MIS QUIZ #2

Bit

Reading: Glossary: A binary digit representing the smallest unit of data in a computer system. It can only have one of two states, representing 0 or 1.

Database Server

Reading: Glossary: A computer in a client/server environment that is responsible for running a DBMS to process SQL statements and perform database management tasks.

File

Reading: Glossary: A group of records of the same type.

Database

Reading: Glossary: A group of related files.

Field

Reading: Glossary: A grouping of characters into a word, a group of words, or a complete number, such as a person's name or age.

software package

Reading: Glossary: A prewritten, precoded, commercially available set of programs that eliminates the need to write software programs for certain functions.

tuple

Reading: Glossary: A row or record in a relational database.

Relational DBMS

Reading: Glossary: A type of logical database model that treats data as if they were stored in two-dimensional tables. It can relate data stored in one table to data in another as long as the two tables share a common data element.

responsibility

Reading: Glossary: Accepting the potential costs, duties, and obligations for the decisions one makes.

Web Browser

Reading: Glossary: An easy-to-use software tool for accessing the World Wide Web and the Internet.

Web Hosting Service

Reading: Glossary: Company with large web server computers to maintain the websites of fee-paying subscribers.

Server

Reading: Glossary: Computer specifically optimized to provide software and other resources to other computers over a network.

Big Data

Reading: Glossary: Data sets with volumes so huge that they are beyond the ability of typical relational DBMS to capture, store, and analyze. The data are often unstructured or semi-structured.

text mining

Reading: Glossary: Discovery of patterns and relationships from large sets of unstructured data.

Foreign Key

Reading: Glossary: Field in a database table that enables users find related information in another database table.

Mainframe

Reading: Glossary: Largest category of computer, used for major business processing.

Windows

Reading: Glossary: Microsoft family of operating systems for both network servers and client computers.

Tablet Computers

Reading: Glossary: Mobile handheld computer that is larger than a mobile phone and operated primarily by touching a flat screen.

Analytic Platform

Reading: Glossary: Preconfigured hardware-software system that is specifically designed for high-speed analysis of large datasets.

Safe Harbor

Reading: Glossary: Private self-regulating policy and enforcement mechanism that meets the objectives of government regulations but does not involve government regulation or enforcement.

Software as a Service (SaaS)

Reading: Glossary: Services for delivering and providing access to software remotely as a web-based service.

Application Server

Reading: Glossary: Software that handles all application operations between browser-based computers and a company's back-end business applications or databases.

Operating System

Reading: Glossary: Software that manages the resources and activities of the computer.

Database Management System (DBMS)

Reading: Glossary: Special software to create and maintain a database and enable individual business applications to extract the data they need without having to create separate files or data definitions in their computer programs.

Spyware

Reading: Glossary: Technology that aids in gathering information about a person or organization without their knowledge.

Data Inconsistency

Reading: Glossary: The presence of different values for same attribute when the same data are stored in multiple locations.

Immanuel Kant's Categorical Imperative

Reading: Glossary: A principle that states that if an action is not right for everyone to take it is not right for anyone.

Computer vision syndrome (CVS)

Reading: Glossary: Eyestrain condition related to computer display screen use; symptoms include headaches, blurred vision, and dry and irritated eyes.

General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)

Reading: Glossary: Legislation effective May 25, 2018 that updates and unifies data privacy laws across the European Union, focusing on making businesses more transparent and expanding the privacy rights of data subjects.

Privacy

Reading: Glossary: The claim of individuals to be left alone, free from surveillance or interference from other individuals, organizations, or the state.

Information Rights

Reading: Glossary: The rights that individuals and organizations have with respect to information that pertains to themselves.

Repetitive Stress Injury (RSI)

Reading: A common occupational disease today is repetitive stress injury (RSI). RSI occurs when muscle groups are forced through repetitive actions often with high-impact loads (such as tennis) or tens of thousands of repetitions under low-impact loads (such as working at a computer keyboard). The incidence of RSI is estimated to affect as much as one-third of the labor force and accounts for one-third of all disability cases. Glossary: Occupational disease that occurs when muscle groups are forced through repetitive actions with high-impact loads or thousands of repetitions with low-impact loads.

Data Dictionary

Reading: A data dictionary is an automated or manual file that stores definitions of data elements and their characteristics. Glossary: An automated or manual tool for storing and organizing information about the data maintained in a database.

Data Lake

Reading: A data lake is a repository for raw unstructured data or structured data that for the most part has not yet been analyzed, and the data can be accessed in many ways. The data lake stores these data in their native format until they are needed. The Hadoop Distributed File System (HDFS) is often used to store the data lake contents across a set of clustered computer nodes, and Hadoop clusters may be used to pre-process some of these data for use in the data warehouse, data marts, or an analytic platform, or for direct querying by power users. Outputs include reports and dashboards as well as query results. Glossary: Repository for raw unstructured data or structured data that for the most part have not yet been analyzed.

Data Mart

Reading: A data mart is a subset of a data warehouse in which a summarized or highly focused portion of the organization's data is placed in a separate database for a specific population of users. For example, a company might develop marketing and sales data marts to deal with customer information. Bookseller Barnes & Noble used to maintain a series of data marts—one for point-of-sale data in retail stores, another for college bookstore sales, and a third for online sales. Glossary: A small data warehouse containing only a portion of the organization's data for a specified function or population of users.

Distributed Database

Reading: A distributed database is one that is stored in multiple physical locations. Parts or copies of the database are physically stored in one location and other parts or copies are maintained in other locations. Spanner makes it possible to store information across millions of machines in hundreds of data centers around the globe, with special time-keeping tools to synchronize the data precisely in all of its locations and ensure the data are always consistent. Google uses Spanner to support its various cloud services, including Google Photos, AdWords (Google's online ad system), and Gmail, and is now making the technology available to other companies that might need such capabilities to run a global business. Glossary: Database stored in multiple physical locations.

Byte

Reading: A group of bits, called a byte, represents a single character, which can be a letter, a number, or another symbol. Glossary: A string of bits, usually eight, used to store one number or character in a computer system.

Record

Reading: A group of related fields, such as the student's name, the course taken, the date, and the grade, comprises a record; Glossary: A group of related fields.

Database Administration

Reading: A large organization will also have a database design and management group within the corporate information systems division that is responsible for defining and organizing the structure and content of the database and maintaining the database. In close cooperation with users, the design group establishes the physical database, the logical relations among elements, and the access rules and security procedures. The functions it performs are called database administration. Glossary: Refers to the more technical and operational aspects of managing data, including physical database design and maintenance.

Multicore Processor

Reading: A multicore processor is an integrated circuit to which two or more processor cores have been attached for enhanced performance, reduced power consumption, and more efficient simultaneous processing of multiple tasks. This technology enables two or more processing engines with reduced power requirements and heat dissipation to perform tasks faster than a resource-hungry chip with a single processing core. Today you'll find PCs with dual-core, quad-core, six-core, and eight-core processors and servers with 16- and 32-core processors. Glossary: Integrated circuit to which two or more processors have been attached for enhanced performance, reduced power consumption, and more efficient simultaneous processing of multiple tasks.

