BBSBMGT407 - APPLY DIGITAL SOLUTIONS TO WORK PROCESSESSBCRT401

- ARTICULATE, PRESENT AND DEBATE IDEAS

Activity 1

1. A few Examples of digital communication

a. Chat & Private Messaging = Collaborative spaces which provide private/group
messaging and chat functions are often viewed as one of the best business
communication tools to keep teams working together. It’s an effective form of
communication for busy employees and managers. Instant messaging makes
updates on projects and general team discussion much easier.
b. Live video streaming = is useful for internal workplace communications because
of how easy it is to quickly get a message out to a distributed workforce. Many
organisations use live video to conduct staff meetings, sales meetings and
presentations to the whole organisation.
c. Intranet = The intranet is a central portal where everyone in the organisation can
access information, communications, documents and contracts in one place. Social
intranet software lowers IT maintenance costs by allowing employees to use their
own devices to access workplace information through a centralized platform.
d. Instant messaging = Private, group messaging and chat room applications such as
Yammer, Lync and Basecamp allow employees and work teams to collaborate and
communicate in real time across different geographical locations and time zones.
This is important when managers need updates on the progress of projects or
when they need to quickly communicate with team members.
e. Discussion forums = Online discussion forums allow all members of an
organisation to participate in open discussions on a topic. This helps to
disseminate information, gather support and allow employees to ask questions,
discuss projects and resolve workplace issues in a moderated environment.

Activity 2

1. Digital communications refer to application software that can be used by a computer,

mobile device, or tablet, in order to perform tasks.
2. 10 examples of digital information that you are most likely to use at work:
a. email,
b. instant messaging,
c. voicemail,
d. short messaging services (SMS),
e. multimedia messaging services (MMS),
f. intranet,
g. portals,
h. public websites
i. video conferencing and
 j. teleconferencing
3. Digital information can be located at:
a. Office applications, such as word-processing documents, spreadsheets and
presentations
b. Online platforms, such as the intranet, portals, public websites and records of
transactions
c. Business information systems, such as databases, geospatial data systems, human
resources systems, financial systems, workflow systems, customer management
systems, electronic documents and record management systems
d. Digital communication systems, such as email, instant messaging, voicemail,
short messaging services (SMS), multimedia messaging services (MMS), video
conferencing and teleconferencing
e. Cloud service panels, data center panels, information and communication
technology (ICT) hardware panels, mobile panels and telecommunication panels
4. Organisations should ensure that any policies and procedures introduced are necessary
and relevant, and that managers have the capacity and capability to work within the
policy framework. Digital workplace information should be structured in a way that
helps people to do their jobs and to coordinate work processes, practices and projects
in ways that deliver meaningful outcomes.
5. Five ways workers can learn how to use digital devices safely and securely in the
workplace:
 Employees need the flexibility to choose the most effective way to access business
applications wherever they work.
 Strong connectivity remains a crucial requirement in the digital workplace, both in
the office and on the road; it is fundamental to ensuring that the communications
technologies and business and collaboration applications driving business today
function effectively.
 Giving employees seamless access to business applications regardless of location
and time increases productivity and supports collaboration with other employees,
partners, and customers.
 Workplace tools have a strong influence on employees’ motivation, performance,
and productivity.

Activity 3

1. Validity can be defined as the quality of being correct or true. Reliability, on the other
hand, is the quality of being reliable, dependable, or trustworthy.
2. Five reasons why some information might be unreliable:
 Data systems and storage might be inefficient, inadequate, or incomplete
 Data suppliers might be untrustworthy, or have a different agenda from the
organization
 Targets might be incorrectly identified
 Data might be out to date
 Data might be improperly collected.
 3. There are six ways to tell if website is credible
o Author, Information on the internet with a listed author is one indication of a
credible site.
 Date. The date of any research information is important.
 Sources. Credible websites, like books and scholarly articles, should cite the
source of the information presented.
 Domain. Some domains such as.edu is reserved for colleges and universities,
while .gov denotes a government website.
 Site Design. This can be very subjective, but a well-designed site can be an
indication of more reliable information.
 Writing Style. Poor spelling and grammar are an indication that the site may not
be credible.

Activity 4

1. There are a number of ways in which digital information can be stored, including:
a. Online, whether locally on an agency server, or by hosted storage through the
internet, for example in cloud storage.
b. In offline storage from which data can be quickly retrieved through a near-line
storage system and brought online for access.
c. On removable media such as magnetic tapes, CDs, DVDs, memory cards, flash
drives (USB sticks).
2. A strong password consists of at least six characters (and the more characters, the
stronger the password) that are a combination of letters, numbers and symbols (@, #,
$, %, etc.) if allowed. Passwords are typically case-sensitive, so a strong password
contains letters in both uppercase and lowercase. Strong passwords also do not
contain words that can be found in a dictionary or parts of the user's own name.
3. Document-retrieval systems store entire documents, which are usually retrieved by
title or by key words associated with the document. In some systems, the text of
documents is stored as data. This permits full text searching, enabling retrieval on the
basis of any words in the document. In others, a digitized image of the document is
stored, usually on a write-once optical disc.

