Students responsible for replying: Replied to each discussion topic posted by classmates by Saturday midnight with substantive relevant postings, adding value to the discussion and demonstrating student’s understanding of the concepts. And, replied more than once to at least one of the topics. In-text citation and references should be use. Discussion 1 - ISO 9000 Class, What is the trend In a world where business success can depend heavily on consumer reviews and adherence to strict regulations, there is a trend growing among enterprises of all sizes to certify the quality of their products and services. ISO 9000 is an internationally recognized certification comprised of a series of quality management systems which are designed to oversee the enterprise's operations in order to maintain a certain level of excellence (Hayes, 2019). So what… If a business is operating in an environment with strict regulations, such as food and beverage, then obtaining the ISO 9000 certification will serve to meet many federal guidelines and prevent costly fines associated with quality negligence. I was curious to know if enterprises earn greater sales after achieving this certification since many times a certification is used as leverage to close a deal. An article posted in the International Journal of Productivity and Performance Management showed that there was “no evidence of improved performance after registration” (Heras et al, 2019). The study was conducted on a group of 400 accredited firms. This suggests that many enterprises would not need to spend the resources necessary on this type of certification especially if it would not help them maintain adherence to regulations. How does it relate to the case study? Achieving this certification would not benefit Trust Carpets, the business from our case study. Another article posted in the International Journal of Productivity and Performance Management identified that the key motivation for organizations achieving this certification is because they were pressured from their customers (Kakouris & Sfakianaki, 2019). I do not perceive that any consumers would expect carpets and their installation to be ISO 9000 certified products or services. Aside from food and beverage, what sort of products or services/industries do you suspect would benefit most from this certification? Which products or services/industries do you believe have the largest consumer demand for this certification? Would you require this certification for your carpet provider? References Hayes, A. (2019). ISO 9000. Investopedia. Retrieved from https://www.investopedia.com/terms/i/iso9000.asp Heras, I., Dick, G.P.M. and Casadesús, M. (2002), "ISO 9000 registration’s impact on sales and profitability: A longitudinal analysis of performance before and after accreditation", International Journal of Quality & Reliability Management, Vol. 19 No. 6, pp. 774-791. https://doiorg.ezproxy.umgc.edu/10.1108/02656710210429618 Kakouris, A. and Sfakianaki, E. (2019), "Motives for implementing ISO 9000 – does enterprise size matter?", International Journal of Productivity and Performance Management, Vol. 68 No. 2, pp. 447463. https://doi-org.ezproxy.umgc.edu/10.1108/IJPPM-03-2018-0096 Discussion 2 - Self-healing System Technology Class, When I first saw the phrase, Self-healing System Technology, the first thing that came to mind was the T1000 from Terminator 2: Judgement Day and how the T-1000 repaired itself when it got shot or damaged (Terminator 2, 1991). In some respects, that is the same concept behind Self-healing System Technology. Vadavi (2019) describes self-healing systems as “any device or system that has the ability to perceive that it is not operating correctly and, without external assistance, make the necessary adjustments to restore itself to normal operation”. Break fix seems to be a major part of an IT professional’s responsibilities. A Gartner survey along with additional studies project over a million IT and Telecommunications jobs will go unfilled in the United States by 2030 (Kurkal, 2019). CIO’s say 70% of budget and staff work at “just keeping things up and running” (Kurkal, 2019). Self-healing System Technology has the potential to be one of the next major advancements in information technology. Having the ability for a network, application, or material to fix itself without external intervention is a game changer. Businesses around the world have experienced loss of revenue while it waits for IT to resolve/fix and ultimately bring a system back online. A one-hour IT outage for 95% of businesses means lost productivity worth $100,000 (Fat Finger, 2019). With the advancements in artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML), this next generation of systems (self-healing systems) can help reduce this loss. Self-healing systems will help IT professionals improve performance and uptime while reducing the mean time to resolution (MTTR) and allow the system to get back online faster (Kurkal, 2019). Currently, Adobe is using self-developed AI based programming “to automate about 25 core IT tasks that were previously done by employees” (Castellanos, 