Patent

Reading: A patent grants the owner an exclusive monopoly on the ideas behind an invention for 20 years. The congressional intent behind patent law was to ensure that inventors of new machines, devices, or methods receive the full financial and other rewards of their labor and yet make widespread use of the invention possible by providing detailed diagrams for those wishing to use the idea under license from the patent's owner. The granting of a patent is determined by the United States Patent and Trademark Office and relies on court rulings. Glossary: A legal document that grants the owner an exclusive monopoly on the ideas behind an invention for 20 years; designed to ensure that inventors of new machines or methods are rewarded for their labor while making widespread use of their inventions.

Private Cloud

Reading: A private cloud is operated solely for an organization. It may be managed by the organization or a third party and may be hosted either internally or externally. Like public clouds, private clouds are able to allocate storage, computing power, or other resources seamlessly to provide computing resources on an as-needed basis. Companies that want flexible IT resources and a cloud service model while retaining control over their own IT infrastructure are gravitating toward these private clouds. Glossary: A proprietary network or a data center that ties together servers, storage, networks, data, and applications as a set of virtualized services that are shared by users inside a company.

Public Cloud

Reading: A public cloud is owned and maintained by a cloud service provider, such as Amazon Web Services, and made available to the general public or industry group. Public cloud services are often used for websites with public information and product descriptions, one-time large computing projects, developing and testing new applications, and consumer services such as online storage of data, music, and photos. Google Drive, Dropbox, and Apple iCloud are leading examples of these consumer public cloud services. Glossary: A cloud maintained by an external service provider, accessed through the Internet, and available to the general public.

Entity

Reading: A record describes an entity. An entity is a person, place, thing, or event on which we store and maintain information. Each characteristic or quality describing a particular entity is called an attribute. For example, Student_ID, Course, Date, and Grade are attributes of the entity COURSE. The specific values that these attributes can have are found in the fields of the record describing the entity COURSE. Glossary: A person, place, thing, or event about which information must be kept.

Information Policy

Reading: An information policy specifies the organization's rules for sharing, disseminating, acquiring, standardizing, classifying, and inventorying information. Information policy lays out specific procedures and accountabilities, identifying which users and organizational units can share information, where information can be distributed, and who is responsible for updating and maintaining the information. For example, a typical information policy would specify that only selected members of the payroll and human resources department would have the right to change and view sensitive employee data, such as an employee's salary or social security number, and that these departments are responsible for making sure that such employee data are accurate. Glossary: Formal rules governing the maintenance, distribution, and use of information in an organization.

Opt-Out

Reading: An opt-out model of informed consent permits the collection of personal information until the consumer specifically requests the data not to be collected. Glossary: Model of informed consent permitting the collection of personal information until the consumer specifically requests that the data not be collected.

Android

Reading: Android is an open source operating system for mobile devices such as smartphones and tablet computers, developed by the Open Handset Alliance led by Google. It has become the most popular smartphone platform worldwide, competing with iOS, Apple's mobile operating system for the iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch. Conventional client operating system software is designed around the mouse and keyboard but increasingly is becoming more natural and intuitive by using touch technology. Glossary: A mobile operating system developed by Android, Inc. (purchased by Google) and later the Open Handset Alliance as a flexible, upgradeable mobile device platform.

In-memory computing

Reading: Another way of facilitating big data analysis is to use in-memory computing, which relies primarily on a computer's main memory (RAM) for data storage. (Conventional DBMS use disk storage systems.) Users access data stored in system primary memory, thereby eliminating bottlenecks from retrieving and reading data in a traditional, disk-based database and dramatically shortening query response times. In-memory processing makes it possible for very large sets of data, amounting to the size of a data mart or small data warehouse, to reside entirely in memory. Complex business calculations that used to take hours or days are able to be completed within seconds, and this can even be accomplished using handheld devices. Glossary: Technology for very rapid analysis and processing of large quantities of data by storing the data in the computer's main memory rather than in secondary storage.

Trade Secret

Reading: Any intellectual work product—a formula, device, pattern, or compilation of data—used for a business purpose can be classified as a trade secret, provided it is not based on information in the public domain. Protections for trade secrets vary from state to state. In general, trade secret laws grant a monopoly on the ideas behind a work product, but it can be a very tenuous monopoly. Glossary: Any intellectual work or product used for a business purpose that can be classified as belonging to that business, provided it is not based on information in the public domain.

Multitouch

Reading: Apple iPad and iPhone, features a multitouch interface, where users employ one or more fingers to manipulate objects on a screen without a mouse or keyboard. Microsoft's Windows 10 and Windows 8, which run on tablets as well as PCs, have multitouch capabilities, as do many Android devices. Glossary: Interface that features the use of one or more finger gestures to manipulate lists or objects on a screen without using a mouse or keyboard.

Blockchain

Reading: Blockchain is a distributed database technology that enables firms and organizations to create and verify transactions on a network nearly instantaneously without a central authority. The system stores transactions as a distributed ledger among a network of computers The information held in the database is continually reconciled by the computers in the network. Glossary: Distributed ledger system that stores permanent and tamper-proof records of transactions and shares them among a distributed network of computers.

sentiment analysis

Reading: Businesses might turn to text mining to analyze transcripts of calls to customer service centers to identify major service and repair issues or to measure customer sentiment about their company. Sentiment analysis software is able to mine text comments in an email message, blog, social media conversation, or survey forms to detect favorable and unfavorable opinions about specific subjects. For example, Kraft Foods uses a Community Intelligence Portal and sentiment analysis to tune into consumer conversations about its products across numerous social networks, blogs, and other websites. Kraft tries to make sense of relevant comments rather than just track brand mentions and can identify customers' emotions and feelings when they talk about how they barbecue and what sauces and spices they use. Glossary: Mining text comments in an email message, blog, social media conversation, or survey form to detect favorable and unfavorable opinions about specific subjects.

Green Computing (green IT)

Reading: By curbing hardware proliferation and power consumption, virtualization has become one of the principal technologies for promoting green computing. Green computing, or green IT, refers to practices and technologies for designing, manufacturing, using, and disposing of computers, servers, and associated devices such as monitors, printers, storage devices, and networking and communications systems to minimize impact on the environment. Glossary: Refers to practices and technologies for designing, manufacturing, using, and disposing of computers, servers, and associated devices such as monitors, printers, storage devices, and networking and communications systems to minimize impact on the environment.

Nanotechnology

Reading: Chip manufacturers can shrink the size of transistors down to the width of several atoms by using nanotechnology. Nanotechnology uses individual atoms and molecules to create computer chips and other devices that are thousands of times smaller than current technologies permit. Chip manufacturers are trying to develop a manufacturing process to produce nanotube processors economically. Stanford University scientists have built a nanotube computer. Glossary: Technology that builds structures and processes based on the manipulation of individual atoms and molecules.

