CHAPTER 3: Information Systems: Ethics, Privacy and Information Security

CHAPTER 3: Information Systems: Ethics, Privacy and Information Security

Ethics is A branch of philosophy that deals with what is considered to be rightand wrong. ThreeFundamental Tenets of Ethics are, Responsibility which means that you accept the consequences of your decisions and actions, Accountability which means a determination of who is responsible for actions that were taken, and Liability which are a legal concept meaning that individuals have the right to recover the damages done to them by other individuals, organizations, or systems. The Four Categories of Ethical Issues are , Privacy Issues involve collecting, storing and disseminating information about individuals, Accuracy Issues involve the authenticity, fidelity and accuracy of information that is collected and processed, Property Issues involve the ownership and value of information, and Accessibility Issues revolve around who should have access to information and whether they should have to pay for this access.

Privacy is the right to be left alone and to be free of unreasonable personal intrusions. Court decisions have followed two rules, First, The right of privacy is not absolute.Your privacy must be balanced against the needs of society. Second, The public’s right to know is superior to the individual’s right of privacy. Personal Information in Databases. Information about individuals is being kept in many databases: banks, utilities co., govt. agencies, …etc.; the most visible locations are credit-reporting agencies. Equifax, TransUnion, and Experian are the three best known credit reporting agencies. Social Networking Sites often include electronic discussions such as chat rooms. These sites appear on the Internet, within corporate intranets, and on blogs.A blog(Weblog) is an informal, personal journal that is frequently updated and intended for general public reading. Social Networking Sites Can Cause You Problems.Anyone can post derogatory information about you anonymously. The second article shows students how information they (or others) post to social networking sites can impact their lives, in particular, their job search. This information may take the form of text, images, etc.

Many Factors Increasing the Threats to Information Security, International organized crime turning to cybercrime, Downstream liability, Increased employee use of unmanaged devices, and Lack of management support. Downstream liability occurs when Company A’s systems are attacked and taken over by the perpetrator. Company A’s systems are then used to attack Company B. Company A could be sued successfully by Company B, if Company A cannot prove that it exercised due diligence in securing its systems.Due diligence means that a company takes all necessary security precautions, as judged by commonly accepted best practices.Unmanaged devices are those outside the control of the IT department. Examples include devices in hotel business centers, customer computers, computers in restaurants such as McDonalds, Paneras, Starbucks, etc. Lack of management support takes many forms: insufficient funding, technological obsolescence, and lack of attention.

CHAPTER 6: Electronic Commerce: Applications and Issues

 

CHAPTER 6: Electronic Commerce: Applications and Issues

 

Electronic commerce (e-commerce, EC) describes the buying, selling, transferring or exchanging of products, services or information via computer networks, including the Internet. E-business is a broader definition of EC, including buying and selling of goods and services, and also servicing customers, collaborating with partners, conducting e-learning and conducting electronic transactions within an organization. Pure versus Partial Electronic Commerce depends on the degree of digitization involved, Brick-and-mortar organizations, Virtual organizations, and Click-and-mortar organizations.

There are six types of E-Commerce, which are Business-to-consumer (B2C) the sellers are organizations and the buyers are individuals, Business-to-business (B2B): both the sellers and buyers are business organizations. B2B represents the vast majority of e-commerce.Consumer-to-consumer (C2C): an individual sells products or services to other individuals.Business-to-employee (B2E): An organization uses e-commerce internally to provide information and services to its employees. Companies allow employees to manage their benefits, take training classes electronically as well as buy discounted insurance, travel packages, and event tickets.E-Government: the use of Internet Technology in general and e-commerce in particular to deliver information about public services to citizens (called Government-to-citizen [G2C EC]), business partners and suppliers (called government-to-business [G2B EC]),  Mobile Commerce (m-commerce) refers to e-commerce that is conducted in a wireless environment. For example, using a cell phone to shop over the Internet.

