CYBER CRIME

Cyber crime or computer crime refers to crime that involves a computer and network. Some common examples of cyber crime include identity theft, financial fraud, web site defacement and cyber bullying. At an organizational level, cyber crime may involve the hacking of databases and theft of intellectual property or confidential information. Many users think they can protect themselves, their accounts and their computers at home with just anti-spyware and anti-virus software. At work, many employees believe that the organization will provide all the protection needed, so they think they don’t need to be concerned about their cyber-activity. Cyber criminals are becoming more sophisticated and they are targeting consumers as well as public, private and state organizations. Therefore, additional layers of defense are needed. Criminals take advantage of technology in many different ways. The Internet, in particular, is a great tool for hackers and other miscreants since it allows them to ply their trade while hiding behind a shield of digital anonymity. Cyber crime affects society in a number of different ways.

There are three major categories of cyber crimes which are crimes against the person, property and the government. The first category of cyber crimes is cyber crime against person. Cyber crime against person is included harassment via email or cyber-stalking. Cyber Stalking means following the moves of an individual's activity over internet. It can be done with the help of many protocols available such at e- mail, chat rooms, user net groups while, harassment can be included sexual, racial, religious, or others. This crime usually happens to women and teenager. There is a case happened to a girl in Ahmedabad, Gujarat India. She was lured to a private place through cyber chat by a man with his friends, attempted to rape her. Luckily she was rescue by passersby that heard she cried she was rescued. Second category of cyber crimes is that of cyber crimes against all forms of property. These crimes include computer vandalism by transmission of harmful programmed to other computer through internet. The other example is cyber criminal can take the contents of individual bank account. One widespread method of getting people's bank account details is the money transfer email scam. People receive emails requesting help with transferring funds from another country. Hacking into company websites is property trespass, and stealing information is property theft. Internet time theft also one of the cyber crime against property. It is done by an authorized person in the usage of the internet hours which is actually paid by another person.The third category is cyber crimes against governments constitute another level of crime. Cyber terrorism is the most serious type of crime in this category. Hacking into a government website, particularly the military sites, is one manifestation of cyber terrorism. The example of cyber crime against government is web jacking. By web jacking, hackers gain access and control over the website of another, even they change the content of website for fulfilling political objective or for money.

Example of cyber crime that happened in Malaysia:

RM1bil lost to cyber crimes

There is a growing concern over the increasing numbers of cyber crimes in Malaysia, says Deputy IGP Mohd Bakri Zin.

CYBERJAYA: Cyber crime is a ticking bomb in Malaysia according to the police.
Between January and July this year the Malaysian police recorded RM1 billion in losses from victims of such crime, said Deputy Inspector-General of Police Mohd Bakri Zinin.
He said US-based IT security developer, SOPHOS had it is three-month Security Threat report this year ranked Malaysia as sixth globally in terms of cyber crime threat risks.
“It (cyber crime) is serious and we must educate the public in preventing it,” he told a press conference after the signing of a memorandum of understanding (MoU) between the Royal Malaysian Police and Limkokwing University, here yesterday.
The MoU was signed by Federal Commercial Crime Investigation Department director, Syed Ismail Syed Azizan, and Limkokwing University of Creative Technology senior vice-president Raja Aznil Raja Hashim.
It provides the university with a five-year contract to provide contents such as posters, video clips and animations to the police in cyber crime-prevention campaigns.
Mohd Bakri said out of the RM1 billion in losses from cyber crime in the first six months of this year, 9,857 cases were reported with 7,801 of these solved and 3,385 people detained.
He said last year, the losses amounted to RM1.115 billion with 8,920 of the 11,543 reported cases solved and 3,712 people arrested.
Meanwhile, Syed Ismail said most of the cyber crime committed in the country were through parcel scams, selling goods via the Internet, and masquerading.
“Cyber crime in the country has yet to reach a level, where a syndicate would steal an information or intellectual property from a person or
organisation and sell it to other parties or a rival for a price,” he said.
Therefore, Raja Aznil said the collaboration with the police in the campaign was vital to educate the public on the prevention measures so that they would not easily fall prey to cyber crime.

