This week your rotation assignment takes you to the Office of the Chief Financial Officer (CFO).

An external audit of the company’s financial operations has just been completed. Last week, an “early look” copy of the audit was sent to the CFO with a request for a formal written response for each of the findings. Some of the problem areas were known to the CFO’s staff and they were already working on the required responses. But, there is one set of findings that came as a complete surprise — Shadow IT — the unauthorized / unapproved use of cashless payment technologies by certain locations and offices within the company. These technologies included:

1. Micro payments using a payment card issued by guest services to hotel guests and via unattended vending machines to visitors. These payment cards are loaded with a cash value deposited to the card’s account via a credit card charge. Guest services also credits some of these payment card accounts with “reward dollars” for guests who belong to the hotel’s affinity program. The payment cards are used at service locations which do not have a cashier station. e.g. game arcade, self-service laundry or sales kiosk, etc. The payments are processed by a third party service provider which then uses an electronic funds transfer to pay the hotel its share of the income.

2. Mobile Payments for services booked through the concierge desk with an authorized but independent provider (not a hotel employee). These services include: private lessons with a tennis or golf pro, childcare, tours and tour guides, interpreters, etc. These payments are made by cell phone either as a mobile payment using a contactless payment system such as Apple Pay or by swiping a credit card through a magnetic stripe reader connected to the provider’s cell phone. The payment accounts which receive the guests’ payments are connected to the hotel’s merchant card accounts. The hotel pays the providers monthly via electronic deposit and issues an IRS Form 1099 to record the income.

The CFO must make a presentation to the IT Governance board about these payment systems as a first step towards either getting approval for continued use or issuing a “cease and desist” directive to force the rogue offices and locations to stop using the unapproved payment systems. The presentation must include information about known or suspected compliance issues for PCI-DSS. The IT Governance board has previously asked project sponsors for information about potential privacy and security issues.

Due to the size and complexity of the problem, the CFO has split the available staff into two teams. Team #1 will focus on the micro payment cards. Team #2 will focus on the mobile payment systems. You have been asked to join one of these two teams and assist with their research. (Note: you *must* pick one and only one of the two technologies to focus on for your discussion paper this week.)

Your team leader has asked you to read the provided background information (see the Week 7 readings) and then put together a 2 page summary of the important points from your readings. You have also been asked to help identify and describe / explain 5 or more privacy and security issues that could arise in conjunction with the use of the technology being studied by your team. Remember to keep your focus on the financial aspects of the technology implementation since you are contributing to the CFO’s effort. (Financial aspects include how payments are made, what types of information are exchanged and with whom, how that information is protected, etc.)

Create a 10- to 12-slide, multimedia-rich presentation in which you provide:

• A definition of cybersecurity and further explain how cybersecurity differs from enterprise security
• A timeline of cyber milestones, including graphics and a brief explanation of the milestone
• An explanation of why knowing cyber milestones is important for improving security for the organization’s current and future environment
• A chart presenting 4 strategies that could be used to determine the organization’s current security environment, the impact of the strategy, and resources (personnel, finances, etc.)

Your presentation should also include:

• Speaker notes
• At least 2 references to support the presented facts/etc. Format your citations according to APA guidelines.

Note: “Multimedia-rich” presentation typically means including several of the following: appropriate charts, graphics, video or audio samples, or images

Go online and search for information that relates to ethical hacking (white hat or gray hat hacking). Choose one of these areas explain why a company might benefit from hiring someone to hack into their systems.

assignment should be 3-4 paragraphs in length.

 You are a member of the IT team at Don & Associates, a financial  consulting company that provides services to small- and medium-sized  companies. Because the company is looking to expand into neighboring  states within the Northeast region, its leaders have tasked you  with determining if cloud computing is a viable solution to the need for  infrastructure.

you will be submitting a one- to two-page executive summary to the  owner of Don & Associates. It should briefly explain the major cloud  service providers, cloud computing service models, and the potential  benefits and risks of migrating Don & Associates’ technical  infrastructure to the cloud.

Use this executive summary template. In  the template, you will see specific instructions in the document.  Delete the instruction text before you submit your project.

Your summary should include: 

• the types of cloud computing (private, public, hybrid)
   
• three major cloud service providers
   
• three cloud computing service models 
   
• potential benefits and risks of migrating the company’s technical infrastructure to the cloud
   

Be sure to cite any sources you use.