Non-relational database management systems

Reading: Companies are turning to "NoSQL" non-relational database technologies for this purpose. Non-relational database management systems use a more flexible data model and are designed for managing large data sets across many distributed machines and for easily scaling up or down. They are useful for accelerating simple queries against large volumes of structured and unstructured data, including web, social media, graphics, and other forms of data that are difficult to analyze with traditional SQL-based tools. Glossary: Database management system for working with large quantities of structured and unstructured data that would be difficult to analyze with a relational model.

Data Definition

Reading: DBMS have a data definition capability to specify the structure of the content of the database. It would be used to create database tables and to define the characteristics of the fields in each table. This information about the database would be documented in a data dictionary. Glossary: DBMS capability that specifies the structure and content of the database.

Data Manipulation Language (DML)

Reading: DBMS includes tools for accessing and manipulating information in databases. Most DBMS have a specialized language called a data manipulation language that is used to add, change, delete, and retrieve the data in the database. This language contains commands that permit end users and programming specialists to extract data from the database to satisfy information requests and develop applications. Glossary: A language associated with a database management system that end users and programmers use to manipulate data in the database.

Structured Query Language (SQL)

Reading: DBMS includes tools for accessing and manipulating information in databases. Most DBMS have a specialized language called a data manipulation language that is used to add, change, delete, and retrieve the data in the database. This language contains commands that permit end users and programming specialists to extract data from the database to satisfy information requests and develop applications. The most prominent data manipulation language today is Structured Query Language, or ​SQL​. Figure 6.7 illustrates the SQL query that would produce the new resultant table in Figure 6.5. You can find out more about how to perform SQL queries in our Learning Tracks for this chapter. Figure 6.7 Glossary: The standard data manipulation language for relational database management systems.

Data Administration

Reading: Data administration is responsible for the specific policies and procedures through which data can be managed as an organizational resource. These responsibilities include developing an information policy, planning for data, overseeing logical database design and data dictionary development, and monitoring how information systems specialists and end-user groups use data. Glossary: A special organizational function for managing the organization's data resources, concerned with information policy, data planning, maintenance of data dictionaries, and data quality standards.

Data Cleansing

Reading: Data cleansing, also known as data scrubbing, consists of activities for detecting and correcting data in a database that are incorrect, incomplete, improperly formatted, or redundant. Data cleansing not only corrects errors but also enforces consistency among different sets of data that originated in separate information systems. Specialized data-cleansing software is available to automatically survey data files, correct errors in the data, and integrate the data in a consistent companywide format. Glossary: Activities for detecting and correcting data in a database or file that are incorrect, incomplete, improperly formatted, or redundant. Also known as data scrubbing.

Data Mining

Reading: Data mining is more discovery-driven. Data mining provides insights into corporate data that cannot be obtained with OLAP by finding hidden patterns and relationships in large databases and inferring rules from them to predict future behavior. The patterns and rules are used to guide decision making and forecast the effect of those decisions. The types of information obtainable from data mining include associations, sequences, classifications, clusters, and forecasts. Glossary: Analysis of large pools of data to find patterns and rules that can be used to guide decision making and predict future behavior.

data redundancy

Reading: Data redundancy is the presence of duplicate data in multiple data files so that the same data are stored in more than one place or location. Data redundancy occurs when different groups in an organization independently collect the same piece of data and store it independently of each other. Data redundancy wastes storage resources and also leads to data inconsistency Glossary: The presence of duplicate data in multiple data files.

Entity-Relationship Diagram (ERD)

Reading: Database designers document their data model with an entity-relationship diagram, illustrated in Figure 6.11. This diagram illustrates the relationship between the entities SUPPLIER, PART, LINE_ITEM, and ORDER. The boxes represent entities. The lines connecting the boxes represent relationships. A line connecting two entities that ends in two short marks designates a one-to-one relationship. A line connecting two entities that ends with a crow's foot topped by a short mark indicates a one-to-many relationship. Figure 6.11 shows that one ORDER can contain many LINE_ITEMs. (A PART can be ordered many times and appear many times as a line item in a single order.) Each PART can have only one SUPPLIER, but many PARTs can be provided by the same SUPPLIER. Glossary: A methodology for documenting databases illustrating the relationship between various entities in the database.

Golden Rule

Reading: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you (the Golden Rule). Putting yourself in the place of others, and thinking of yourself as the object of the decision, can help you think about fairness in decision making. Glossary: Putting oneself in the place of others as the object of a decision.

attribute

Reading: Each characteristic or quality describing a particular entity is called an attribute. For example, Student_ID, Course, Date, and Grade are attributes of the entity COURSE. The specific values that these attributes can have are found in the fields of the record describing the entity COURSE. Glossary: A piece of information describing a particular entity.

Mobile Device Management (MDM)

Reading: Firms using mobile computing and cloud computing platforms will require new policies, procedures, and tools for managing these platforms. They will need to inventory all of their mobile devices in business use and develop policies and tools for tracking, updating, and securing them, and for controlling the data and applications that run on them. Firms often turn to mobile device management (MDM) software, which monitors, manages, and secures mobile devices that are deployed across multiple mobile service providers and across multiple mobile operating systems being used in the organization. MDM tools enable the IT department to monitor mobile usage, install or update mobile software, back up and restore mobile devices, and remove software and data from devices that are stolen or lost. Glossary: Software that monitors, manages, and secures mobile devices that are deployed across multiple mobile service providers and multiple mobile operating systems used in the organization.

Web Server

Reading: For instance, at the first level, a web server will serve a web page to a client in response to a request for service. Web server software is responsible for locating and managing stored web pages. Glossary: Software that manages requests for web pages on the computer where they are stored and that delivers the page to the user's computer.

Chrome OS

Reading: Google's Chrome OS provides a lightweight operating system for cloud computing using a web-connected computer. Programs are not stored on the user's computer but are used over the Internet and accessed through the Chrome web browser. User data reside on servers across the Internet. Glossary: Google's lightweight computer operating system for users who do most of their computing on the Internet; runs on computers ranging from netbooks to desktop computers.