“This campaign mainly targets the young generation as they are tech-savvy in using computers and mobile devices.
“They are also prone to be influenced by what is posted on the Internet, making them easy prey,” he said.
-Bernama

 

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GREEN IT

Green IT or Green Computing refers to minimizing the impact on the environment of designing, manufacturing, using and disposing of computers, servers and associated peripherals such as monitors, printers, storage devices, and networking and communications systems. The goals are to reduce the use of hazardous materials, maximize energy efficiency during the product’s lifetime and promote the effective recycling of the technology at the end of its useful life. According to Wikipedia the purpose of green computing are similar to green chemistry which reduce the use of hazardous materials, maximize energy efficiency during the product's lifetime, and promote the recyclabilty of defunct products and factory waste. Many corporate IT departments have green computing initiatives to reduce the environmental impact of their IT operations.

According to a 2007 Gartner report, data-centre electricity consumption is almost 0.5% of world electricity production. A McKinsey report showed that between 2000 and 2006 the power consumption of data centres doubled and the average data centre consumes the energy equivalent of 25,000 households. In fact, data centres generate 0.3% of global carbon dioxide emissions, a surprising statistic considering that airlines, which are considered heavy emitters, contribute only 0.6%. Clearly with cap and trade and carbon taxes such as those in British Columbia, there is added incentive to implement green computing, or green IT, initiatives.

All businesses are increasingly dependent on technology including small business. We work on our PCs, notebooks and smart phones all day, connected to servers running 24 hours a day and 7 days a week or in other words is everyday. Because the technology refresh cycle is fast, these devices quickly become obsolete or out of date and at some point more often sooner than later we dispose of old devices and replace them with new ones. We use massive quantities of paper and ink to print documents, many of which we promptly send to the circular file. In the process, most businesses waste resources, in the form of energy, paper, money and time. 

Solutions:

Simple procedures can be implemented such as powering down systems and lights-out processing sites. Green IT also involves rewriting programs to run more efficiently or on implementing new technologies that consume less electricity. It can involve providing more electronic access and self-reporting techniques used by utilities that allow consumers to view their bills and make payments online. Green initiatives that focus on “low-hanging fruits,” especially conservation-based efforts such as energy-efficient devices, power-saving strategies, eliminating excessive use of resources, etc., can yield the dual benefits of protecting the environment and saving money. Minimize of printing document process.


Go Green!

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IMPACT OF E-COMMERCE

 

Wikipedia defined Electronic commerce commonly known as E-commerce or eCommerce is trading in products or services using computer networks such as the Internet. In other word E-commerce refers to the use of the Internet and the web to transact business.More formally, e-commerce is about digitally enabled commercial transactions between and among organizations and individuals.For the most part, this means transactions that occur over the Internet and the web. Commercial transactions involve the exchange of value across organizational or individual boundaries in return for products and services. E-commerce has been with us a long time now. It has improved its payment gateways and it has completely changed e-commerce consumer experience. And with the smartphone market booming, e-commerce become more popular. Example of e-commerce are amazon, eBay, Lazada, Zalora and many more.

• Impact e-commerce to customer                                                                                                   E-commerce make our life become more easy and convenient especially we as a customer.  Customers not need to make a long queue to pay what they buy at counter, they can buy what they want anytime 24/7/365 if they have an Internet connection which is consider as faster buying procedures. With the search engine like Google, Internet Explorer customer can make price comparison to search the lower and the best price. Nowadays, there are shopping price comparison website that make customer become more convenient to make price comparison, there are also many choice to customer to choose. For customer who live in rural area and not situated in urban center, e-commerce make their life become more easier because they can buy what they like without going to town, so this will save money and time instead of paying for petrol, toll and parking, not need for customers to travel long distances to reach their preferred physical store, e-commerce allows them to visit the same store virtually, with a few mouse clicks. Customers can easily select products from different providers without moving around physically. Smartphones and tablets have become the mobile devices consumers use to shop in virtual stores. Mobile commerce offers mobility, it is time-saving and it does not require a fixed internet connection. But when buying thru e-commerce customer cannot touch, feel, hear, taste and smell before they buy, it takes away that luxury.    
                                                                                                                                                                      