 

They are several benefits of E-Commerce, First Benefits to organizations, it Makes national and international markets more accessible, and Lowering costs of processing, distributing, and retrieving information. Second,Benefits to customers, it Access a vast number of products and services around the clock (24/7/365). Third, Benefits to Society, its ability to easily and conveniently deliver information, services and products to people in cities, rural areas and developing countries. Also, thy are  Limitations of E-Commerce Technological Limitations, it lack of universally accepted security standards , insufficient telecommunications bandwidth, expensive accessibility. And Non-technological Limitations like, perception that EC is unsecure, unresolved legal issues, and lacks a critical mass of sellers and buyers

CHAPTER 5: Network Applications, Web 2.0, Distance Learning, and Telecommuting Computer

CHAPTER 5: Network Applications, Web 2.0, Distance Learning, and Telecommuting Computer

Networks to Connected computers in order to work together, are interdependent, and exchange data with each other. Three size Computer Networks are, Home computer network, National computer network, and Global computer network. And they are four Network Applications. First, Discovery, it allows users to browse and search data sources, in all topic areas,on the Web. It includes Search engines which are computer programs that search for specific information by key words and report the results. And Metasearch engines search several engines at once and integrate the findings of the various search engines to answer queries posted by users. Portal is a Web-based, personalized gateway to information and knowledge that provides relevant information from different IT systems and the Internet using advanced search and indexing techniques. Commercial (public) portals offer content for diverse communities and are the most popular portals on the Internet. Affinity portals support communities such as a hobby group or a political party. Mobile portals are accessible from mobile devices. Corporate portals offer a personalized single point of access through a Web browser. Industrywide portals are for entire industries.

Second Network Application is Communication, it include Electronic mail (e-mail) is the largest-volume application running on the Internet, Web-based call centers (customer call center) are services that provide effective personalize customer contact as an imporant part of Web-based customer support, and Electronic chat room is a virtual meeting place where groups of regulars come to “gab”. Unified communications simplifies and integrates all forms of communications – voice, voice mail, fax, chat, e-mail, instant messaging, short message service,presence (location) services, and videoconferencing – on a common hardware, and software platform.



Third, Collaboration refers to efforts of two or more entities (individuals, teams, groups, or organizations) who work together to accomplish certain tasks. Work group refers specifically to two or more individuals who act together to perform some task. Virtual group (team) is when group members are in different locations. Virtual collaboration is the use of digital technologies that enable organizations or individuals to collaboratively plan, design, develop, manage and research products, services and innovative applications. Web 2.0 is a loose collection of information technologies and applications, and the Web sites that use them. The this is the most well-known Web 2.0 meme map, by Tim O’Reilly. He goes into more detail than Markus Angemeier. Depending on how much detail you want to go into, this figure provides any level of detail that you need.

 

 

CHAPTER 4: Managing Knowledge and Data

 

 

CHAPTER 4: Managing Knowledge and Data

IT applications cannot be performed without using data. Data should be accurate, complete. Timely, consistent, accessible, relevant, and concise. There are several difficulties in Managing Data, Amount of data increases exponentially, Data are scattered and collected by many individuals using various methods and devices, Data come from many sources, and Data security, quality and integrity are critical. An ever-increasing amount of data needs to be considered in making organizational decisions Database management system (DBMS) provides all users with access to all the data. DBMSs minimize several problems, data redundancy which is the same data are stored in many places, data isolation which is applications cannot access data associated with other applications, and data inconsistency which is various copies of the data do not agree. DBMSs maximize the many issues like Data security which is  Keeping the organization’s data safe from theft, modification, and/or destruction, data integrity which is Data must meet constraints (e.g., student grade point averages cannot be negative), and Data independence which is Applications and data are independent of one another. Applications and data are not linked to each other, meaning that applications are able to access the same data.