Template

Project Description

Include the name of the project here.

Statement of Need 

Explain what the company is struggling with and how the company could benefit from moving to the cloud.

Cloud Service Providers

Provide an overview of the top three cloud service providers. List the services offered and briefly describe the advantages and disadvantages of each provider.

Recommended Plan

Provide your recommendation for a cloud service provider and justify your selection.

Impact of Recommended Plan 

Describe how your recommended plan will address the needs of the stakeholders. Briefly describe the potential risks of migration/potential drawbacks for the company.

References

Being an Effective Agile Project Leader

You have been asked by your manager to document your experiences as an Agile project manager so these can be shared with others.

Write a 6–8 page paper in which you:

1. Explain how to handle the documentation needs using the Agile concepts.
2. Determine the necessary success factors one would need to become an Agile leader in this project, which contains a complex scope and extended timeline.
3. Recommend the approach to manage offshore resources in this project. Determine the associated challenges and mitigation strategies to ensure the success of the project.
4. Suggest strategies for measuring the performance and quality of the products and services of this organization. Provide the approach to accelerate the delivery process.
5. Use at least three quality resources in this assignment. Note: Wikipedia and similar Websites do not qualify as quality resources.

Organizations globally use collaborative technologies (intranets/portals) to manage their corporate data. Many are also using social tools such as Teams and Slack for knowledge share, capture, and dissemination. They claim it saves time and produces work efficiency. Here are a few questions you must address:

• Do you believe such tools in the enterprise offer work productivity and efficiency?
• Do such tools challenge organizations on their knowledge sharing and retention strategy?
• How can one prevent knowledge from walking away when a person leaves an organization – especially in a world where social media exposes corporate knowledge easily. 
• What security methodologies, including blockchain can an organization apply to protect the corporate enterprise?

The theme of this research paper is Block Chain technologies. For this assignment, you must

research the theme with a focus on potential business applications of it (including yet beyond

Fintech). You must research current trends and summarize your research as a report. The

general structure of the report is as follows:

1. An introductory section about the current hype surrounding block chain technologies,

providing context for your report;

2. A description of select applications of Blockchain to business (minimum 3). Choose 1

particularly business areas (of your interest) in mind (e.g., HR, Marketing and Sales,

or  Operations) and provide three applications of Block Chain int those business areas. You must also describe and analyze these technologies based on

their potential to be game changers;

3. The challenges for such applications to become widespread and beneficial to

companies;

4. A conclusion section (with your takeaway from the discussion).

requirements

Your report must adhere to APA formatting;

2. You must research at least 5 recent (i.e., less than 5 years) peer-reviewed articles.

Exceptionally, highly regarded industry sources (e.g., IBM, Oracle, SAP, McKinsey,

Accenture, Deloitte, Capgemini) will be accepted;

3. Other than APA formatting, the structure for the paper is not fixed, as long as there is

a logical flow of ideas. The length of the paper is 5-6 pages

 describe what components of cryptography impacted you the most. 

 Many new clean tech ventures have relied on funding and partnership from established corporations. Select a recently funded clean tech venture with corporate venture involvement. Did the funding impact the structure of the new venture? What does the new venture expect to gain from the backing by the larger corporation? What does the larger corporation expect to gain from being involved in the new venture? 

*******

 You will develop your research project in stages throughout the course, to include:  selecting a topic, submitting an abstract/outline, and submitting your final project (paper) for evaluation.  You must support your materials by using at least five appropriate, properly cited sources in addition to your course textbook. Your project (paper) will comprise 3000 words (not including title and reference pages).  Your project (paper) must be formatted according to APA guidelines as a Word document, double spaced, Times New Roman, 12-font, with one inch margins. 

Text book: Technology Ventures : from idea to enterprise 5th edition by Thomas Byers ISBN: 9781260048490

 ***I require only the Packet Tracer file for the working redesign listed below in the requirements***

IT INFRASTRUCTURE PROJECT PHASE I INSTRUCTIONS 

All labs must be submitted using the version of Packet Tracer in the online course/learning management system. Please do NOT use other versions of Packet Tracer to assure licensing compliance and proper assessment/credit. In addition, please do NOT add users or passwords to any device, leave all credentials blank for assessment purposes. 

