karl greene

Data loss can happen in many ways. One of the most common causes is physical failure of the media the data is stored on. You probably have everything saved on your PCs hard drive. That hard drive will not live forever. To quote a friend of mine, “there are only two types of hard drives – the ones that have failed and the ones that will fail.” Yes, normally hard drives will live for years without incident. But eventually they will die. It might happen gradually, by more and more bad clusters accumulating until most of the drive is unusable. Or it might happen suddenly, the hard drive just dies without warning.

Another bad storage media are floppy disks. They are good for temporary storage and maybe transporting information, but not for permanent data storage. I’ve lost count of how many floppies I’ve tossed because they were bad. And I have talked to countless people who saved valuable data to a floppy only to find out when they needed to access it that the floppy was bad and the data inaccessible.

Another possible cause for data loss is power failure or spikes. It can result in loss of the document you are currently working on because you did not save it before the power failed and your PC shut down, or in loss of your entire hard drive because a power surge fried your motherboard and destroyed the file allocation table of your hard drive.

Also worth mentioning is data loss through virus attacks. There are plenty of nasty computer viruses out there that will delete files on an infected machine. That’s why Virus Protection is just as important.

Antivirus or anti-virus software is software used to prevent, detect and remove malware (of all descriptions), such as: computer viruses, adware, backdoors, malicious BHOs, dialers, fraudtools, hijackers, keyloggers, malicious LSPs, rootkits, spyware, trojan horses and worms. Computer security, including protection from social engineering techniques, is commonly offered in products and services of antivirus software companies. This page discusses the software used for the prevention and removal of malware threats, rather than computer security implemented by software methods.

A variety of strategies are typically employed. Signature-based detection involves searching for known patterns of data within executable code. However, it is possible for a computer to be infected with new malware for which no signature is yet known. To counter such so-called zero-day threats, heuristics can be used. One type of heuristic approach, generic signatures, can identify new viruses or variants of existing viruses by looking for known malicious code, or slight variations of such code, in files. Some antivirus software can also predict what a file will do by running it in a sandbox and analyzing what it does to see if it performs any malicious actions.

No matter how useful antivirus software can be, it can sometimes have drawbacks. Antivirus software can impair a computer’s performance. Inexperienced users may also have trouble understanding the prompts and decisions that antivirus software presents them with. An incorrect decision may lead to a security breach. If the antivirus software employs heuristic detection, success depends on achieving the right balance between false positives and false negatives. False positives can be as destructive as false negatives.^[1] Finally, antivirus software generally runs at the highly trusted kernel level of the operating system, creating a potential avenue of attack.^[2]

For computer security: 

• Install a firewall and virus-checking on your computers.
• Make sure that your operating system is set up to receive automatic updates.
• Protect your computer by downloading the latest patches or security updates, which should cover vulnerabilities.
• Only allow your staff access to the information they need to do their job and don’t let them share passwords.
• Encrypt any personal information held electronically that would cause damage or distress if it were lost or stolen.
• Take regular back-ups of the information on your computer system and keep them in a separate place so that if you lose your computers, you don’t lose the information.
• Securely remove all personal information before disposing of old computers (by using technology or destroying the hard disk).
• Consider installing an anti-spyware tool. Spyware is the generic name given to programs that are designed to secretly monitor your activities on your computer. Spyware can be unwittingly installed within other file and program downloads, and their use is often malicious. They can capture passwords, banking credentials and credit card details, then relay them back to fraudsters. Anti-spyware helps to monitor and protect your computer from spyware threats, and it is often free to use and update.

For using emails securely:

• Consider whether the content of the email should be encrypted or password protected. Your IT or security team should be able to assist you with encryption.
• When you start to type in the name of the recipient, some email software will suggest similar addresses you have used before. If you have previously emailed several people whose name or address starts the same way - eg “Dave” - the auto-complete function may bring up several “Daves”. Make sure you choose the right address before you click send.
• If you want to send an email to a recipient without revealing their address to other recipients, make sure you use blind carbon copy (bcc), not carbon copy (cc). When you use cc every recipient of the message will be able to see the address it was sent to. 
• Be careful when using a group email address. Check who is in the group and make sure you really want to send your message to everyone.
• If you send a sensitive email from a secure server to an insecure recipient, security will be threatened. You may need to check that the recipient’s arrangements are secure enough before sending your message.

For using faxes securely:

• Consider whether sending the information by a means other than fax is more appropriate, such as using a courier service or secure email. Make sure you only send the information that is required. For example, if a solicitor asks you to forward a statement, send only the statement specifically asked for, not all statements available on the file.
• Make sure you double check the fax number you are using. It is best to dial from a directory of previously verified numbers.
• Check that you are sending a fax to a recipient with adequate security measures in place. For example, your fax should not be left uncollected in an open plan office.
• If the fax is sensitive, ask the recipient to confirm that they are at the fax machine, they are ready to receive the document, and there is sufficient paper in the machine.
• Ring up or email to make sure the whole document has been received safely.
• Use a cover sheet. This will let anyone know who the information is for and whether it is confidential or sensitive, without them having to look at the contents.