Activity 5

1. Five trends and/or innovations in digital technology:

 Application program interfaces (API) = Digital transformation inherently espouses
shadow IT and the need for agility. New tools and technologies need more than
one avenue for viability. otherwise, their value quickly drops. APIs are a secret
weapon for embracing true digital transformation.
 Big data and analytics = The importance of big data in the business world can’t be
overstated. We know that there’s a dizzying amount of valuable data in the world,
but few companies are using it to maximum effect. Analytics drive business by
showing how your customers think, what they want, and how the market views
your brand.
  Digital transformation = is driven by the Internet of Things (IoT). Speaking of
how invaluable big data is to marketers, the IoT offers immeasurable insight into
customer’s mind. It’s also changing how daily life operates by helping create
more efficient cities and leaner enterprises. Businesses and customers alike will
continue to benefit from the IoT.
 Smart machines and artificial intelligence (AI) are taking off in a big way = Our
relationships to technology continue to evolve. Soon machines will be able to
learn and adapt to their environments. AI has long been considered the realm of
science fiction, but as technology improves, AI becomes a reality.
 Embrace the remote workforce: Young professionals prefer flexibility to
compensation. Mobile technology and bandwidth proliferation allow businesses to
connect with (and retain) top talent anywhere in the world. Contract and freelance
employees appreciate the ability to work from home or while sitting on the beach.
Companies benefit from having the ability to hire the most talented employees
available in any time zone.
2. I read blogs and am involved with different forums and communities. I also subscribe
to all frameworks and technologies I use, so I receive an email whenever there is a
new version or changes. This keeps me abreast with the technologies I work in, not
what’s 'hot and new and out there' and not in general about the software industry. So,
I want to ensure whenever I answer I am not blabbering and what I do to keep abreast
is generally acceptable. In the software industry, things change fast. Having a
developer who is at least aware of current technology or the direction technology is
going is much more valuable than one that only focuses on what they know, and is
never willing to look outside their own skill set to learn new things. A programmer
who claims N years’ experience could easily be one with only 1 years’ experience,
repeated N times, and this sort of question is one way to identify that. I think the only
bad answer to such a question is "Nothing". To me, that would signify that you are
stuck in whatever time period you learned in, and that you aren't the kind of person
who works to improve your programming abilities at all. An appropriate answer is
anything at all to indicate you try to keep your skill set updated, or at very least are
aware of changes in the technology world. Some easy examples I usually give are
MSDN, online programmer communities (StackOverflow, HackerNews, some other
forums, etc), technology blogs, Google tech news, etc. More importantly, the ability
to seamlessly move from a call to action in an email to the landing page without slow
loading times or warped content is crucial. Both, big data and IoT are extremely
advantageous for marketers in terms of gathering consumer information. This data, in
turn, can help them in making the necessary changes to their products, services and
content and improve consumer experience. Almost every business constantly looks
for new ways to market itself in an attempt to stay ahead of the herd. And why not? It
is better to gain a competitive edge and attract higher website traffic, new leads and
more customers rather than plunge into the darkness of non-existence.

Activity 6
 1. Digital services deliver digital content across multiple platforms and devices, such as
mobile and internet. Information is presented in a way that is easy to use and
understand.
2. Meet with your team and see what needs to be done to reach those goals. Then draw a
kind of action plan with the strategies to be used and see what your internal team can
do. These factors will need to be considered:
a. Cost
b. Availability
c. Ease of use
d. Flexibility
e. Coverage
f. Reliability
g. Service
h. Length of contract
i. Any traditional fees (such as equipment and installation cost)
j. redundancy
3. Five steps that should be followed when integrating digital services into workplace
operations:
a. Outlining goals.
b. Creating policies and procedures
c. Communicating the change
d. Engaging and training employees
e. Removing barriers
4. Digital services deliver digital content across multiple platforms and devices, such as
mobile and internet. Information is presented in a way that is easy to use and
understand.

Activity 7

1. A digital strategy, or solution, is a form of strategic management and business

response to a digital question, often best addressed as part of an overall strategy. This
is often characterized by the application of new technologies to existing business
activity. When selecting what digital solutions to use, they should be screened to
ensure they are appropriate for the purpose and that they are cost effective.
2. Can virtual assistants improve your company's order fulfillment process? Can AR or
VR enable your team to create prototypes that are easily shared across continents?
Will IoT devices and smart sensors work to reduce manufacturing costs? Maybe or
maybe not, but if you are not at least aware of these trends, you will not be able to
make informed decisions about which might be applicable to your company. The
latest technology trends could be the key to getting your company through a growth
phase with ease. But if you don't know what's happening, then the opportunity to
integrate this tech into your operations will never see the light of day. If growth and
expansion are on the horizon for your business, you'll want to make sure your
company is digitally mature before you get too big to function. You can bet Amazon
 is taking full advantage of digital solutions as they expand their workforce and you
can do so today by taking the above into account.