Project Background 

Please reference Figure 1. Friendly Care Hospital is one of the biggest hospitals in DC. You have recently bought the hospital, naming it [Your Firstname Lastname] Hospital. For example, Jane Doe Hospital. Jane Doe Hospital owns a 5-story building and houses many departments that span multiple floors. Its Radiology department is spread across the first and second floors, connected by a dedicated local area network (LAN). The department has recently deployed a new “Radiology Images” application as part of their initiative to digitize patient records. However, the department staff sometimes faces long application delays during busy hours. It also experiences regular delays in Internet connectivity, FTPS services, web services, and email services. 

Their original design, depicted in Figure 1, was categorized as a small network, providing services for up to 200-500 devices. They have well surpassed this. You, as their senior network administrator, are tasked with the job of a complete re-design. This design must support a medium to large sized network for over 1,000 devices. Thus, it should surpass the current capabilities. 

Figure 1. Current Friendly Care Hospital Network Design 

Project Overview  

In this project, you will study performance improvements in a congested, wired LAN/WAN environment that can be solved to varying degrees by a new IT infrastructure design and fully functional implementation in Packet Tracer.  To learn more about Packet Tracer please read the Cisco Packet Tracer DS PDF. Later, in Phase II of the project, you will scale this design to a larger enterprise IT infrastructure. 

To begin the projects, you will complete a review of related literature to identify what is appropriate to improve system feasibility, RAS (reliability, availability, serviceability), security, and disaster recovery of the existing IT infrastructure and model of your hospital. Once this review of literature is complete, you will use the outcomes and research results to advance and improve the IT infrastructure. Proper data analysis, comparison, and contrast will be summarized within in-text tables and figures as well as appendixes to explain the results of the IT infrastructure re-design and improvement. 

Packet Tracer is limited given it is a simulator. Be creative! For instance, if Packet Tracer does not have a file sharing service for a file sharing server, turn on any other related and relevant services that are available. As another example, use LAN and WAN protocols that are optimal given what the version of Packet Tracer allows. You will be assessed based upon optimal configurations in the version of Packet Tracer used. Thus, assure this is well studied. Research will outline new opportunities for future IT infrastructure designs, and this should be discussed accordingly in the written paper even if not configured in Packet Tracer. Often, new technologies are not implemented in industry immediately due to limitations such as hardware architecture. 

Please verify all requirements are met by reviewing the grading rubric. Below is an outline of minimum requirements with examples and ideas. 

Minimum Project Requirements 

• Submit a working Packet Tracer lab, typically this file has a .pkt file extension. 

o This will include the fully operational new IT infrastructure design o All devices in the lab must be named with your first name and last name 

▪ Example: Jane_Doe_Router_1 o All hardware and software should be configured properly and should be able to communicate using optimized networking designs, configurations, and protocols 

o No devices should have passwords for assessment purposes 

• Minimum IT Infrastructure Design and Packet Tracer Requirements o You must start with a blank/new Packet Tracer file, existing labs or modified labs of existing solutions will receive a zero without exception 

o Design a medium-size hospital IT infrastructure for well over 1,000 devices, and scalable beyond the Figure 1 example 

▪ For example, a design that goes beyond traditional N-Tier designs 

▪ Design proper addressing via IPv4 and/or IPv6 that scales 

▪ Add appropriate routers and switches to support this new design 

▪ Configure at least one appropriate networking protocol, operational across the entire infrastructure 

▪ Use proper network address translation (NAT) 

▪ Implement private and public IP address spaces correctly 

▪ Assure network traffic is organized, efficient, and secured properly (e.g. limit broadcast domains, do not allow marketing employees to access accounting systems, etc) 

o Add an Internet Service Provider (ISP) into the design o Add enough modularity, resiliency, and flexibility into the design o Design and implement the following new services and servers 

▪ A Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) server that automatically assigns working IP addresses to new workstations 

▪ A name server that manages the Domain Name System (DNS) for all servers in the hospital 

▪ A web server hosted on the Internet 

▪ Two new user workstations located at each level of the building that can use the new services properly 

• Show these services working on each workstation in your project (e.g. a website from the web server, DHCP, etc) 

Provide a few hospital departments as examples beyond radiology