HTML5

Reading: HTML was originally designed to create and link static documents composed largely of text. Today, however, the web is much more social and interactive, and many web pages have multimedia elements—images, audio, and video. Third-party plug-in applications like Flash, Silverlight, and Java have been required to integrate these rich media with web pages. However, these add-ons require additional programming and put strains on computer processing. The next evolution of HTML, called HTML5, solves this problem by making it possible to embed images, audio, video, and other elements directly into a document without processor-intensive add-ons. HTML5 makes it easier for web pages to function across different display devices, including mobile devices as well as desktops, and it will support the storage of data offline for apps that run over the web. Glossary: Next evolution of HTML, which makes it possible to embed images, video, and audio directly into a document without add-on software.

edge computing

Reading: Having all the laptops, smartphones, tablets, wireless sensor networks, and local on-premise servers used in cloud computing systems interacting with a single central public cloud data center to process all their data can be inefficient and costly. Edge computing is a method of optimizing cloud computing systems by performing some data processing on a set of linked servers at the edge of the network, near the source of the data. This reduces the amount of data flowing back and forth between local computers and other devices and the central cloud data center. Glossary: Method of optimizing cloud computing systems by performing some data processing on a set of linked servers at the edge of the network, near the source of the data.

Slippery Slope Rule

Reading: If an action cannot be taken repeatedly, it is not right to take at all. This is the ​slippery slope rule:​ An action may bring about a small change now that is acceptable, but if it is repeated, it would bring unacceptable changes in the long run. In the vernacular, it might be stated as "once started down a slippery path, you may not be able to stop." Glossary:

Moore's Law

Reading: In 1965, Gordon Moore, the director of Fairchild Semiconductor's Research and Development Laboratories, wrote in Electronics magazine that since the first microprocessor chip was introduced in 1959, the number of components on a chip with the smallest manufacturing costs per component (generally transistors) had doubled each year. This assertion became the foundation of Moore's Law. Moore later reduced the rate of growth to a doubling every two years. Glossary: Assertion that the number of components on a chip doubles each year.

Client/Server Computing

Reading: In client/server computing, desktop or laptop computers called clients are networked to powerful server computers that provide the client computers with a variety of services and capabilities. Glossary: A model for computing that splits processing between clients and servers on a network, assigning functions to the machine most able to perform the function.

Service Level Agreement (SLA)

Reading: In order to manage their relationship with an outsourcer or technology service provider, firms need a contract that includes a service level agreement (SLA). The SLA is a formal contract between customers and their service providers that defines the specific responsibilities of the service provider and the level of service expected by the customer. SLAs typically specify the nature and level of services provided, criteria for performance measurement, support options, provisions for security and disaster recovery, hardware and software ownership and upgrades, customer support, billing, and conditions for terminating the agreement. We provide a Learning Track on this topic. Glossary: Formal contract between customers and their service providers that defines the specific responsibilities of the service provider and the level of service expected by the customer.

Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)

Reading: Infrastructure as a service (IaaS): Customers use processing, storage, networking, and other computing resources from cloud service providers to run their information systems. For example, Amazon uses the spare capacity of its IT infrastructure to provide a broadly based cloud environment selling IT infrastructure services. These include its Simple Storage Service (S3) for storing customers' data and its Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) service for running their applications. Users pay only for the amount of computing and storage capacity they actually use. (See the Interactive Session on Organizations). Figure 5.10 shows the range of services Amazon Web Services offers. Glossary:

On-demand Computing

Reading: It is now possible for companies and individuals to perform all of their computing work using a virtualized IT infrastructure in a remote location, as is the case with cloud computing. Cloud computing is a model of computing in which computer processing, storage, software, and other services are provided as a shared pool of virtualized resources over a network, primarily the Internet. These "clouds" of computing resources can be accessed on an as-needed basis from any connected device and location. Figure 5.9 illustrates the cloud computing concept. Glossary: Firms off-loading peak demand for computing power to remote, large-scale data processing centers, investing just enough to handle average processing loads and paying for only as much additional computing power as the market demands. Also called utility computing.

cloud computing

Reading: It is now possible for companies and individuals to perform all of their computing work using a virtualized IT infrastructure in a remote location, as is the case with cloud computing. Cloud computing is a model of computing in which computer processing, storage, software, and other services are provided as a shared pool of virtualized resources over a network, primarily the Internet. These "clouds" of computing resources can be accessed on an as-needed basis from any connected device and location. Figure 5.9 illustrates the cloud computing concept. Glossary: Model of computing in which computer processing, storage, software, and other services are provided as a shared pool of virtualized resources over a network, primarily the Internet.

Java

Reading: Java is an operating system-independent, processor-independent, object-oriented programming language created by Sun Microsystems that has become the leading interactive programming environment for the web. The Java platform has migrated into mobile phones, tablets, automobiles, music players, game machines, and set-top cable television systems serving interactive content and pay-per-view services. Java software is designed to run on any computer or computing device, regardless of the specific microprocessor or operating system the device uses. For each of the computing environments in which Java is used, a Java Virtual Machine interprets Java programming code for that machine. In this manner, the code is written once and can be used on any machine for which there exists a Java Virtual Machine. Glossary: Programming language that can deliver only the software functionality needed for a particular task, such as a small applet downloaded from a network; can run on any computer and operating system.

Hybrid Cloud

Reading: Large firms are most likely to adopt a hybrid cloud computing model where they use their own infrastructure for their most essential core activities and adopt public cloud computing for less critical systems or for additional processing capacity during peak business periods. Table 5.2 compares the three cloud computing models. Cloud computing will gradually shift firms from having a fixed infrastructure capacity toward a more flexible infrastructure, some of it owned by the firm and some of it rented from giant computer centers owned by computer hardware vendors. You can find out more about cloud computing in the Learning Tracks for this chapter. Glossary: Computing model where firms use both their own IT infrastructure and also public cloud computing services.

Windows 10

Reading: Microsoft's Windows 10 and Windows 8, which run on tablets as well as PCs, have multitouch capabilities, as do many Android devices. Glossary: Most recent Microsoft Windows client operating system.

Open Source Software

Reading: Open source software is software produced by a community of several hundred thousand programmers around the world. According to the leading open source professional association, OpenSource.org, open source software is free and can be modified by users. Works derived from the original code must also be free. Open source software is by definition not restricted to any specific operating system or hardware technology. Glossary: Software that provides free access to its program code, allowing users to modify the program code to make improvements or fix errors.

Spam

Reading: Originally, spam was junk email an organization or individual sent to a mass audience of Internet users who had expressed no interest in the product or service being marketed. Spammers tend to market pornography, fraudulent deals and services, outright scams, and other products not widely approved in most civilized societies. Some countries have passed laws to outlaw spamming or restrict its use. In the United States, it is still legal if it does not involve fraud and the sender and subject of the email are properly identified. Glossary: Unsolicited commercial email.

Linux

Reading: Perhaps the most well-known open source software is Linux, an operating system related to Unix. Linux was created by Finnish programmer Linus Torvalds and first posted on the Internet in August 1991. Linux applications are embedded in cell phones, smartphones, tablet computers, and consumer electronics. Linux is available in free versions downloadable from the Internet or in low-cost commercial versions that include tools and support from vendors such as Red Hat. Glossary: Reliable and compactly designed operating system that is an offshoot of UNIX and that can run on many different hardware platforms and is available free or at very low cost. Used as alternative to UNIX.