Activity 8

1. Digital innovations be integrated into workplace operations While the workplace

began transforming as far back at the agricultural and industrial revolutions, the
widespread proliferation of information technology forever changed the ways in
which employees connect, collaborate and communicate. As workplace demographics
continue to shift, employers struggle to meet the varying needs of a multi-generational
workforce. As the use of the Internet and mobile devices grows, the pace of change
continues to accelerate. These changes are further exacerbated by ongoing demands to
increase productivity and cut costs, making it harder for employees to meet market
expectations. Together, these trends are reshaping the work environment.
2. Three tools that can be used to identify improvements and generate innovations.
 Aging workforce: as the baby boomers continue to retire, they are taking key
knowledge with them, increasing the need to capture their knowledge.
 Information overload: information is still growing at exponential rates and
employees can’t find what they need, even with technology advances.
 The need for speed: with the rapid pace of today’s work environment, employees
increasingly need to work faster and collaborate more effectively to get their jobs
done.

Activity 9

1. Netiquette is short for "Internet etiquette." Just like etiquette is a code of polite
behavior in society, netiquette is a code of good behavior on the Internet. The word
netiquette is a combination of ’net’ (from internet) and ’etiquette’. It means respecting
other users’ views and displaying common courtesy when posting your views to
online discussion groups. This includes several aspects of the Internet, such as email,
social media, online chat, web forums, website comments, multiplayer gaming, and
other types of online communication. While there is no official list of netiquette rules
or guidelines, the general idea is to respect others online.
2. The rapid pace of consumer adoption of digital platforms has taken most
organisations by surprise. In many ‘digital’ has been, until recently, an relatively
minor offshoot of the marketing department. Suddenly it is a C-Suite priority. Gartner
recently reported that over half of the firms in their CEO survey have some sort of
digital protocol and invention. Many others reported that they were working on one or
knew they needed one, so digital protocol and invention is clearly important for a
wide range of organisations.
3. In the short space of a current college student's lifetime, the internet has gone from a
specialized, futuristic system to the network that most significantly structures how we
engage daily with the world at large. It is now obvious to anyone who uses a
computer that intellectual exercises as basic as reading the newspaper or doing
research have become fundamentally different activities largely because of the
 internet. So too have our views of communication in general; the very notion of
globalization, so consuming in today's world, is predicated on the possibilities
engendered by a technology barely twenty years old. Such is the nature of "new
media." Computers, and the digital systems and products for which they are currently
a shorthand, are what most of us think of when we hear the words new media. And
why not? The world of computer hardware, software, email, and e-business is for
most of us the latest communication and information frontier. Part of our experience
of digital media is the experience of their novelty. Yet if we were asked to think of
other "new media," we might have a harder time coming up with obvious examples.
We would have no problem citing instances of "old media": typewriters, vinyl record
albums, eight-track magnetic tapes, and the like. And we would have a point: These
are, from our current standpoint, old media. But they were not always old, and
studying them in terms that allow us to understand what it meant for them to be new
is a timely and culturally important task, an exercise that in this volume we hope
profitably to apply to media much older than we are. As our title suggests, this
collection of essays challenges the notion that to study "new media" is to study today's
new media. All media were once "new media; and our purpose in these essays is to
consider such emergent media within their historical contexts, to seek out the past on
its own passed terms. We do so, in part, to counter the narrow devotion to the present
that is often evident today in "new media" studies, a growing field whose conceptual
frameworks and methods of inquiry are heavily influenced by experiences of digital
networks and the professional protocols of the social science of communications. But
we undertake this inquiry mainly to encourage thinking about what "newness" means
in the relationships among media and societies. There is a moment, before the
material means and the conceptual modes of new media have become fixed, when
such media are not yet accepted as natural, when their own meanings are in flux. At
such a moment, we might say that new media briefly acknowledge and question the
mythic character and the ritualized conventions of existing media, while they are
themselves defined within a perceptual and semiotic economy that they then help to
transform. This collection of essays explores such moments in order to enrich our
contemporary perspective on what media are, and on when and how they are
meaningfully "new." (http://web.mit.edu/transition/subs/newmediaintro.html)