2019). This AI program “automatically fixes failures in data-batching” (Castellanos, 2019). Another use for self-healing system technology is predicting a “network failure or performance issue, and fix it automatically” (Castellanos, 2019). International Business Machines (IBM) Corp., is currently researching using the technology in this way. Have you ever visited an online retailer and their site loaded slowly so you went elsewhere? A self-healing system could notice the slowness in real-time and take the necessary action to correct the situation by allotting additional computing resources or tracing down and remediating the problem (Fat Finger, 2019). Like most emerging technology, it has its good and bad sides. What are the downsides to Self-healing System Technology? There are warehouses that have robots who travel around and pickup items and take them back to designated locations. Can you see self-healing system technology being deployed with robots to replace faulty server parts or mechanical parts in hard to reach places once the system alerts there is a failure? What is the ethical effect of self-healing system technology and what affect does technology have on IT professional jobs? References: Castellanos, S. (2019, July 2). AI Powers 'Self-Healing' Technology. Retrieved May 30, 2020, from https://www.wsj.com/articles/ai-powers-self-healing-technology-11562021951 Fat Finger. (2019, October 21). Are Self-Healing Platforms the Next Wave of Innovation in AI. Retrieved May 30, 2020, from https://percentotech.com/are-self-healing-platforms-the-next-wave-of-innovation-in-ai/ Kurkal, V. (2019, November 14). 2020 Business Trends: AIOps and the Promise of Self-healing IT. Retrieved May 30, 2020, from https://www.devprojournal.com/technology-trends/ai/2020-business-trendsaiops-and-the-promise-of-self-healing-it/ Terminator 2: Judgment Day. (1991, July 3). Retrieved May 30, 2020, from https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0103064/ Vadavi, R. (2019, April 11). Self-healing IT systems: Less of a choice, more a mandatory requirement. Retrieved May 30, 2020, from https://www.mindtree.com/blog/self-healing-it-systems-less-choice-moremandatory-requirement Discussion 3 - Neuromorphic Hardware Class, Neuromorphic hardware is described as any electronic device that can mimic the natural biological structures of our nervous system. An example would be how the emerging technology of Neuromorphic computing is focusing on Artificial Intelligence (AI) tech that can recognize smells by using the structure of the human brain. This type of technology is important because of the unique criteria it fulfills. For computing, which was mentioned, it could be used to detect scents of explosives, chemical weapons and narcotics. It can also isolate scents which can be used to improve current technologies of smoke detectors as an example. (Neuromorphic computing, 2020) (Finch, 2018) This tech exists because it seems to be the next step of where AI is going. In order to create more efficient AI tech that can respond to human cognition's. Intel specifically is researching into this technology in order to emulate the neural network of the human brain called Spiking neural networks (SNN). How it operates is that each “neuron” in the network operates separately as well as sending signals to each other in order to simulate the learning process of the brain. The problems with creating and using neuromorphic hardware is that the time to create and refine it as well as creating the algorithms for the hardware, how it will operate specifically. (Neuromorphic Computing - Next Generation of AI) This type of technology is important because it can give us more insight on how the human brain operates. If this technology is given the time to develop, the outcome could be a new type of machine that is capable of memorizing patterns by using less inputs than a digital neural network. Some organizations that have used this type of technology is both IBM and google. IBM with creating Neuromorphic chips focused on deep learning to power supercomputers, and Google with creating neuromorphic AI systems to create a multimodel task machine to be able to do as many as eight tasks simultaneously. In addition, neuromorphic hardware could enhance what already exists with supercomputers. If supercomputers had neuromorphic tech, it could enhance the learning capabilities that already exist and essentially become a “supercomputer that can simulate a supercomputer”. (Fulton, 2019) (Neuromorphic: Designing the NextGeneration Supercomputer) Due to how complicated the brain is and how limited the technology that we have today, do you believe that it is possible to fully recreate the human brain and all its functions? What impacts do you think that Neuromorphic computing can have on society such what effects in can cause in the economy, domestic policies, etc.? Do you believe that this technology could benefit “Trusty Carpets”? References Finch, S. (2018, May 28). At A Glance - Neuromorphic Hardware. Retrieved June, from https://disruptionhub.com/neuromorphic-hardware/ Fulton, S., III. (2019, February 