Platform as a Service (PaaS)

Reading: Platform as a service (PaaS): Customers use infrastructure and programming tools supported by the cloud service provider to develop their own applications. For example, Microsoft offers PaaS tools and services for software development and testing among its Azure cloud services. Another example is Salesforce.com's Salesforce Platform. 186 Glossary:

Opt-in

Reading: Privacy advocates would like to see wider use of an opt-in model of informed consent in which a business is prohibited from collecting any personal information unless the consumer specifically takes action to approve information collection and use. Here, the default option is no collection of user information. Glossary: Model of informed consent permitting prohibiting an organization from collecting any personal information unless the individual specifically takes action to approve information collection and use.

Program-data dependence

Reading: Program-data dependence refers to the coupling of data stored in files and the specific programs required to update and maintain those files such that changes in programs require changes to the data. Every traditional computer program has to describe the location and nature of the data with which it works. In a traditional file environment, any change in a software program could require a change in the data accessed by that program. One program might be modified from a five-digit to a nine-digit ZIP code. If the original data file were changed from five-digit to nine-digit ZIP codes, then other programs that required the five-digit ZIP code would no longer work properly. Such changes could cost millions of dollars to implement properly. Glossary: The close relationship between data stored in files and the software programs that update and maintain those files. Any change in data organization or format requires a change in all the programs associated with those files.

Quantum computing

Reading: Quantum computing uses the principles of quantum physics to represent data and perform operations on these data. While conventional computers handle bits of data as either 0 or 1 but not both, quantum computing can process units of data as 0, 1, or both simultaneously. Glossary: Use of principles of quantum physics to represent data and perform operations on the data, with the ability to be in many different states at once and to perform many different computations simultaneously.

Hadoop

Reading: Relational DBMS and data warehouse products are not well suited for organizing and analyzing big data or data that do not easily fit into columns and rows used in their data models. For handling unstructured and semi-structured data in vast quantities, as well as structured data, organizations are using Hadoop. Hadoop is an open source software framework managed by the Apache Software Foundation that enables distributed parallel processing of huge amounts of data across inexpensive computers. It breaks a big data problem down into sub-problems, distributes them among up to thousands of inexpensive computer processing nodes, and then combines the result into a smaller data set that is easier to analyze. You've probably used Hadoop to find the best airfare on the Internet, get directions to a restaurant, do a search on Google, or connect with a friend on Facebook. Glossary: Open source software framework that enables distributed parallel processing of huge amounts of data across many inexpensive computers.

Referential Integrity

Reading: Relational database systems try to enforce referential integrity rules to ensure that relationships between coupled tables remain consistent. When one table has a foreign key that points to another table, you may not add a record to the table with the foreign key unless there is a corresponding record in the linked table. In the database we examined earlier in this chapter, the foreign key Supplier_Number links the PART table to the SUPPLIER table. We may not add a new record to the PART table for a part with Supplier_Number 8266 unless there is a corresponding record in the SUPPLIER table for Supplier_Number 8266. We must also delete the corresponding record in the PART table if we delete the record in the SUPPLIER table for Supplier_Number 8266. In other words, we shouldn't have parts from nonexistent suppliers! Glossary: Rules to ensure that relationships between coupled database tables remain consistent.

Scalability

Reading: Scalability refers to the ability of a computer, product, or system to expand to serve a large number of users without breaking down. New applications, mergers and acquisitions, and changes in business volume all affect computer workload and must be considered when planning hardware capacity. Glossary: The ability of a computer, product, or system to expand to serve a larger number of users without breaking down.

Legacy Systems

Reading: Software integration means ensuring the new infrastructure works with the firm's older, so-called legacy systems and ensuring the new elements of the infrastructure work with one another. Legacy systems are generally older transaction processing systems created for mainframe computers that continue to be used to avoid the high cost of replacing or redesigning them. Replacing these systems is cost prohibitive and generally not necessary if these older systems can be integrated into a contemporary infrastructure. Glossary:

Outsourcing

Reading: Software outsourcing enables a firm to contract custom software development or maintenance of existing legacy programs to outside firms, which often operate offshore in low-wage areas of the world. For example, in 2013, IKEA announced a six-year offshore IT outsourcing deal with German infrastructure solutions firm Wincor Nixdorf. Wincor Nixdorf set up 12,000 point-of-sale (POS) systems in 300 IKEA stores in 25 countries. These systems use Wincor Nixdorf's POS TP.net software to control furniture checkout transactions in each store and consolidate all data across the retail group. Glossary: The practice of contracting computer center operations, telecommunications networks, or applications development to external vendors.

Utilitarian Principle

Reading: Take the action that achieves the higher or greater value (utilitarian principle). This rule assumes you can prioritize values in a rank order and understand the consequences of various courses of action Glossary: Principle that assumes one can put values in rank order of utility and understand the consequences of various courses of action.

Risk Aversion Principle

Reading: Take the action that produces the least harm or the least potential cost (risk aversion principle). Some actions have extremely high failure costs of very low probability (e.g., building a nuclear generating facility in an urban area) or extremely high failure costs of moderate probability (speeding and automobile accidents). Avoid actions that have extremely high failure costs; focus on reducing the probability of accidents occurring. Glossary: Principle that one should take the action that produces the least harm or incurs the least cost.

Technology Standards

Reading: Technology standards are specifications that establish the compatibility of products and the ability to communicate in a network. Technology standards unleash powerful economies of scale and result in price declines as manufacturers focus on the products built to a single standard. Without these economies of scale, computing of any sort would be far more expensive than is currently the case. Table 5.1 describes important standards that have shaped IT infrastructure. Glossary: Specifications that establish the compatibility of products and the ability to communicate in a network.

Total Cost of Ownership (TCO)

Reading: The actual cost of owning technology resources includes the original cost of acquiring and installing hardware and software as well as ongoing administration costs for hardware and software upgrades, maintenance, technical support, training, and even utility and real estate costs for running and housing the technology. The total cost of ownership (TCO) model can be used to analyze these direct and indirect costs to help firms determine the actual cost of specific technology implementations. Table 5.4 describes the most important components to consider in a TCO analysis. Glossary: Designates the total cost of owning technology resources, including initial purchase costs, the cost of hardware and software upgrades, maintenance, technical support, and training.

Service-oriented architecture (SOA)

Reading: The collection of web services that are used to build a firm's software systems constitutes what is known as a service-oriented architecture. A service-oriented architecture (SOA) is set of self-contained services that communicate with each other to create a working software application. Business tasks are accomplished by executing a series of these services. Software developers reuse these services in other combinations to assemble other applications as needed. Glossary: Software architecture of a firm built on a collection of software programs that communicate with each other to perform assigned tasks to create a working software application

Key Field

Reading: The field for Supplier_Number in the SUPPLIER table uniquely identifies each record so that the record can be retrieved, updated, or sorted. It is called a key field. Each table in a relational database has one field that is designated as its primary key. This key field is the unique identifier for all the information in any row of the table and this primary key cannot be duplicated. Supplier_Number is the primary key for the SUPPLIER table and Part_Number is the primary key for the PART table. Note that Supplier_Number appears in both the SUPPLIER and PART tables. In the SUPPLIER table, Supplier_Number is the primary key. When the field Supplier_Number appears in the PART table, it is called a foreign key and is essentially a lookup field to look up data about the supplier of a specific part. Glossary: A field in a record that uniquely identifies instances of that record so that it can be retrieved, updated, or sorted.

