Wednesday, 10 November 2010

Questionnaire

Questionnaire

1)Have you ever encountered a virus on your personal computer before?

Yes                         No

2)If yes, how was it attracted? i.e. email? (If unknown please say) 



3) Do you have security software on your computer?

Yes                    No

4)Is the security software paid for or is it free?

Free                  Paid

5)Out of the following which software's do you have? (can tick more than 1 and write others)

Firewall      Anti-Virus        Anti-Spyware       Desktop      Passwords       Email

Other :

6)On a scale of 1-5 how effective is this software to you?
1      2              3        4            5

7)If software was paid, how many viruses on average have you encountered the past year?

0-5            6-25                 26-50                51-100                  101+

8)If software was free, how many viruses on average have you encountered the past year?

0-5           6-25                 26-50                 51-100                  101+

9)Do you use emails? (If Yes, in 'other' box write how often in days per week)

Yes             No                       Use
10)Have you ever seen a 'fake' email (thinking it was real) and clicked upon  it and obtained a virus?

Yes                 No
11)Do you have passwords for protection on the computer?

Yes                  No
12)If yes, how often are the passwords changed?

Daily             Weekly               Monthly             Yearly            Never

Assignment +

Literature Review

Computers are becoming more and more common in daily use for a person. The internet is the main attraction to a person is social networking sites, Information pages and emailing. Results show that "In 2010, 30.1 million adults in the UK (60 per cent) accessed the Internet every day or almost every day."(ONS Opinions Survey 27/08/2010)


Figure 1 - Chart of people accessing the internet by year
This means that more people out there are accessing the internet and are possible targets for people to attack. (As shown in figure above)

For this reason there is now many ways for a user to protect themselves from attacks when using the internet; private browsing, email (phishing), anti-virus, spyware/firewall, account management.

When it comes down to private browsing it doesn’t save history and keyed in data, but “many websites encrypt their data for security reasons by automatically establishing a secure key with the user's computer, even if private browsing is enabled. (August 13, 2010 – Collin Jackson). Emailing has phishing emails; replicas of a normal email to obtain your details, “About 28 percent of the time, the consumers incorrectly identify the phishing messages as legitimate.” (28/7/2004 – Bob Sullivan). The most common known protection is anti-virus, but even this can be ineffective when you find you have a fake version, fake anti-virus "represents 15 percent of all malware that Google detects on web sites" (Google - 27/4/2010) supported by the "240 million Web pages and more than 11,000 domains involved in fake anti-virus distribution uncovered” (Elinor Mills – 2010)


Research Methodology

There are two main types of research methods; Primary and Secondary. Also with the use of quantative and qualitative methods under each primary and secondary method of research, so using both quantative and qualitative a wide variety of data can be gained.

Primary Sources


Quantitative

When it comes down to using primary sources as a method to gain data, The easiest and an extremely effective method is the questionnaire; With the use of a questionnaire gaining yes and no answers from an array of questions. It's possible to gain data to create graphs, charts and trends so it gives the idea of what "in this case computer security" is used and how effective this security is.
Using a questionnaire to gaining data on security, with a subject range of 10-20 people answering the questionnaire within the university and out if the university a wide range of answers can be gained, to create a statistical chart and a trend chart, on security methods and security usage and how effective they are for the user.

Qualitative

Here interviewing will be used to gain the data, with open sourced questions, getting the user to give their own opinion on the topic. With the open questions its guaranteed that the answers will not be exactly the same, therefore the data can be processed and shown as they are answered to try and prove the hypothesis.
4 people will be interviewed outside of the university. As getting the data from people outside the university can work out better, because these people may not be up-to-date with security methods and have been open to attack with the security they, this showing the security faults and that the hypothesis is correct, the data intended to gain, will be revolving around the flaws in security software's. The answers provided from the research will be directly copied into the report as evidence.

Secondary Sources


Quantitative and Qualitative


Here secondary sources both Quantitative and Qualitative methods will be used in conjunction. Through the use of the internet to research computer security; the internet provides information pages, surveys people have completed, FAQ's, articles and more.
The internet is going to be used to gain as many resources as necessary to prove the hypothesis, mainly through the use of articles and other people's opinions and information pages about security facts. the pure facts being Quantitative and opinion surveys being the Qualitative side.

Monday, 25 October 2010

Assignment

Title - Are Our Home and Private Computers Ever Safe from External Threats?

Hypothesis - Computers are never safe from external threats


Introduction

The use of computers these days has become a necessity for work purposes and for home private use, for example; social networking for communication with friends, or to use as storage device for saving work documents , pictures and videos etc.

With the great overload of people using computers and the types of information stored on them, their will always be a need for safety software to be employed. As their will be people out there who miss-use and abuse this technology and try ‘hack’ into ones computer and steal this information, or pass on computer viruses and spyware. For example, when someone has a personal email address and is receiving emails from sites they use for updates, the possibility that they are malicious emails is unknown. When opened upon could upload a virus to the computer, and the user wouldn’t have the choice of stopping it.

With the employment of security software these types of attacks can possibly be prevented and protect users. As technology progresses, the software must be updated as new viruses and spyware are being created by people, which once again leave a user open for attack and vulnerable. Therefore the aims of this essay are to provide you with an argument of whether the software available for computers is effective and consistent enough to keep a user protected at all times through the use of a hypothesis and research (books, articles, newspapers, online websites, questionnaires and qualitative and quantitative research methods). 

Thursday, 14 October 2010

Interesting Sites / Potential of Assignment Choice

http://www.networkworld.com/index.html - has information about the windows phone - and its adaptability to computers such as MAc and Windows (because its a windows phone) and other information on updates for the windows phone.

http://www.internetnews.com/infra/ - Has information on general news about networking e.g. with cisco and microsoft and apple etc. (business specific)

http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com/news/0,289141,sid7,00.html - networking news
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsphone/en-us/default.aspx - main site about windows phone 7 (microsoft)

Thursday, 30 September 2010

Learning Line

This is my Learning line of my life so far;

1. Nursery

2. Primary School - St Francis

3. Football Team (sporting 77)

4. Secondary School - St John Payne

5. Worked at a restaurant

6. Went to Sixth form

7. Passed CBT (motorbike training)

8. General Store Work - HomePride (Finished 2010)

9.Working At Morrisons (Checkout Operator / Supervisor)

10. Driving Liscence Obtained (2011)

11. Anglia Ruskin University (Current)

VARK - Personality

V - 9 points       \
A - 5 points         \ This makes me
R - 5 points         / a visual person
K - 6 points       /

My result came out as a visual person, this does relate to me as a person, as im not the type to complete tonnes of writing tasks and study word for word tutorial books or even read just for pleasure.
Taking notes in a lecture then reading over them, is an easier way to go about studying, or to just watch a video or presentation about the topic.

Wednesday, 22 September 2010

SWOT

Strengths;
  • Good level of IT skills
  • Good social skills
  • Team player
  • Completed a Cisco course - so I am up-to-date with latest technology in computer networking


Weaknesses;
  • Speaking infront of large groups
  • Academic referencing
  • Organisational skills
  • Forgetful / Lazy


Opportunities;
  • Books (resources)
  • Internet use (Library)
  • University facilities
  • Team work


Threats;
  • Getting far behind on work
  • Presentations (large groups)
  • Loss of work (memory stick / corruption)