Overview of IS Risk Assessment (IP) Research Paper

Overview of IS Risk Assessment (IP) - Research Paper Example Measurements consist of (Sun, Srivastava, & Mock, 2006): Cost which is used to protect the information and systems Value of the information and information systems Threat probability and occurrence Effectiveness of Controls Prior to Risk Assessment Before conducting risk assessment, primary factors are considered. The identification of information assets lays the foundation for further assessment. Information assets are defined as the entities that hold organization data. A good discussion is available on ‘www.ibm.com’ which states it as, information assets precisely resembles with the nature of business and business strategy of the organization. Likewise, these information systems may be subjected to contractual and legislative compliance requiring protection from threats and mission critical systems. The information assets for an organization will be the technology assets, data asset, service asset and people asset. In a typical scenario of an organization’s net work, the owners for server hardware will be the server administration group. The owners for the applications running on the servers will be the application support group and the owners for the data, which is stored on the server, will be system development group. Question needs to be answered Moreover, the risk management process involves the implementation of safeguards and controls that are continuously observed. Likewise, risk management identifies information assets along with their weaknesses and prioritizes them as per severity and business impact. The self-examination process of risk management assists managers to identify and mark severity of information assets. However, it is not a fact that assets are only indicating as systems, they also includes people, hardware and software components. Moreover, risk management also reflects asset classification, categorization of groups with respect to business impact against each identified asset; there are certain questions that nee d to be answered: What is the most important or mission critical asset for the organization? Which asset generates profit for the organization? Which asset provides revenue for the organization? Which information asset has the most replacement cost? Which information asset requires significant protection cost? Which information asset reflects the most significant liability when breached? Phases of Risk Assessment The first phase of risk assessment is the investigation phase. The investigation phase is conducted to gather information regarding the system and resources. The threats are prioritized before assessment. The identification of critical components is conducted in order to prioritize threats. After prioritization, related plug-in is selected before execution. Risk assessment includes the scanning of all open ports of the system. This phase also conducts scanning of all known vulnerabilities. The next phase includes reporting of the findings which are extracted by investigatio n phase. The findings are then categorized in different priorities. The report illustrates open ports, number of vulnerabilities found at high status, number of vulnerabilities found at medium status, number of vulnerabilities found at low status (Fenz, Ekelhart, & Neubauer, 2011). Report also includes host information including the ‘netbios’ name, DNS name and operating system. This phas

Economic Issues For HMOs Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Economic Issues For HMOs - Essay Example As a representative of Castor, I am responsible for analyzing and providing optimal solution to my employer which generates most favorable utilization, maximizes its profits and simultaneously mitigates risks. Client Profile Constructit has an employee headcount of 1000 staff members, 550 males and 450 females, ranging within ages of 26 to 42 and comprising 60% of married people. Highest number of employees, amounting to 406, has ages between 26 and 30 while 314 are between 31 and 35, being second highest. However, while 53% of males belong to the dominant age bracket of 26 to 30, 43% of women belong to the age group of 31 to 35. 320 of these employees have job description involving rigorous physical tasks while 250 of them only carry out activities requiring moderate physical efforts. 170 males and 210 females have been diagnosed to have no major medical conditions that may contribute to company’s risk profile. However, the fact that 55 men and 36 women are reportedly chain s mokers, can be linked to become cause of respiratory difficulties, being one of the major reasons for taking sick leaves, amongst others including physical injuries, allergies and viruses, digestive problems and neural disorders. Comprising 39% of the total manpower, 198 males and 192 females suffer from obesity and are therefore highly susceptible to conditions like high blood pressure, diabetes and heart-related diseases such as high cholesterol. Analysis of plans The basic measure for checking if an insurance plan is feasible is to ensure a perfect balance between injury liability and insurance cover against it, such that the former doesn’t exceed the latter (Smith, pp. 68). Employees are responsible for paying insurance premiums themselves and Constructit shall not account for any expenses on their behalf. Given data reveals that personnel are only ready to bear an annual insurance premium not exceeding $4,000. The first plan, Castor Standard doesn’t cover preexist ing medical conditions of employees. This plan if implemented is capable of generating cash flows amounting to $3,428 annually for Castor. The costs that shall be incurred under this plan amount to $1,905 and $1,524 relating to inpatient and outpatient services respectively. The second plan, Castor Enhanced provides coverage for preexisting diseases and injuries found amongst employees. The costs incurred under this plan amount to $4,396 while aggregate earnings are $4,428. This large gap is justifiable due to high risks involved under this plan: Castor is responsible for bearing costs pertaining to preexisting conditions as well and therefore is charging premium as compensation for high risks involved. There is a third plan, Castor Enhanced Minor, which is a mere extension and tailored form of second plan with exclusion of few services that have high utilization. This in turn helps in controlling risks by flexibly adjusting each service and computing its sensitivity on costs incurr ed and profits earned. Constructit employees are majorly suffering from obesity and smoking addiction problems and therefore, substantial medical costs are speculated to be incurred in these two areas. Therefore, if two services, substance abuse treatment and obesity treatment, may be removed from Enhanced plan then the company is able to achieve a better balance between earnings ($3,882) and risks or costs incurred ($3,850). As a last resort, if none of the plans seem to be profitable for the company considering the

