Posts in category: Uncategorized

Mercury USA is a small- and medium-sized business (SMB) in the transportation sector with 400 employees. 

You’ve just been hired by Mercury USA as the first cyber threat analyst on the team and will work within the existing Information Technology department. Mercury USA has an urgent interest in addressing security vulnerabilities.

Judy “Mac” McNamara, the manager of IT services, said the chief executive officer (CEO) recently learned via a mandatory breach disclosure that a competitor was a victim of ransomware. The firm in question lost a significant amount of intellectual property and customer data and is facing expensive litigation, government fines, and loss of customer confidence. These issues are likely to result in bankruptcy.

Thus, executive management would like to prevent Mercury USA’s critical data (e.g., order data, customer lists, sales leads, Payment Card Industry (PCI) compliance for processing credit, proprietary software) from falling into the wrong hands and threatening the survival of the business.

Message from the CEO

The CEO of Mercury USA has recorded a video message for all employees. Watch this video before starting the projects.

As the cyber threat analyst at Mercury USA, you will be expected to identify security-related issues that hackers could use against the company. You will begin by addressing the security vulnerabilities present in the IT infrastructure of the company and develop a way forward that helps to prevent and deter attacks.

You will be completing three projects for this course:  

Part 1:  Vulnerability Process and Assessment Memo—A two- to three-page memorandum outlining the VM process in which you will use a sample vulnerability scan report to assess security posture and develop a recommended VM process (Week 3)

Part 2:  VM Scanner Background Report—A four- to six-page background report to review a commercial scanning tool and provide a recommendation (Week 5)

Part 3:  Presentation to Management—A five- to 10-slide “pitch” to executive management outlining your assessment of Mercury USA’s security posture, the business need, and seeking a decision on purchasing the commercial tool (Week 7

1. What is knowledge discovery in databases (KDD)? 
2. Review section 1.2 and review the various motivating challenges.  Select one and note what it is and why it is a challenge.Challenges are as follows

i.Non-tarditional Analysis, ii.data ownership and distribution, iii.heterogeneous and complex data, iv.scalability, v.high dimesionality

3.Note how data mining integrates with the components of statistics and AL, ML, and Pattern Recognition.

4.Note the difference between predictive and descriptive tasks and the importance of each.

· What are the similarities and differences between an operations versus a project?

· Can you provide an example of operations and an example of a project in an organization?

As project manager, you have been tasked with creating a project schedule that defines the tasks, duration, dependencies and resources to for a Chat App. Could you complete the following in Microsoft Project?

3. Create a project to be completed in three months.

4. Enter task details, including a minimum of 20 tasks for a marketing campaign project schedule.

5. Add start and end dates for each task.

1. You will be submitting the following  project files. Remember, Last and First should actually be your last name and first name 🙂
2. To upload your file:

• Click on the Submit Assignment button
• Click on Choose File and then search and open 18PR_ppt_LastFirst.pptx
• Click +Add Another File and then search and open 18PR_word_LastFirst.docx
• Click +Add Another File and then search and open 18PR_excel_LastFirst.xlsx
• Once all files have been chosen, click on Submit Assignment
• If necessary, you may return and click Re-submit Assignment to resubmit. 

The PowerPoint part of the project must be over:

(1) A country (any country, but just one). You can cover food, culture, sports, activities, museums, etc… Whatever you want, but make a plan. 

-OR-

(2) Your family

different options for testing blockchain applications. For our course, we have chosen to use Ganache, a local test blockchain. Explore some of the advantages and disadvantages of using local and public blockchains to test apps and contrast the two options.  

• Contract the advantages and disadvantages of using local and public blockchains to test applications.
• Explain how each advantage and disadvantage impacts blockchain application development, and why each is important to a successful blockchain implementation

Details to the assignment uploaded.

Thank you!

SDN and IBN Assignment (Due Week 4)

Software-defined networking (SDN) and intent-based networking (IBN)  offer an ability to revolutionize the modern network  architecture. Both concepts are relatively new, and your chief  technology officer (CTO) has only heard them in passing. In fact, she  pawned them off as the new “marketing fad” dressed up as a new concept.  Since you have researched both technologies, you understand this is not a  fad. When used in combination with virtualization and cloud computing,  you know SDN and IBN could revolutionize how the organization operates,  providing for reduced costs, efficiency, better management of the  network assets, and security. 

However, you need to develop a white paper for the Caduceus CTO to  highlight these benefits. Given the CTO has only heard the term in  passing, you must describe in this white paper, the SDN and IBN  concepts, their benefits, and what it would take for the organization to  implement.

Forming Your Teams 

In addition to submitting your individual white paper here in the SDN  and IBN Assignment, you will also begin to work with your team for the  upcoming collaborative projects.  You should meet your team, brainstorm  ideas for your white paper together, and begin planning your upcoming  work.

Writing Your Paper

After you introduce yourself to your team and brainstorm ideas for this assignment, refer to the company highlights document for more details about Caduceus.

In your white paper, use additional sources of information but also  describe the concept in layman’s terms. Use visuals where appropriate.  Describe how an SDN/IBN architecture would look different than network  architectures we have traditionally deployed. Compare and contrast the  network architectures and discuss the pros and cons of each. 