08). What neuromorphic engineering is, and why it's triggered an analog revolution. Retrieved June 03, 2020, from https://www.zdnet.com/article/what-neuromorphic-engineeringis-and-why-its-triggered-an-analog-revolution/ Neuromorphic computing. (2020). Computer Act!Ve, 577, 49. Neuromorphic: Designing the Next-Generation Supercomputer ... (n.d.). Retrieved June 3, 2020, from https://science.rpi.edu/computer-science/news/neuromorphic-designing-next-generation-supercomputer Neuromorphic Computing - Next Generation of AI. (n.d.). Retrieved June 03, 2020, from https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/research/neuromorphic-computing.html Discussion 4 - Continuous Adaptive Risk and Trust Class, Have you ever been bored at work and decided to do some browsing on the internet, maybe on sites such as Pinterest or Facebook, maybe even LinkedIn or other random websites. If you have, you’ve probably ran into a problem where you hit a brick wall that says the content was blocked or the website you’re trying to reach is not allowed. Perhaps you were researching potential methods for improving your business by trying to find new products or services that could change the way you do things, but even that go blocked. In the past, there were programs or applications, which were either installed on every machine or connected to the network itself that would have a standard set of websites that the application would automatically block. Just the same, in the security settings of your favorite browser, you can set the level of security (i.e. low, medium, high or even custom) which will give warnings about potentially risky sites before you browse them. If this content is exactly what you’re looking for, these constant warnings or site blockages can be very annoying. As such, a single standard for each enterprise, business and architecture is not going to be the same with regards to cybersecurity. That being said, the traditional method in cyber security risk deterrence, having a standard list of potential threats is not the same and ultimately obsolete as a method for cybersecurity. Since the turn of the century, there have been several data breaches in large corporations that have impacted thousands, if not millions of people around the globe, to include: Adobe in 2016, LinkedIn in 2012 and 2016 as well as Equifax in 2017 to name a few (Swinhoe, 2020). These data breaches have put corporations and subscribers on each as their personal information has been exploited against their will. Presenting the modern concept of Continuous Adaptive Risk and Trust Assessment (CARTA). Mar (2018) explains that CARTA is a top strategic technology trend that started in 2018 and focuses, as its name suggests, constant risk and cyber threat assessments in order to thwart attacks and protect clients and business data. In contrast to traditional methods that only did periodical assessments and updates to cybersecurity systems, CARTA moves away from “rule-based” approaches and puts greater emphasis on detection and preventative rather than reactive measures in dealing with risks and threats. This new method puts the accountability and level of cybersecurity on businesses and organizations rather than on that of a blanket software owning corporation to make updates to their security. The implementation of this new methodology can be cumbersome as it drives a need for additional network security and manpower. The Department of Defense is an easy example in the shift from traditional methods to the CARTA method of cybersecurity. In recent years, each branch of the military has created cyber-based career fields, as opposed to strictly communication-based career fields and integrated the CARTA mindset into a daily routine by utilizing risk management frameworks across the various networks. With the idea of the Internet of Things (IoT) in mind and cyber threats constantly increasing and actually exploiting home networks like in the case of an Alabama family (The Guardian, 2019), what are you doing to keep your household secure from hackers and being exploited? What can be done to further the progression of cybersecurity, if any, to the point of safety? Or is this even possible? Have we adequately addressed the risk posed by employees, including education and training, policies regarding internet and device use, and employee turnover risks? Lastly, are we ever really safe from the threat of data being exploited and how can we get to “safety”? - BJ References MAR, S. (2018). BRINGING CYBERSECURITY INTO THE FUTURE: Internal auditors should consider whether CARTA is a smarter approach to addressing information security risks. Internal Auditor, 75(1), 16–17. Swinhoe, D. (2020, April 17). The 15 biggest data breaches of the 21st century. CSO Online. https://www.csoonline.com/article/2130877/the-biggest-data-breaches-of-the-21st-century.html The Guardian. (2019, December 27). Ring sued by man who claims camera was hacked and used to harass his kids. the Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/dec/27/ring-camera-lawsuithackers-alabama
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