Community issue story Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Community issue story - Essay Example It strongly believed that internet would greatly facilitate local business and increased connectivity would help in planning and execution of programs and projects. Most importantly, Wi-Fi connectivity would introduce new opportunities of innovation in learning, job avenues, government transparency, economic growth etc. The Wi-Fi public internet has increasingly become a major facilitating agent for higher productivity for businesses and citizens alike. The convergence of information technology and communication has emerged as vital ingredient of new age hyper-connectivity that significantly promotes sustainable growth. While many local businesses, especially restaurants and coffee shops offer free internet services to increase their clientele, CID’s new venture is already expected to generate around $400,000 from tax. It is expected that $30,000 would be spent on Wi-Fi and same amount would be used as operational expenses for the pilot testing (Barker, 2012). The benefits of Wi-Fi in downtown areas would increase not only CID’s credibility and impact its economic goals but it would also considerably decrease the digital divide across people coming from different demographic segments. Wi-Fi connectivity on a pilot test basis would help contribute to the viability of the project and expose it huge relevance to businesses, public welfare, government departments and impact on their performance, students and academia in general. The huge benefits of internet connectivity through Wi-Fi promote greater awareness about the myriad businesses and services within specified areas. In the Columbia downtown, free Wi-Fi would hugely aid local entrepreneurs and businesses to attract new customers. At the same time, CID and local government can promote new welfare schemes, programs and policies and seek public feedback for improvements. The free access would also allow students to access necessary information and expand academic knowledge. Report

Why a Graduate Degree Essay Example for Free

Why a Graduate Degree Essay When I started writing this paper I had hundreds of reasons why I am pursuing a graduate degree. My objective was to recognize which ones were more important and to find out what were the real reasons. As I sat in front of my piece of paper I came to realize the most important reasons as to why I want to purse my MBA. I graduated in 2001 from a school in Bolivia, South America. I moved to Virginia in January 2002 to start a new life. I began looking for a job related to my degree, Industrial Engineering, but the offers I received came nothing close to a job I desired. After months of searching I realized that it maybe because most companies don’t want to hire someone who graduated from a university they never heard of, especially one abroad. It is then when I realized that I needed something to be more competitive in the labor market, so the solution was to enroll myself in a graduate program. Another reason is because of a disadvantage in my major. My major does not provide specific knowledge in specific areas, but basic knowledge in different areas. I want a major that specializes in one specific area, such as Management Technology. I am young and have a lot of spare time. I am 26 years old and I think it is time for me to establish my career. I am not content with my current job and I want to develop a career that is going to take me farther. I am 100% certain that a MBA is going to take me where I want to go. Financial security is something that for me right now is not a major issue because I am single and have no children; but one day I do want to build a family and when that day comes I want to be financially stable. Pursuing a graduate degree will help and be an important factor to my financial security in life. I also want to pursue a MBA for personal satisfaction. I have always believed that knowledge is something that makes you a better person for the society. I also want my mom to be proud, she worked hard to put me through college and now it is my turn to show her and my family I can do this on my own and I can do it right.