XML

Reading: The foundation technology for web services is XML, which stands for Extensible Markup Language. This language was developed in 1996 by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C, the international body that oversees the development of the web) as a more powerful and flexible markup language than hypertext markup language (HTML) for web pages. Whereas HTML is limited to describing how data should be presented in the form of web pages, XML can perform presentation, communication, and storage of data. In XML, a number is not simply a number; the XML tag specifies whether the number represents a price, a date, or a ZIP code. Table 5.3 illustrates some sample XML statements. Glossary: General-purpose language that describes the structure of a document and can perform presentation, communication, and storage of data, allowing data to be manipulated by the computer.

Unix

Reading: The leading operating systems for corporate servers are Microsoft Windows Server, Unix, and Linux, an inexpensive and robust open source relative of Unix. Microsoft Windows Server is capable of providing enterprise-wide operating system and network services and appeals to organizations seeking Windows-based IT infrastructures. Unix and Linux are scalable, reliable, and much less expensive than mainframe operating systems. They can also run on many different types of processors. The major providers of Unix operating systems are IBM, HP, and Oracle-Sun, each with slightly different and partially incompatible versions. Glossary: Operating system for all types of computers, which is machine independent and supports multiuser processing, multitasking, and networking. Used in high-end workstations and servers.

BYOD (bring your own device)

Reading: The popularity, ease of use, and rich array of useful applications for smartphones and tablet computers have created a groundswell of interest in allowing employees to use their personal mobile devices in the workplace, a phenomenon popularly called "bring your own device" (BYOD). BYOD is one aspect of the consumerization of IT, Glossary: Stands for "bring your own device," and refers to employees using their own computing devices in the workplace.

Consumerization of IT

Reading: The popularity, ease of use, and rich array of useful applications for smartphones and tablet computers have created a groundswell of interest in allowing employees to use their personal mobile devices in the workplace, a phenomenon popularly called "bring your own device" (BYOD). BYOD is one aspect of the consumerization of IT, in which new information technology that first emerges in the consumer market spreads into business organizations. Consumerization of IT includes not only mobile personal devices but also business uses of software services that originated in the consumer marketplace as well, such as Google and Yahoo search, Gmail, Google Maps, Dropbox, and even Facebook and Twitter. Glossary: New information technology originating in the consumer market that spreads to business organizations.

Multitiered Client/Server Architecture

Reading: The simplest client/server network consists of a client computer networked to a server computer, with processing split between the two types of machines. This is called a two-tiered client/server architecture. Whereas simple client/server networks can be found in small businesses, most corporations have more complex, multitiered client/server architectures (often called N-tier client/server architectures) in which the work of the entire network is balanced over several different levels of servers, depending on the kind of service being requested (see Figure 5.3). Glossary: Client/server network in which the work of the entire network is balanced over several different levels of servers.

carpal tunnel syndrome (CTS)

Reading: The single largest source of RSI is computer keyboards. The most common kind of computer-related RSI is carpal tunnel syndrome (CTS), in which pressure on the median nerve through the wrist's bony structure, called a carpal tunnel, produces pain. The pressure is caused by constant repetition of keystrokes: In a single shift, a word processor may perform 23,000 keystrokes. Symptoms of CTS include numbness, shooting pain, inability to grasp objects, and tingling. Millions of workers have been diagnosed with CTS. It affects an estimated 3 to 6 percent of the workforce (LeBlanc and Cestia, 2011). 150 RSI is avoidable. Designing workstations for a neutral wrist position (using a wrist rest to support the wrist), proper monitor stands, and footrests all contribute to proper posture and reduced RSI. Ergonomically correct keyboards are also an option. These measures should be supported by frequent rest breaks and rotation of employees to different jobs. Glossary: Type of RSI in which pressure on the median nerve through the wrist's bony carpal tunnel structure produces pain.

Mashup

Reading: The software you use for both personal and business tasks today may be composed of interchangeable components that integrate freely with other applications on the Internet. Individual users and entire companies mix and match these software components to create their own customized applications and to share information with others. The resulting software applications are called mashups. The idea is to take different sources and produce a new work that is greater than the sum of its parts. You have performed a mashup if you've ever personalized your Facebook profile or your blog with a capability to display videos or slide shows. 196 Web mashups combine the capabilities of two or more online applications to create a kind of hybrid that provides more customer value than the original sources alone. For instance, ZipRealty uses Google Maps and data provided by an online real estate database Glossary: Composite software applications that depend on high-speed networks, universal communication standards, and open source code.

Data Warehouse

Reading: The traditional tool for analyzing corporate data for the past two decades has been the data warehouse. A data warehouse is a database that stores current and historical data of potential interest to decision makers throughout the company. The data originate in many core operational transaction systems, such as systems for sales, customer accounts, and manufacturing, and may include data from website transactions. The data warehouse extracts current and historical data from multiple operational systems inside the organization. These data are combined with data from external sources and transformed by correcting inaccurate and incomplete data and restructuring the data for management reporting and analysis before being loaded into the data warehouse. The data warehouse makes the data available for anyone to access as needed, but the data cannot be altered. A data warehouse system also provides a range of ad hoc and standardized query tools, analytical tools, and graphical reporting facilities. Glossary: A database, with reporting and query tools, that stores current and historical data extracted from various operational systems and consolidated for management reporting and analysis.

Profiling

Reading: The use of computers to combine data from multiple sources and create digital dossiers of detailed information on individuals is called profiling. Glossary: The use of computers to combine data from multiple sources and create electronic dossiers of detailed information on individuals.

Web Beacons

Reading: There are now even more subtle and surreptitious tools for surveillance of Internet users. Web beacons, also called web bugs (or simply tracking files), are tiny software programs that keep a record of users' online clickstreams. They report this data back to whomever owns the tracking file, which is invisibly embedded in email messages and web pages to monitor the behavior of the user visiting a website or sending email. Web beacons are placed on popular websites by third-party firms who pay the websites a fee for access to their audience. So how common is web tracking? In a path-breaking series of articles in the Wall Street Journal, researchers examined the tracking files on 50 of the most popular U.S. websites. What they found revealed a very widespread surveillance system. Glossary: Tiny objects invisibly embedded in email messages and web pages that are designed to monitor the behavior of the user visiting a website or sending email.