The paper should include the following sections:

• introduction to software-defined networking (SDN) (discussed in Week 3)
   
• introduction to intent-based networking (IBN) (discussed in Week 4)
   
• discussion on how virtualizing the desktop and now back-end infrastructure are complementary and related 
   
• discussion of how SDN and IBN are related

Company Highlights

●The organization currently maintains 2,000 Microsoft Windows desktop computers for the workforce. As you recall, these desktop computers were about to be refreshed. The organization is currently considering the Dell Optiplex series. Specifically, each computer would have a Intel Core i5 processor, run Microsoft Windows 10, contain 8GB DDR4 RAM, and have a 256GB solid state drive. The rough estimate for each PC is $1,250, which equates to a $2,500,000 upgrade cost to the organization.●Microsoft Office runs on each of these computers. The license fee for each computer is $150, which equates to a $300,000 outlay. The organization typically upgrades all PCs with the latest version of Microsoft Office when it is released.●The organization used multiples instances of Oracle Database. These databases are distributed across 10 Dell PowerEdge servers. These servers cost a minimum of $2,159  each, for a total cost of $21,580.●The organization maintains an additional 20 Dell PowerEdge servers for a variety of reasons to include email, file backup, remote access, etc. The total cost to refresh each of these servers is $3,000 for a total cost of $60,000.●The organization maintains various networking devices. The total cost of this equipment is $3,000,000 and yearly refresh costs are $750,000.●The organization maintains a suite of network security hardware and software solutions. They include a DMZ configuration, multiple firewalls, VPN hardware, antivirus solutions, intrusion detection and protection devices, and log management solutions. The total yearly hardware and software costs for the organization cybersecurity efforts are $2,000,000.●The organization also allows users to access the network via their company-issued Android phones, or iPads. Employees receive a mobile device with VPN software installed so that they may remotely access company systems when they are at home, or traveling.●Because this is a notional example and assignment, you may make further assumptions about the organization IT environment. There is no need to ask your instructor for permission. Simply make explicit your assumptions in the white paper. For example, you are free to assume the number of IT professionals, their specialties, and more importantly the cost to run the IT department.

1. Identify a topic in your specialization. (For IT students, Information Technology is not a topic, however, Millennial’s perceptions of smart phone technology could be a topic.  For leadership students, leadership or leadership styles would be too broad.  You could, however, compare leader and followers perceptions of leadership styles in private four year institutions. These are examples).  
2. What is the cited problem? The problem you want to address has to come from the literature, and be cited, who are saying there are problems.
3. What is the population you would like to address?
4. What methodology are you planning on using? (If you are unsure, do you plan on a quantitative or qualitative study?
5. Locate at least one article related to your topic. What was the research question in the study? Who were the participants in the study? What findings were reported?

Using either R or Python (or anaconda) and the data set provided, I want you to provide me the code and output that completes the following. That said, I will communicate the data structures of this assignment using R.

1. Create a data set with the following values.

x = c(94, 90, 72, 72, 95, 7, 89, 36, 61, 30, 80, 15, 73, 99, 24,

96, 36, 40, 39, 84, 4, 12, 39, 8, 96, 7, 38, 91, 84, 49, 3, 34,

52, 6, 11, 2, 54, 75, 61, 47, 62, 73, 41, 41, 12, 77, 81, 74,

44, 97, 10, 15, 5, 53, 26, 1, 36, 15, 37, 3, 86, 93, 92, 28,

42, 44, 57, 19, 67, 18, 37, 46, 94, 50, 84, 52, 56, 49, 32, 17,

23, 69, 96, 95, 69, 67, 52, 85, 58, 13, 6, 4, 89, 40, 26, 73,

9, 70, 29, 41, 57, 91, 77, 54, 53, 63, 88, 39, 98, 71, 67, 14,

2, 82, 42, 8, 34, 7, 54, 7, 79, 12, 97, 26, 94, 85, 13, 12, 75,

2, 58, 6, 43, 12, 59, 25, 81, 10, 28, 96, 61, 16, 41, 41, 32,

82, 48, 3, 21, 75, 85, 1, 98, 84, 7, 42, 30, 28, 47, 13, 5, 34,

34, 14, 7, 59, 90, 84, 40, 7, 21, 68, 27, 95, 11, 23, 86, 83,

28, 23, 80, 42, 32, 25, 76, 28, 82, 1, 93, 38, 8, 79, 96, 82,

24, 75, 96, 43, 62, 35)

If you are interested in how I created the well formatted vector provided above, below is the code snipped from R that created it.

x=floor(runif( min=1, max=100, n=200))

page(x)

2.  Identify the mean, standard deviation, quartiles, and median using any method available to you. Please clearly identify your answer is! Please provide any code that you use to derive your answer whether R or python.

3. Using the sample function, sample the vector above to create a new vector of length n where n = {10, 50, 75, 100, 150}.  For each of these new vectors, calculate the value of mean, standard deviation, quartiles, and median. Explain what is happening in the above scenario as the sample size increases.

5. This will require some thinking. I would like you provide statistical evidence that a coin flop has a 50/50 probability of landing on heads (or tails) by generating a vector of length 200 and applying the concepts of mean, median, standard deviation, etc. to evaluate the data set. Hint: you may have to run your experiment more than once! 

a. For your answer, please provide any code / results that you use. 

b. Please provide a short paragraph describing why your findings are evidence that a coin flop has 50/50 probability of landing on heads or tails.

Finish assignment