To His Coy Mistress Essay: The Carpe Diem Motif -- His Coy Mistress Es

The Carpe Diem Motif in To His Coy Mistress "Seize the day." For cavalier poets, there seemed to be little else they found nearly as interesting write about than the carpe diem concept. The form of carpe diem poetry is generally consistent, almost to the point of being predictable. Though Andrew Marvell worked with the same concepts, his modifications to them were well-considered. In "To His Coy Mistress," Marvell makes use of allusion, metaphor, and grand imagery in order to convey a mood of majestic endurance and innovatively explicate the carpe diem motif. Previous carpe diem poems (such as those written by Robert Herrick at the same time period) often took an apostrophic form and style which stressed the temporality of youth. The logical extension was to urge the recipient of the poem to take advantage of that youth to further her relationship with the narrator. They were often dark and melancholy in theme, underneath a light exterior of euphony and springtime images (perhaps to urge consideration of the winter to come). Marvell chooses not to employ many of these techniques in the opening of "To His Coy Mistress." Instead, his images and tools stress how he wishes his love to be- tranquil and drawn out. Rather than beginning with a focus on the concept of death, he opens the poem with the lines, "Had we but world enough, and time / This coyness, lady, were no crime" (ll. 1-2) He will later take on the trappings of the carpe diem poem, but his focus will then be on the grandeur and passion of love, rather than its instability. To begin to slow the passage of time in his poem, Marvell makes reference to past and future events on a grand scale. His allusions to religious scriptur... ...it becomes easy to say "death is coming, so we should love" without any particular impact behind the thought. Now, by contrasting the alternative to love caught in time, Marvell demonifies time to be a tyrant, slowly killing us all. He then states that an escape from and method of fighting against time is to love with a passion and defy his aging effect (ll. 40-46). By rethinking the carpe diem theme, Andrew Marvell makes his point more effectively than many other poets working with the same ideas. Using the methods described above, he makes the ideal scene of timelessness more concrete, so that when it is swept away the alternative seems all the more frightening and imperative. In this way he recreates a feature of real life- death is imperative, but trivialities can often make it seem distant. Invariably, however, it will greet us all.

A Day Worth Remembering

April 10, 2007 is a day I will never forget. It was the day I gave birth to my son. Beforehand, I thought it would all be a piece of cake, but to my surprise, it was far from that. On my way to a routine check-up, it seemed as if all I was able to think about was how bad my back hurt and that I could not wait to have this baby. I arrived at the doctor’s office and everything seemed to be running smoothly. I sat in the small, cramped room for what seemed like forever after the nurse had gotten my vitals.The doctor finally came into the room and asked me how I was feeling. I informed her that besides the fact that I was wobbling around and carrying an extra 30 pounds, I felt just fine. She then looked at me with a facial expression that had me thinking the worse. She informed me that my blood pressure was through the roof and that they would have to induce my labor. There I was, a first time mom about to go through something that I had never experienced before. Nervous doesnâ₠¬â„¢t even begin to describe the feelings that I was having at that time and moment.I called my husband and informed him that I was being sent to the maternity ward. Calling him did not help me to calm down. To be honest, I think I was calmer than he was which was surprising since he had been through this before. Finally, after all the questions and trying to comprehend what was going on, he was on his way. I was finally taken upstairs to the maternity ward and admitted. Not too long after arriving, I was given Pytocin to get the contractions started, a drug given to speed up the dilation of the cervix, since there was a chance of my son’s heart rate dropping.Shortly after I was examined, I was diagnosed with severe Preeclampsia, a condition in which the blood pressure is significantly high and chances of seizures and liver failure can occur. Not only was I diagnosed with something that I had never heard of with the potential to become fatal, the woman in the next room over t hat was actually giving birth at that time was screaming her heart out. I wanted to dart out of that place. I was beyond terrified. I sat there in a daze for most of the day since I was on so many different medications. You would have never thought that I was in labor because I was hooked up to so many machines.I felt like this was the worst day of my life and swore I would never do it again. The sharp, rushing pains of contractions kept coming, and to me, life as I knew it sucked. Whenever the pain came along, it would be stronger, longer, and more unbearable than the last. This lasted for an eternity in my eyes and I could not wait for it to be over. I eventually made it to the ten centimeters required to deliver. I was almost to the finish line and I was ready for it to be done and over with. With my husband and mother at my side, I felt invincible.They gave me the energy that was necessary to make it through one of the most important days of my life. I had my game face on and no thing stood in between me and giving birth to the son I was dying to meet. I began to push. The first push and I thought my lungs had collapsed. I was determined to end the long journey I had been on for nine months. With the second and last push came a beautiful, little baby boy. All that I had gone through was well worth it and if I had to do it all over again I would. April 10, 2007 was one of the most terrifying but happiest days of my life and I will always remember every detail of it.