Minicomputers

Reading: This pattern began to change with the introduction of minicomputers, produced by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) in 1965. DEC minicomputers (PDP-11 and later the VAX machines) offered powerful machines at far lower prices than IBM mainframes, making possible decentralized computing, customized to the specific needs of individual departments or business units rather than time sharing on a single huge mainframe. In recent years, the minicomputer has evolved into a midrange computer or midrange server and is part of a network. Glossary: Middle-range computer used in systems for universities, factories, or research laboratories.

Online Analytical Processing (OLAP)

Reading: To obtain the answer, you would need online analytical processing (OLAP). OLAP supports multidimensional data analysis, enabling users to view the same data in different ways using multiple dimensions. Each aspect of information—product, pricing, cost, region, or time period—represents a different dimension. So, a product manager could use a multidimensional data analysis tool to learn how many washers were sold in the East in June, how that compares with the previous month and the previous June, and how it compares with the sales forecast. OLAP enables users to obtain online answers to ad hoc questions such as these in a fairly rapid amount of time, even when the data are stored in very large databases, such as sales figures for multiple years. Glossary: Capability for manipulating and analyzing large volumes of data from multiple perspectives.

Normalization

Reading: To use a relational database model effectively, complex groupings of data must be streamlined to minimize redundant data elements and awkward many-to-many relationships. The process of creating small, stable, yet flexible and adaptive data structures from complex groups of data is called normalization. Glossary: The process of creating small stable data structures from complex groups of data when designing a relational database.

Trademarks

Reading: Trademarks are the marks, symbols, and images used to distinguish products in the marketplace. Trademark laws protect consumers by ensuring they receive what they paid for. These laws also protect the investments that firms have made to bring products to market. Typical trademark infringement violations occur when one firm appropriates or pirates the marks of a competing firm. Infringement also occurs when firms dilute the value of another firm's marks by weakening the connection between a mark and the product. For instance, if a search engine firm copies the trademarked Google icon, colors, and images, it would be infringing on Google's trademarks. It would also be diluting the connection between the Google search service and its trademarks, potentially creating confusion in the marketplace. Glossary:

Software Defined Storage (SDS)

Reading: Virtualization also enables multiple physical resources (such as storage devices or servers) to appear as a single logical resource, as in software-defined storage (SDS), which separates the software for managing data storage from storage hardware. Using software, firms can pool and arrange multiple storage infrastructure resources and efficiently allocate them to meet specific application needs. SDS enables firms to replace expensive storage hardware with lower-cost commodity hardware and cloud storage hardware. There is less under- or over-utilization of storage resources (Letschin, 2016). Glossary: Software to manage provisioning and management of data storage independent of the underlying hardware.

Virtualization

Reading: Virtualization is the process of presenting a set of computing resources (such as computing power or data storage) so that they can all be accessed in ways that are not restricted by physical configuration or geographic location. Virtualization enables a single physical resource (such as a server or a storage device) to appear to the user as multiple logical resources. For example, a server or mainframe can be configured to run many instances of an operating system (or different operating systems) so that it acts like many different machines. Each virtual server "looks" like a real physical server to software programs, and multiple virtual servers can run in parallel on a single machine. VMware is the leading virtualization software vendor for Windows and Linux servers. Glossary: Presenting a set of computing resources so that they can all be accessed in ways that are not restricted by physical configuration or geographic location.

Web Mining

Reading: Web mining looks for patterns in data through content mining, structure mining, and usage mining. Web content mining is the process of extracting knowledge from the content of web pages, which may include text, image, audio, and video data. Web structure mining examines data related to the structure of a particular website. For example, links pointing to a document indicate the popularity of the document, while links coming out of a document indicate the richness or perhaps the variety of topics covered in the document. Web usage mining examines user interaction data recorded by a web server whenever requests for a website's resources are received. The usage data records the user's behavior when the user browses or makes transactions on the website and collects the data in a server log. Analyzing such data can help companies determine the value of particular customers, cross-marketing strategies across products, and the effectiveness of promotional campaigns. Glossary: Discovery and analysis of useful patterns and information from the World Wide Web.

Web Services

Reading: Web services refer to a set of loosely coupled software components that exchange information with each other using universal web communication standards and languages. They can exchange information between two different systems regardless of the operating systems or programming languages on which the systems are based. They can be used to build open standard web-based applications linking systems of two different organizations, and they can also be used to create applications that link disparate systems within a single company. Different applications can use web services to communicate with each other in a standard way without time-consuming custom coding. Glossary: Set of universal standards using Internet technology for integrating different applications from different sources without time-consuming custom coding. Used for linking systems of different organizations or for linking disparate systems within the same organization.

Data Governance

Reading: You may hear the term data governance used to describe many of these activities. Promoted by IBM, data governance deals with the policies and processes for managing the availability, usability, integrity, and security of the data employed in an enterprise with special emphasis on promoting privacy, security, data quality, and compliance with government regulations. Glossary: Policies and processes for managing the availability, usability, integrity, and security of the firm's data.

Primary Key

Reading: ach table in a relational database has one field that is designated as its primary key. This key field is the unique identifier for all the information in any row of the table and this primary key cannot be duplicated. Supplier_Number is the primary key for the SUPPLIER table and Part_Number is the primary key for the PART table. Note that Supplier_Number appears in both the SUPPLIER and PART tables. In the SUPPLIER table, Supplier_Number is the primary key. Glossary: Unique identifier for all the information in any row of a database table.

Cookies

Reading: are small text files deposited on a computer hard drive when a user visits websites. Cookies identify the visitor's web browser software and track visits to the website. When the visitor returns to a site that has stored a cookie, the website software searches the visitor's computer, finds the cookie, and knows what that person has done in the past. It may also update the cookie, depending on the activity during the visit. In this way, the site can customize its content for each visitor's interests. For example, if you purchase a book on Amazon.com and return later from the same browser, the site will welcome you by name and recommend other books of interest based on your past purchases. DoubleClick, described earlier in this chapter, uses cookies to build its dossiers with details of online purchases and examine the behavior of website visitors. Glossary: Tiny file deposited on a computer hard drive when an individual visits certain websites. Used to identify the visitor and track visits to the website.

Apps

Reading: are small, specialized software programs that run on the Internet, on your computer, or on your mobile phone or tablet and are generally delivered over the Internet. Google refers to its online services as apps. But when we talk about apps today, most of the attention goes to the apps that have been developed for the mobile digital platform. It is these apps that turn smartphones and tablets into general-purpose computing tools. There are now millions of apps for the IOS and Android operating systems. Glossary: Small pieces of software that run on the Internet, on your computer, or on your cell phone and are generally delivered over the Internet.

Digital Divide

Reading: could lead to a society of information haves, who are computer literate and skilled, versus a large group of information have-nots, who are computer illiterate and unskilled. Public interest groups want to narrow this digital divide by making digital information services—including the Internet—available to virtually everyone, just as basic telephone service is now. Glossary: Large disparities in access to computers and the Internet among different social groups and different locations.