•  Impact e-commerce to business                                                                                                E-commerce give a lot of impact to the business industry. First of all business not need to have physical store to operate their business, so it need a very low cost to running the business. If u running e-commerce business, not need to rent a store, paying utility bills and hiring workers. When you need a low cost to operate the e-commerce business you can offer a lower price of your products to the customers like offering coupons and discount. For example Lazada.com offering free shipping fee and 10% discount if customers paying with credit cards in every Friday, new customer are given RM10 coupons if they register as a members. Your e-commerce store open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and 365 days a year and your customer can shop anywhere anytime they want. There are also opportunity to reach a new market faster rather than operate in traditional way because when we cannot locate our store in rural area or some place that hard to reach e-commerce store are possible. In your e-commerce store you can sell anything you like and you not need to keep the stock of your product because your supplier will keep the stock, when the customer want some items just contacts your supplier to deliver it. There are limitations to the amount of information that can be displayed in a physical store. It is difficult to equip employees to respond to customers who require information across product lines. E-commerce websites can make additional information easily available to customers. Most of this information is provided by vendors and does not cost anything to create or maintain. When your customer fill the registration form to become a members you can use these information to communicate relevant messages like email the customer of your new products, offering coupons and so on to make your customer coming back and buy at your e-commerce store. Unfortunately according to some research the growth of e-commerce affected some retail store like bookstores, travel agencies, music stores and some more. Some of the store need to close down because of decreasing pattern customer visit their store.                                                                                                                                                                                                                      

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LIFE WITHOUT SOCIAL NETWORKING

Wikipedia defined a social networking service is a platform to build social networks or social relations among people who share interests, activities, backgrounds or real-life connections. A social network service consists of a representation of each user often a profile of his or her social links and a variety of additional services. Social networks are web-based services that allow individuals to create a public profile, to create a list of users with whom to share connections and view and cross the connections within the system. Most social network services are web-based and provide means for users to interact over the Internet such as e-mail and instant messaging. Social network sites are varied and they incorporate new information and communication tools such as mobile connectivity, photo, video, sharing and blogging. Online community services are sometimes considered as a social network service, though in a broader sense, social network service usually means an individual-centered service whereas online community services are group-centered. Social networking sites allow users to share ideas, pictures, posts, activities, events, interests with people in their network. Examples of social networking are Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, Tagged and many more. If our life without social networking:

                                                                                                                                                   
     1.     More productive

     

Life without social networking makes your life more productive when working because you not need to look at your Facebook, Twitter or any social networking. Most of workers nowadays always stare to their Facebook while working although they have a task to be settled. Employers should ban their workers from staring at their social networking while working.

2.     Life more peaceful without picking fights

Everyday there are always people fights each other at Facebook or Twitter because of unsatisfied of someone status, post or picture. This make our life not happy because someone saying something rude or not nice to us.

3.     More social in real life

You have more quality time  when you gathering with your family or friends without looking to your phone or tab to update what are doing right now or to see what are in the news feed. You have an actual conversation to people surrounding you. Please don't be anti-social.

4.     Save money

You not need to pay to Internet provider if you not subscribe to Internet plan, this will save your money.

5.     Sharing or show off

Among us there are people who are like to post what they do, what they bought, where they go or anything that they want to post, maybe their intention is to sharing something with others but maybe others call it as show off. I cannot begin to explain how good it feels to just focus on what’s going on for you without comparing it to what everyone else is doing and wondering whether you’re doing enough with your life after seeing the achievements of others. Be yourself.

6.     Minimize crime

There are data shows that crimes are increasing drastically because of social networking. Crime can be minimizing if there is no social networking in this world.

        

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