels to the ISP that the user subscribes to.  The ISP then sends the packet out to the internet, where it travels to the network that has the information being requested.  The packet then follows a similar route but in reverse until it reaches the server with the information that it is r...