Nonobvious relationship awareness (NORA)

Reading: data analysis technology called nonobvious relationship awareness (NORA) has given both the government and the private sector even more powerful profiling capabilities. NORA can take information about people from many disparate sources, such as employment applications, telephone records, customer listings, and wanted lists, and correlate relationships to find obscure connections that might help identify criminals or terrorists Glossary: Technology that can find obscure hidden connections between people or other entities by analyzing information from many different sources to correlate relationships.

Client

Reading: desktop or laptop computers called clients are networked to powerful server computers that provide the client computers with a variety of services and capabilities. Computer processing work is split between these two types of machines. The client is the user point of entry, whereas the server typically processes and stores shared data, serves up web pages, or manages network activities. Glossary: The user point-of-entry for the required function in client/server computing. Normally a desktop computer, workstation, or laptop computer.

iOS

Reading: iOS, the operating system for the phenomenally popular Apple iPad and iPhone, features a multitouch interface, where users employ one or more fingers to manipulate objects on a screen without a mouse or keyboard. Microsoft's Windows 10 and Windows 8, which run on tablets as well as PCs, have multitouch capabilities, as do many Android devices. Glossary: Operating system for the Apple iPad, iPhone, and iPod Touch.

Accountability

Reading: is a feature of systems and social institutions; it means that mechanisms are in place to determine who took action and who is responsible. Systems and institutions in which it is impossible to find out who took what action are inherently incapable of ethical analysis or ethical action. Glossary: The mechanisms for assessing responsibility for decisions made and actions taken.

Hypertext Markup Language (HTML)

Reading: is a page description language for specifying how text, graphics, video, and sound are placed on a web page and for creating dynamic links to other web pages and objects. Using these links, a user need only point at a highlighted keyword or graphic, click on it, and immediately be transported to another document. Glossary: Page description language for creating web pages.

Due Process

Reading: is a related feature of law-governed societies and is a process in which laws are known and understood, and ability exists to appeal to higher authorities to ensure that the laws are applied correctly. Glossary: A process in which laws are well-known and understood and there is an ability to appeal to higher authorities to ensure that laws are applied correctly.

Computer Abuse

Reading: is the commission of acts involving a computer that may not be illegal but are considered unethical. The popularity of the Internet, email, and mobile phones has turned one form of computer abuse—spamming—into a serious problem for both individuals and businesses Glossary: The commission of acts involving a computer that may not be illegal but are considered unethical.

Computer Crime

Reading: is the commission of illegal acts by using a computer or against a computer system. Simply accessing a computer system without authorization or with intent to do harm, even by accident, is now a federal crime. The most frequent types of incidents comprise a greatest hits list of cybercrime: malware, phishing, network interruption, spyware, and denial of service attacks (PwC, 2016). The true cost of all computer crime is unknown, but it is estimated to be in the billions of dollars. Glossary: The commission of illegal acts through the use of a computer or against a computer system.

Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA)

Reading: of 1998 also provides some copyright protection. The DMCA implemented a World Intellectual Property Organization Treaty that makes it illegal to circumvent technology-based protections of copyrighted materials. Internet service providers (ISPs) are required to take down sites of copyright infringers they are hosting when the ISPs are notified of the problem. Glossary: Adjusts copyright laws to the Internet Age by making it illegal to make, distribute, or use devices that circumvent technology-based protections of copyrighted materials.

Wintel PC

Reading: the Wintel PC computer (Windows operating system software on a computer with an Intel microprocessor) became the standard desktop personal computer. Worldwide PC sales have declined because of the popularity of tablets and smartphones, but the PC is still a popular tool for business. Approximately 88 percent of desktop PCs are thought to run a version of Windows, and about 8 percent run a version of MacOS. Wintel dominance as a computing platform is receding as iPhone and Android device sales increase. Glossary: Any computer that uses Intel microprocessors (or compatible processors) and a Windows operating system.

Data Quality Audit

Reading: Glossary: A survey and/or sample of files to determine accuracy and completeness of data in an information system.

ethical no-free-lunch rule

Reading: Assume that virtually all tangible and intangible objects are owned by someone else unless there is a specific declaration otherwise. (This is the ethical no-free-lunch rule.) If something someone else has created is useful to you, it has value, and you should assume the creator wants compensation for this work. Glossary: Assumption that all tangible and intangible objects are owned by someone else, unless there is a specific declaration otherwise, and that the creator wants compensation for this work.

Fair Information Practices (FIP)

Reading: Most American and European privacy law is based on a regime called Fair Information Practices (FIP), first set forth in a report written in 1973 by a federal government advisory committee and updated in 2010 to take into account new privacy-invading technology (U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, 1973). FIP is a set of principles governing the collection and use of information about individuals. FIP principles are based on the notion of a mutuality of interest between the record holder and the individual. Glossary: A set of principles originally set forth in 1973 that governs the collection and use of information about individuals and forms the basis of most U.S. and European privacy laws.

Copyright

Reading: a statutory grant that protects creators of intellectual property from having their work copied by others for any purpose during the life of the author plus an additional 70 years after the author's death. For corporate-owned works, copyright protection lasts for 95 years after their initial creation. Congress has extended copyright protection to books, periodicals, lectures, dramas, musical compositions, maps, drawings, artwork of any kind, and motion pictures. The intent behind copyright laws has been to encourage creativity and authorship by ensuring that creative people receive the financial and other benefits of their work. Most industrial nations have their own copyright laws, and there are several international conventions and bilateral agreements through which nations coordinate and enforce their laws. Glossary: A statutory grant that protects creators of intellectual property against copying by others for any purpose for a minimum of 70 years.

liability

Reading: extends the concept of responsibility further to the area of laws. Liability is a feature of political systems in which a body of laws is in place that permits individuals to recover the damages done to them by other actors, systems, or organizations. Glossary: The existence of laws that permit individuals to recover the damages done to them by other actors, systems, or organizations.

Ethics

Reading: s a concern of humans who have freedom of choice. Ethics is about individual choice: When faced with alternative courses of action, what is the correct moral choice? What are the main features of ethical choice? Glossary: Principles of right and wrong that can be used by individuals acting as free moral agents to make choices to guide their behavior.

informed consent

Reading: Customers must provide their informed consent before any company can legally use data about them, and they have the right to access that information, correct it, and request that no further data be collected. Informed consent can be defined as consent given with knowledge of all the facts needed to make a rational decision. Glossary: Consent given with knowledge of all the facts needed to make a rational decision.

intellectual property

Reading: Intellectual property is defined as tangible and intangible products of the mind created by individuals or corporations. Information technology has made it difficult to protect intellectual property because computerized information can be so easily copied or distributed on networks. Intellectual property is subject to a variety of protections under four legal traditions: copyright, patents, trademarks, and trade secrets. Glossary: Intangible property created by individuals or corporations that is subject to protections under trade secret, copyright, and patent law.