Information World Jragon Note

Digital divide*0913

• The gap between those who have access to information and communication technology (phone, internet, PCs) and those that don’t have full access. This also includes the skills to use the technology. This may be an economic issue but also a geographic one.
• e.g. People in undeveloped countries have no access to social-network or  E-communities compared to us

ERP

• Enterprise Resource Planning systems tightly integrate the functional area information systems via a common database – typically integrating sales, marketing, logistics etc. Customer orders can be monitored and checks can be made on customer payment history for example.
• e.g. Microsoft Dynamics GP, includes features for financial management, human resources and supply chain management. 

Value Chain Secondary (Support) activities*12

• do not add value directly to a firm’s products and services, but support the primary activities.  Support activities include accounting, finance, management, human resources management, product and technology development (R&D), and procurement. Strong performance in these areas will bolster the primary activities.
• e.g. Procurement (purchasing) – This is what the organization does to get the resources it needs to operate. This includes finding vendors and negotiating best prices.

The 3Es

• Economy of inputs - reducing costs of inputs, It covers the financial side on which an activity is achieve

• e.g. effective procurement, People, Equipment, Material, Energy, Information
• Efficiency of Operations - the right effort allocation, states the right use of resources to accomplish a task
• e.g. output per employee, turnover per employee
• Effectiveness of outputs  - deliverable basis and the achievement of goals.
• eg what customer actually wants, price, availability

Data aggregators*1214

• Companies that collect public data (e.g., real estate records, telephone numbers) and nonpublic data (e.g., social security numbers, financial data, police records, motor vehicle records) and integrate them to produce digital dossiers. These could be used for marketing, credit or employee checks etc.
• E.g. A site that sells music CDs might advertise certain CDs based on the age of the user and the data aggregate for their age group

Groupware*13

• Groupware refers to software products that support groups of people who share a common task or goal and who collaborate to accomplish it. Spreadsheets are a common use, shared calendars are another popular example.
• e.g. Microsoft Exchange, which facilitate calendar sharing, e-mail handling,  etc.

Weblog

• A blog (Weblog) an informal, often personal journal that is frequently updated and intended for general public reading. More recently Multi-author blogs (MABs) have developed.
• e.g.  Blogger is the most popular blogging service used today, it can allow you to compose a post that you can save to draft or immediately publish, edit existing posts, and etc.   

Unmanaged devices*13

• Unmanaged devices are those outside the control of the IT department. A particular concern is whether these devices have access to sensitive corporate information.
• E.g. include devices in hotel business centers, customer computers, computers in restaurants such as McDonalds, Starbucks, etc, wi-fi cafes

Social engineering*1214

• Social engineering is an attack where the attacker uses social skills to trick a legitimate employee into providing confidential company information such as passwords. Sometimes the attacker may be dressed as a technician or a security guard etc.
• e.g.  hacker pretends to be a VIP or high-level manager who has the authority to use computer systems or files. Most of the time, low-level employees don’t ask any questions of someone who appears in this position.

Logic Bomb

• A logic bomb is a segment of computer code that is embedded within an organization’s existing computer programs and is designed to activate and perform a destructive action either at a certain time and date or if certain conditions are et such as a person leaving a company.
• E.g. a programmer may hide a piece of code that starts deleting files (such as a salary database trigger), should they ever be terminated from the company.

Phishing

• Phishing use deception to acquire sensitive personal information by masquerading as official-looking e-mails or instant messages.
• E.g. Phishing emails s usually appear to come from a well-known organization and ask for your personal information — such as credit card number, social security number, account number or password.

Screen scraper

• Screen scrapers record a continuous “movie” of what you do on a screen. This is normally done to capture data from a legacy application in order to display it using a more modern user interface.
• e.g.  connecting the terminal output port of one computer system to an input port on another. 

Affinity portal

• Affinity portals support communities such as a hobby group or a political party.
• E.g. myUWG, the student Web Portal designed to simply the process of using email, Banweb, WebCT and more.

