Network Security

Protecting and defending against cyber-attacks has become a vital concern of both business and home computer users over the past decade as Internet services, social media, and the Internet of Things, or IoT, have taken hold.  Three types of security incidents in the forefront are denial of service attack, phishing email, and password cracking.

Computers in the Workplace

The Oil & Gas industry places many demands on its employees to be computer literate.  Computer literacy consists of an understanding of the working of computer hardware and software, as well as forms of electronic communications like email (Business Dictionary, 2020). 

Traveling Through a Network

Throughout my career, I have utilized the commands ping and traceroute (tracert) to troubleshoot numerous issues.  Having a reliable and functional network is critical operating in an enterprise or using the Internet from home.  Both ping and tracert, are ICMP (Internet Control Message Protocol), which the ability to confirm basic connectivity between networked systems.   However, some networks choose to block ICMP for security reasons, which prevent ping and tracert from returning results or functioning at all.  When available, or responding completely, ping and tracert response provide visibility into the underlying connectivity, including distance in milliseconds between systems and the number of systems, or routers.  For this assignment, I choose to ping and perform tracert on google.com, www.australia.gov.au, (Links to an external site.) and tutanota.com. 

Documenting a Day

Waking up at 5:30 AM, I began my standard morning routine of:

• Reading – Reading a chapter from Psalms and Proverbs
• Reflecting – Considering my wins, loses, lessons, and gratitude from the previous day
• Breakfast – The standard cup of coffee, orange, oatmeal, and boiled egg
• Grooming – Brushing my teeth, Showering, and combing my beard
• Dressing – Today, I tried the trend of the fleece vest by sporting the steel blue zippered vest I bought over the weekend.  I paired the vest with a blue dress shirt, khaki pants, and brown slip-ons.

Mobile App Critique

I reviewed the Subway mobile app for IOS.  The Subway app allows the user to order ahead at a Subway restaurant.  I have used this app numerous times to order food for my family, especially in situations where picking up the food and delivering to family members is time-sensitive.  The app certainty beats handwriting down, or even texting, the orders of six family members and telling the ‘sandwich artist’ behind the counter the exact order, but has problems with its design, usability, and functionality.

Programming Languages

My Scratch project can be viewed at https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/364907836/

When utilizing Scratch for the first time, I found the programming language simplistic.  Building upon my previous experience of Visual Basic coding, I realized that all ‘sprites’ or ‘costumes’ were objects that could have blocks of code.  I struggled with many features of Scratch.  I struggled with the movement of my sprites on the background early in the development effort.  I also struggled with how to reset the program.  As my program became complicated with multiple sprites interacting, I struggled with timing and coordinating events.  I overcame these difficulties using Google to search for methods.  My biggest win was learning how to broadcast between sprites so that I could coordinate events between them.  I discovered how to leverage ‘broadcast’ by watching a YouTube video.