 

 

 Data Hierarchy include, a bit which is a binary digit, or a “0” or a “1”, a byte which is eight bits and represents a single character (e.g., a letter, number or symbol), a field which is a group of logically related characters (e.g., a word, small group of words, or identification number), a record which is a group of logically related fields (e.g., student in a university database), afile which is a group of logically related records, a database which is a group of logically related files. Database designers plan the database design in a process called entity-relationship (ER) modeling. ER diagrams consists of entities, attributes and relationships. Entity classes are groups of entities of a certain type. An instance of an entity class is the representation of a particular entity. Entity instances have identifiers, which are attributes that are unique to that entity instance.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER 2: Information Systems and the Modern Organization

 

 

CHAPTER 2: Information Systems and the Modern Organization

Computer-based information systems (CBIS) use computer technology to perform some or all of their tasks and are composed of Hardware which is a device such as a processor, monitor, keyboard or printer, Software which is a program or collection of programs that enable hardware to process data, Database which is a collection of related files or tables containing data, Network which is a connecting system (wireline or wireless) that permits different computers to share resources, Procedures which are the set of instructions about how to combine the above components in order to process information and generate the desired output, and People which are those individuals who use the hardware and software, interface with it, or uses its output. There are two types of Information Systems, Information Systems Inside Your Organization and Information Technology Outside Your Organization. An application program is a computer program designed to support a specific task, a business process or another application program. Breadth of Support of Information Systems is Functional area information systems support particular functional areas in an organization, Enterprise resource planning systems tightly integrate the functional area information systems via a common database, Transaction processing systems support the monitoring, collection, storage, and processing of data from the organization’s basic business transactions, and Interorganizational information systems connect two or more organizations, Examples are supply chain management systems and electronic commerce systems.

 

 

 

 

 

Competitive Advantage: An advantage over competitors in some measure such as cost, quality, or speed, leads to control of a market and to larger-than average profits.Strategic Information Systems (SIS) provide a competitive advantage by helping an organization to implement its strategic goals and to increase its performance and productivity. Porter’s Competitive Forces Model, The best-known framework for analyzing competitiveness is Michael Porter’s competitive forces model (Porter, 1985). It is model is used to develop strategies to increase their competitive edge. Threat of entry of new competitors is high when it is easy to enter a market and low when significant barriers to entry exist.  A barrier to entry is a product or service feature that customers expect from organizations in a certain industry.  For most organizations, the Internet increases the threat that new competitors will enter a market.

CHAPTER 1:The Modern Organization Functioning in a Global Environment

 

 

CHAPTER 1:The Modern Organization Functioning in a Global Environment

 

 

A business process is a collection of related activities that produce a product or a service of value to the organization, its business partners, and/or its customers. A process has inputs and outputs and its activities can be measured. A management technique that includes methods and tools to support the design, analysis, implementation, management, and optimization of business processes called Business process management.

Information Systems, Concepts and Definitions:  one of the primary goals of information system is to economically process data into information and knowledge. Data Item is elementary description of things, events, activities and transactions that are recorded, classified and stored but are not organized to convey any specific meaning. Information is data organized so that they have meaning and value to the recipient. Knowledge is data and/or information organized and processed to convey understanding, experience, accumulated learning and expertise as they apply to a current problem or activity. Business Pressure is the business environment is the combination of social, legal, economic, physical, and political factors that affect business activities. Significant changes in any of this factor are likely to create business pressure on the organization. The three types of business pressures faced are, market, technology, and societal pressures.

 

Why Are Information Systems   Important to us? Information systems and Information technologies are integral to our lives. Information systems offer career opportunities. Information systems are used by all functional areas in an organization.

 

 

 

 

Introduction to Information Systems: Enabling and Transforming Business

Introduction to Information Systems: Enabling and Transforming Business

 

 

 

 

R. Kelly Rainer, Casey G. Cegielski

 

 

Information technology professionals will gain invaluable information with this updated resource on how to connect concepts to key business areas. These areas include accounting, finance, marketing, management, human resources, and operations. The new edition provides concise and accessible coverage of core IT topics. Do It Yourself activities show them how to apply the information on the job. Technology professionals will then be able to discover how critical IT is to each functional area and every business