Student Rights Case Analysis Paper

As Americans we have certain expectations to what our rights are, in fact we have a bill of rights to ensure the rights we deserve. In most cases we consider these rights undeniable but sometimes they are deniable when you are a student on campus. Sometimes the legal line is not quite clear on rights that are afforded to students; rather the moral line is clear or not. In day to day adult life we expect law enforcement and lawyers to enforce our rights properly but on school grounds staff members are expected to take the role of enforcer and judge. The 4th Amendment protects Americans from unreasonable search and seizure, but students are not afforded the same right on most occasions. It has been established that searching backpacks and items of the like is permissible on school campus but Safford Unified School District #1 v. Redding delves into the more complicated area of body searches. At the age of 13 Savana Redding was called into the office of her school because she had been implicated in distribution of over the counter pain killers and prescription pain pills that were the strength of two Advil. The assistant principal and secretary went through Savana’s book bag and pockets were searched. After no pills were found on Savana’s outer layer of clothing the assistant principal â€Å"then had [the secretary]take Savana to the school nurse’s office to search her clothes for pills. After [the secretary] and the nurse, had Savana remove her outer clothing, they told her to pull her bra out and shake it, and to pull out the elastic on her underpants, thus exposing her breasts and pelvic area to some degree. No pills were found. † (Cornell University Law School, 2010) It is important to also point out that Savana’s parents were not notified until after the search and the assistant principal had not gotten details of when Savana had been distributing pill or where she kept these pills. Soon after Savana was pulled out of school and the legal proceedings began. It was decided by the Ninth Circuit Court that Savana had indeed had her 4th Amendment right had been violated. The court found that the circumstances did not warrant such an invasive search â€Å"because the suspected facts pointing to Savana did not indicate that the drugs presented a danger to students or were concealed in her underwear, [the assistant principal] did not have sufficient suspicion to warrant extending the search to the point of making Savana pull out her underwear. [the secretary] and [the nurse] said that they did not see anything when Savana pulled out her underwear, but a strip search and its Fourth Amendment consequences are not defined by who was looking and how much was seen. †. Cornell University Law School, 2010) Savana had a clean disciplinary record and the assistant principal had not even found out when the supposed pills were in Savana’s possession or how many were in her possession. The main problem with this search was that, while the measures may have been considered appropriate, there was no reasonable explanation for the extremes that the searc h went to because there was no proof a student would be hiding a non-dangerous contraband in her underwear. The 4th Amendment protects Americans from unreasonable search and seizure, but the school system only allows that protection sometimes. Schools are allowed to search backpacks but not strip search students. Some things seem obvious to outside eyes, like the fact that you shouldn’t strip search 13 year old children, but when you are in charge of 100s of children sometimes certain things get distorted. The assistant principal in this case was trying to make an example of Savana by showing how strict the school was on their drug policy, but he went too far. Risking the emotional damage a child might face from something like a strip search is never worth proving a point. Strip searching may be warranted in a situation like a student seeing another student carrying a weapon in their under garments, but in a situation where there is no real danger to other students it is extreme. As adults we expect all of our rights to be given to us but unfortunately adults don’t always feel the need to extend those rights to children. The judgment in this case could not have been fairer. Hopefully right infringements like this won’t happen to others thanks to Savana stepping forward. References Cornell University Law School.  (2010).  Legal Information Institute.  Retrieved from http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/08-479.ZS.html