Alien Software

• Alien software is clandestine software that is installed on your computer through duplicitous methods.  It typically is not as malicious as viruses, worms, or Trojan horses, but it does use up valuable system resources.  In addition, it can report on your Web surfing habits and other personal behavior.  
• e.g. Spyware(collects personal information about users without their consent. Two types of spyware are keystroke loggers (keyloggers) and screen scrapers), Sparmware, Cookies

Spamware and Spam

• Spamware is alien software that is designed to use your computer as a launchpad for spammers. Alternatively it might simply copy your address book.  
• E.g. CoolWebSearch, a group of programs that displays pop-up ads, rewrites search engine results, and alters the infected computer's hosts file to direct DNS lookups to these sites.
• Spam use of electronic messaging systems to send unsolicited messages (spam), especially advertising, as well as sending messages repeatedly on the same site. 
• e.g. nearly identical messages sent to numerous recipients by email,  mobile phone messaging spam, internet forum spam  

How to Authenticate

• Something the User Is  - Also known as biometrics, these access controls examine a user's innate physical characteristics. E.g. gait recognition
• Something the User Has - These access controls include regular ID cards, smart cards, and tokens.  
• Something the User Does - These access controls include voice and signature recognition,
• Something the User Knows  - These access controls include passwords and passphrases. A password is a private combination of characters that only the user should know. A passphrase is a series of characters that is longer than a password but can be memorized easily.  

Whitelisting

• Whitelisting is a process in which positively identifies users or software and allows it access their system wholly or partially. It can be used as a filter to allow member access.
• e.g. Spam filters that come with email clients has whitelists of senders and keywords to look for in emails.

A digital certificate*13

• A digital certificate is an electronic document attached to a file certifying that the file is from the organization that it claims to be from and has not been modified from its original format.
• E.g., when sending an email message, you can digitally sign the message by attaching your digital certificate. Once they receive the message, recipients can verify that it came from you by viewing the small attachment on the email, which contains your public key information.

A virtual private network

• A virtual private network is a private network that uses a public network (usually the Internet) to connect users. This gives it the advantage of a public network (such as flexibility of routing) with the functionality of a private network.
• e.g. SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) VPN, which allows the remote user to connect using just a Web browser, avoiding the need to install specialized client software

Data redundancy, Data isolation, Data inconsistency*12

• Data redundancy: The same data are stored in many places.
• e.g. you store an employee’s name in two different tables
• Data isolation: Applications cannot access data associated with other applications.
• E.g. if A issues a transaction against a database at the same time that B issues a different transaction, both transactions should operate on the database in an isolated manner. 
• Data inconsistency: Various copies of the data do not agree.
• E.g. If a student want to make change in his records, the changes must be made in each and every pages that needs changes otherwise will lead to data inconsistency

data warehouse , data cube

• A data warehouse is a repository of historical data (from marketing, sales etc) organized by subject to support decision makers in the organization.
• E.g. Facebook – basically gathers all of your data  – your friends, your likes, who you stalk, etc. – then store these data into one central repository so that they can make sure that you see the most relevant ads that you’re most likely to click on
• The data cube has three dimensions: customer, product, and time.
• E.g. Facebook – name, your friends, your likes  

Knowledge, Knowledge management, Intellectual capital.

• Knowledge that is contextual, relevant, and actionable. E.g. Facts

• Knowledge management is a process that helps organizations manipulate important knowledge that is part of the organization’s memory, usually in an unstructured format.
• E.g. Research files - A company developing a new product conducts research on their competitors and conducts focus groups to find out what is needed in their product or market niche
• Intellectual capital is another term often used for knowledge.
• E.g. human capital, information capital, brand awareness and instructional capital.

Explicit knowledge, Tacit knowledge

• Explicit knowledge: objective, rational, technical knowledge that has been documented.
• Examples: policies, procedural guides, reports, products, strategies, goals, core competencies
• Tacit knowledge:  cumulative store of subjective or experiential learning.
• Examples: experiences, insights, expertise, know-how, trade secrets, understanding, skill sets, and learning

Tagging

• A tag is a keyword or term that describes a piece of information (e.g, blog, picture, article, video clip)
• E.g. On a photo or blog about food, you put the different types of food names as the tagging

Wikis

• A wiki is a web site on which anyone can post material & make changes to other material.
• E.g. Wikipedia – A free encyclopedia built collaboratively using wiki software, written collaboratively by many anonymous volunteer without pay

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