Privacy includes several contexts for individuals. There are three aspects of individual expectations to define the term “privacy”. The first aspect is the expectation of anonymity, which was defined as “The Right to Be Let Alone”. Individuals would expect an environment where no one can access their personal information in no matter physical or digital world. Another one is the expectation of control over information. Individuals would expect that professionals and companies would only collect the customers’ information for the purpose of providing services and they would not use or disclose the information for other commercial purposes. And the third expectation is about the confidentiality of personal documents, including e-mails and medical records. Individuals would expect that they could feel free to conduct online or offline activities without others disruptions. However, these expectations are being challenged by the digital technologies, which keep collecting personal information in our daily lives. This Continue reading
Information Technology
Ethical, Security, Legal and Privacy Concerns of Data Mining
Data mining is a powerful new technology with great potential to help companies focus on the most important information in the data they have collected about the behavior of their customers and potential customers. It discovers information within the data that queries and reports can’t effectively reveal. The amount of raw data stored in corporate databases is exploding. From trillions of point-of-sale transactions and credit card purchases to pixel-by-pixel images of galaxies, databases are now measured in gigabytes and terabytes. Raw data by itself, however, does not provide much information. In today’s fiercely competitive business environment, companies need to rapidly turn these terabytes of raw data into significant insights into their customers and markets to guide their marketing, investment. Data mining, or knowledge discovery, is the computer-assisted process of digging through and analyzing enormous sets of data and then extracting the meaning of the data. Data mining tools predict behaviors Continue reading
Virtual Currency – An Overview
Virtual Money is defined as a digital representation of value that is issued and controlled by its creators. It is used and recognized by members of a specific virtual community. Virtual money relies on an organization that completely works on trust and unlike regular money, it is not issued by central bank or any other banking authorities. A virtual currency permits to transfer money without having to use any sort of intermediary like banks. It uses a cryptographic technology called blockchain that forms a collective and publicly demonstrable file of transactions to stop fraud. This builds trust between sellers and buyers, thus eradicating the want banks to get involved to authenticate the procedure. Globalization, virtualization, active customer participation, cost of reduction and networking are indications of altering reality, persuading also the financial amenities. Operating payments services currently regulated by entities of economic trust, which is based on money that is Continue reading
Extreme Programming (XP) Methodology
Extreme Programming (XP) is a software engineering methodology that has been formulated in 1996 by Kent Beck. It is a lightweight development methodology, XP is one of several popular agile processes. Extreme Programming has received fair media attention, and is most renowned for its practices that are sometimes regarded as controversial, such as pair programming and test-driven development. It has already been proven to be very successful because it reaches to the customer satisfaction. Instead of delivering everything at the same time the XP focus on some date far in the future, this process delivers the software you need as you need it, in other words Extreme Programming empowers the developers to confidently respond to changing customer requirements, even late in the project development life cycle. The philosophy of Extreme Programming is teamwork, in other words Managers, Customers and Developers are all equal partners in a collaborative team. The implement Continue reading
An Introduction to Cryptography and Digital Signatures
Cryptography The Greek words “krypt ´os” standing for “hidden” and the word “l ´ogos” that means “word”, are in essence the base from where the word cryptology was derived. As these words denote, cryptology can be best explained by the meaning “hidden word”. In this context, the original purpose behind cryptology is hiding the meaning of some specific combination of words which in turn would insure secrecy and confidentiality. This is a very limited viewpoint in today’s perspective and a wide range of security applications and issues now come under the term of cryptology (rest of the portion of this section will clarify this point of view). As field of mathematical science, Cryptology includes the study of both cryptanalysis as well as cryptography. On one hand, cryptography is a very broad term and represents any process used for data protection. On the other hand, the study of security related issues Continue reading
Introduction to E-Business
Due to Internet capabilities and web technology, traditional business organization definition has undergone a change where scope of the enterprise now includes other company locations, business partners, customers and vendors. It has no geographic boundaries as it can extend its operations where Internet works. All this is possible due to Internet and web moving traditional paper driven organization to information driven Internet enabled E-business enterprise. E-business enterprise is open twenty-four hours, and being independent, managers, vendors, customers transact business any time from anywhere. Internet capabilities have given E-business enterprise a cutting edge capability advantage to increase the business value. It has opened new channels of business as buying and selling can be done on Internet. It enables to reach new markets across the world anywhere due to communication capabilities. It has empowered customers and vendors / suppliers through secured access to information to act, wherever necessary. The cost of business Continue reading