For other security:

• Shred all your confidential paper waste.
• Check the physical security of your premises.
• Train your staff: 
• so they know what is expected of them;
• to be wary of people who may try to trick them into giving out personal details;
• so that they can be prosecuted if they deliberately give out personal details without permission;
• to use a strong password - these are long (at least seven characters) and have a combination of upper and lower case letters, numbers and the special keyboard characters like the asterisk or currency symbols;
• not to send offensive emails about other people, their private lives or anything else that could bring your organisation into disrepute;
• not to believe emails that appear to come from your bank that ask for your account, credit card details or your password (a bank would never ask for this information in this way);
• not to open spam – not even to unsubscribe or ask for no more mailings. Tell them to delete the email and either get spam filters on your computers or use an email provider that offers this service

Passwords ensure the security and confidentiality of data that is stored on various workstations and servers across campus. Some of this data includes student and employee names and addresses, grades, evaluations, timetables, payroll etc.

It is your responsibility as a user, to make sure that all your account passwords are as difficult to guess as possible.

Did you know that…

• a weak password can allow viruses to gain access to your computer and spread through the University of Ottawa’s network?
• an easy-to-guess password can allow hackers to use your computer to hack into other computers connected to the University’s network?
• these same hackers could use your e-mail account to send malicious messages to everyone in your address book, Inbox and others?

Learning materials are available through the College’s Virtual Learning Environment. These are populated by teaching staff and are course specific. These resources are also accessible off-campus.

Some traditionally paper-based materials are being re-purposed as interactive materials to be embedded into the VLE.

Many Academies are utilising voting pods in their lessons to engage learners into offering instant feedback to other students and tutors.

Gaming software, Neverwinter Nights, has been piloted in Creative Arts to establish if this type of learning would be better suited to some students. The pilot found that:

• The software was very successful in relation to student attendance and eagerness to attend class
• Most students will complete their portfolios compared to traditional methods
• Students show greater acceptance of maths in the curriculum

Networks are being used in the following areas:

• Access to HE
• Doncaster Business School
• Languages
• Carers in the Community
• Sport & Public Services

E-learning includes all forms of electronically supported learning and teaching, and more recently Edtech. The information and communication systems, whether networked learning or not, serve as specific media to implement the learning process.^[1] The term will still most likely be utilized to reference out-of-classroom and in-classroom educational experiences via technology, even as advances continue in regard to devices and curriculum.

E-learning is the computer and network-enabled transfer of skills and knowledge. E-learning applications and processes include Web-based learning, computer-based learning, virtual education opportunities and digital collaboration. Content is delivered via the Internet, intranet/extranet, audio or video tape, satellite TV, and CD-ROM. It can be self-paced or instructor-led and includes media in the form of text, image, animation, streaming video and audio.

Nowadays, it is commonly thought that new technologies can strongly help in education. In young ages especially, children can use the huge interactivity of new media, and develop their skills, knowledge, perception of the world, under their parents monitoring, of course. In no way traditional education can be replaced, but in this era of fast technological advance and minimization of distance through the use of the Internet, everyone must be equipped with basic knowledge in technology, as well as use it as a medium to reach a particular goal.

Abbreviations like CBT (Computer-Based Training), IBT (Internet-Based Training) or WBT (Web-Based Training) have been used as synonyms to e-learning. Today one can still find these terms being used, along with variations of e-learning such as elearning, Elearning, and eLearning. The terms will be utilized throughout this article to indicate their validity under the broader terminology of E-learning

E-Government (short for electronic government, also known as e-gov, digital government, online government, or connected government) is digital interactions between a government and citizens (G2C), government and businesses/Commerce (G2B), government and employees (G2E), and also between government and governments /agencies (G2G). Essentially, the e-Government delivery models can be briefly summed up as (Jeong, 2007):^[1]

• G2C (Government to Citizens)
• G2B (Government to Businesses)
• G2E (Government to Employees)
• G2G (Government to Governments)
• C2G (Citizens to Governments)

This digital interaction consists of governance, information and communication technology (ICT), business process re-engineering (BPR), and e-citizen at all levels of government (city, state/provence, national, and international).

Examples of e-commerce transactions are:

• An individual purchases a book on the Internet.
• A government employee reserves a hotel room over the Internet.
• A business calls a toll free number and orders a computer using the seller’s interactive telephone system.
• A business buys office supplies on-line or through an electronic auction.
• A retailer orders merchandise using an EDI network or a supplier’s extranet.
• A manufacturing plant orders electronic components from another plant within the company using the company’s intranet.
• An individual withdraws funds from an automatic teller machine (ATM).

Identifying e-commerce transactions often is not as straight forward as the previous examples may make it appear. Some additional examples that demonstrate the complexity of implementing the proposed definition are provided below.

• A consumer visits a bookstore and inquires about the availability of an out-of-stock book. A bookstore employee downloads a digital copy of the book and prints it along with cover. Not an e-commerce retail transaction since agreement to purchase did not occur over an electronic network. However, the right to access the digital archived copy is an e-commerce service transaction.
• Consumer uses Internet to research the purchase of a computer, but calls a toll free number and places the order with an operator. Not an e-commerce transaction because agreement to transfer ownership did not occur over computer-mediated network; neither telephone was computer-enabled.
• An individual visits a retail store and purchases merchandise not currently in stock from a computer-enabled kiosk located inside the shop. An e-commerce transaction since agreement occurred over computer-mediated networks. In contrast, the purchase of a pre-packaged music CD from a computerized kiosk would not be considered an e-commerce transaction. If the kiosk was network linked, the digital music was downloaded, and the CD was mastered within the kiosk this would be an e-commerce transaction