ACIS 1504 Exam I
Terms
- 5 components of an information System
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1. hardware
2. software
3. data
4. procedure
5. people
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Information is:
Objective or subjective?
- Subjective; one man's data is another man's information.
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What drives a business?
How does I.S. play a role?
- People; Info systems help these people accomplish the goals and objectives of the organizations they work for
- Adware and Spyware
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Software that gathers information about your online activities and sends it to someone else.
-Adware is designed to enhance the effectiveness of targeted advertising.
-Spyware is designed to support criminal activities.
- Are ethical and legal synonymous?
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No; establish your own decision about what is ethical and what is not.
Remember: misdirected information can be handled unethically by YOU.
- Augmentation information systems
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those in which humans do the bulk of the work
ex: email; users look for support, not answers
- Automated information Systems:
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those in which the hardware and the program components do most of the work
ex: inventory
- Characteristics of good information: Content
- It must be accurate, complete, and concise.
- Characteristics of good information: form
- It must be clear, detailed, orderly, presented well, and through a good medium.
- Characteristics of good information: time
- It must be timely, it must be frequent, current, and it must be in the time period/coverage that is relevant to your needs.
- Competitive Advantage: 8 principles used to create a competitive advantage
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Create a new product or service
Enhance products or services
Differentiate products or service
Lock in customers and buyers
Lock in suppliers
Raise barriers to market entry
Establish alliances
Reduce costs
- Cost Leadership
- Lower your costs, increase costs of competitors, help suppliers lower their costs, help customers lower their costs
- Customer Relationship Management System
- An Info System that maintains data about customers and all their interactions with the organization.
- Data vs. Information
- Data must be processed to become information.
- Decision Steps
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1. Gather information
2. Alternative formulation (other choices?)
3. Choice
4. Implementation
5. Review
- Decisions: Levels
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1. Operational (daily)
2. Managerial (allocation and utilization of resources)
3. Strategic (organizational issues)
- Denial of Service Attack
- A program that controls infected machines and commands them to flood a network with traffic by making numerous unnecessary requests
- Differentiation
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Develop ways to distinguish your product or services from competitors
reduce differences established by competitors
- Encryption
- Encoding information so only those with the key can decode it
- Executive Info Systems
- Info systems that support strategic decision making
- Firewall
- Software or hardware that creates a protective barrier between your computer and potentially harmful programs on the internet
- Hacking
- occurs when a person gains unauthorized access to a computer system
- Info Systems' categories
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Operations Support Systems
Management Support systems
- Information
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Knowledge derived from data that is presented in a meaningful context; process or aggregated data; a difference that makes a difference
Information is relevant data
- Information Literacy
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1. Define what information is needed.
2. Know how and where to obtain data.
3. Understand the meaning of information
4. Act appropriately based on the information (legally and ethically)
- Information System
- Group of componenets that interact to produce information
- Information Technology
- products, methods, inventions, and standards that are used for the purpose of producing information; drives the development of new info systems
- Innovation
- Develop unique products or services, enter unique markets, find new ways of producing products or services, find new ways of distributing products or services, establish new business alliances
- Internet and the Long Tail Theory
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Internet allows businesses to tap into the Long Tail market
Lowering search costs could create a longer tail by increasing sales of hard to find products
- Knowledge management System
- An Info System for storing and retrieving organizational knowledge, whether that knowledge is in the form of data, documents, or employee know-how; its goal is to make the organization's knowledge available to employees, vendors, customers, investors,
- Malware
- Undesirable software on your computer
- Management Info Systems
- Info systems that support managerial decision making
- Management Information Systems
- The development and use of information systems that help businesses achieve their goals and objectives
- Management Support Systems
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1. Management Information Systems (Prespecified reporting for managers)
2. Decision Support Systems (interactive decision support)
3. Executive information systems (info tailored for executives)
- Manufacturing info systems
- Focuses on various aspects of the manufacturing process from quality control to planning to scheduling
- Moore's Law
- Gordon Moore of Intel's observation that "the number of transistors per square inch on an integrated chip doubles every 18 months"; has been proved accurate over the past 40 years
- Operations Support Systems:
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1. transaction processing systems (process business trasactions)
2. process control systems (control of industrial processes)
3. enterprise collaboration systems (team and workgroup collaboration)
- Pharming
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Designed to harvest identity, financial, and other key pieces of information for identity theft.
Exploits vulnerability in DNS server software that allows hacker to redirect the domain name for a site to a different IP address.
- Phishing
- obtaining unauthorized data by pre-texting through email
- Pre-texting
- someone deceives by pretending to be someone else
- Problem
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A perceived difference between what is and what ought to be.
A good problem definition describes the current situation and the desired situation.
- Purposes of Information Systems
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1. To gain a competitive advantage
2. To Solve problems
3. to assist in decision making
4. to comply with a directive
- Risk
- Likelihood of an adverse occurrence
- Safeguard
- any action, device, procedure, technique, or other measure that reduces a system's vulnerability to a threat
- Security Program: 3 components
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1. Senior management
2. Safeguards
3. Planned response to security incidents
- Security Threat Problem Types
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1. Unauthorized data disclosure
2. Incorrect Data Modification
3. Faulty service
- Sniffing
- intercepting computer communications
- Spoofing
- someone pretending to be someone else
- Structured vs. unstructured decision
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1. Structured: decision for which there is an understood and accepted method for making the decision
2. Unstructured: decision for which there is no agreed-on decision making method
- Switching costs
- organizations lock in customers by making it difficult or expensive for customers to switch to another product
- System
- Group of components that interact to achieve some purpose
- the long tail theory
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Chris Anderson of Wired's theory that states companies get less for those items they stock more of
ex: netflix makes a lot of money because they rent a lot of unpopular movies
- Transaction processing systems
- Info systems that support operation decision making.
- Trojan Horse
- A program that seems to perform one good function while actually doing something else that is bad (video game download that has a hidden attachment)
- Uncertainty
- Unknown factors that increase risk
- Usurpation
- Occurs when unauthorized programs invade a computer system and replace legitimate programs
- Virus
- Program instructions in a file that reproduces itself and spreads to other files on the same computer
- vulnerability
- an opening or weakness in the security system
- What governs conduct for business professionals?
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1. The Law
2. Corporate Policy
3. Ethical behavior
- Worm
- Malware that can spread itself to other computers with minimal user interaction