Activity 10

1. Five ways to train, encourage and support staff in the application of digital solutions:
a. Recognize When to Train
b. Begin With Team Leaders
c. Train Online
d. Choose Hands-On Instructional Methods
e. Experiment With New Tools and Software
2. In forward-thinking organisations coaching is embedded into the culture and
leadership style and forms part of the norm for daily conversations and
communication. People just simply coach others as part of their day-to-day
 discussions. A great way to get this model evolving is to spread the organisation with
coaching role models – usually by rolling out an initial training program on coaching
benefits and methods. The key is to create a pool of leaders who can be role models,
supporters and sustainers of a coaching mindset, which will then cascade and filter
through the rest of the organisation. To ensure successful coaching it is useful to
always link the purpose and results of coaching back to the business needs. Leaders
have to know the business case for coaching and developing others if they are to value
it and use it effectively. Finally, give it time to become embedded within the company
and to see results. Time is tight for everyone and some people will naturally resist.
3. To determine specific coaching needs managers could:
a. Observe work performance. Observation will enable them to see, first-hand how
employee performance, meets expectations.
b. Test / assess employee skills, knowledge and attitudes. Employees can be tested
using short answer test, demonstration of performance, role-plays, simulations etc.
to determine both their skill and knowledge levels. Role-plays and theoretical
questions can also help in assessing employee attitude.
c. Analyze customer feedback and complains which will provide valuable insight
into the ways in which clients/customers perceive the organisation’s products and
the accompanying service.
d. Map demonstrated employee skills against their job specifications and the KPIs
applicable to their roles.
e. Analyze employee satisfaction levels and refer to organizational records relating
to accidents, incidents, attrition, and absenteeism.
f. Conduct regular performance evaluations.
g. Assess employee performance against expected work standards.

Activity 11

1. A workplace policy could include guidelines relating to:

a. Using and sharing password
b. Installing software
c. Software licenses
d. Antivirus precautions
e. Copyright law
f. Downloading or sharing offensive or illegal data
g. Monitoring your computer use
h. Downloading, eg size of files, type of files
i. Sharing data with other people
j. Privacy and unauthorized interception, reading, or copying private electronic data.
2. Intellectual property (IP) is intangible property that is the result of human intelligence
and creation. It includes inventions, copyright, trademarks and brands, designs and the
application of an idea. To protect your idea under IP laws, it must be something new
or original. Until recently, IP was a specialized field that only applied to inventors,
and corporate research and development managers.
 3. Whole websites are not protected by copyright. However, component parts of a
website, such as text, artworks, logos and the underlying source code and files, may
be protected. Copyright was initially relevant primarily to published and sold works.
The Internet has changed the way in which people seek and publish information,
making it important to understand the ways in which copyright laws affect Internet
use. Internet-based businesses and businesses that use the Internet for promotion and
publication of information should be aware not only of how to avoid copyright
infringement, but also of the protections copyright laws afford to website operators.
Copyright protection is automatic for any creative work that is created after 1978 and
fixed in some tangible form. You don't have to display a copyright symbol or register
rights to your item for it to receive copyright protection. For this reason, you should
assume all content on the Web is copyrighted unless it explicitly states otherwise.
Copyright laws are federal laws, which mean you generally have to sue in federal
court if someone violates your copyrights. If someone from another country steals
your items, an increasingly common phenomenon given the worldwide reach of the
Internet, it can be extremely difficult to enforce your copyright protection. The "Fair
Use Doctrine" provides an exception to copyright laws for scholarly and educational
purposes. Fair use permits people to take limited excerpts of works for articles,
critiques and other public services. Parodies of copyrighted works are also generally
protected. There is no standard excerpt that is permissible under law, and guidelines
about fair use are relatively unspecific.The simplest way to avoid infringing on
another person or business' copyrights is to seek permission to use anything that is not
yours. Even using a photographer's photo on a personal blog could constitute
copyright infringement. If you are concerned about your copyrights being infringed
upon, insert watermarks and upload material in formats that are difficult to copyright,
PDF files. There is no guaranteed method for preventing infringement, but registering
your copyrights and prominently displaying a copyright symbol can deter would-be
thieves.

Activity 12

1. Outdated policies can leave your organization at risk. Old policies may fail to comply
with new laws and regulations. They may not address new systems or technology,
which can result in inconsistent practices. Regularly reviewing policies and
procedures keeps your organization up to date with regulations, technology, and
industry best practices. Policy review ensures that your policies are consistent and
effective. Reviewing policies and procedures is especially important for high-risk or
highly regulated industries such as healthcare, public safety, banking, and more. But
organizations in every industry should regularly review and revise their company
policies. With all the pressing daily tasks in the workplace, it’s easy for policy review
to fall through the cracks. Administrators may know that it’s important to review
policies and procedures, but other tasks take precedence. However, policy review is
best when it’s done regularly and proactively. Company leaders shouldn’t wait for an
 incident to occur before they review and update company policies. The best way to
proactively tackle policy and procedure review is just to build it into the corporate
calendar. As a general rule, every policy should be reviewed every one to three years.
But most experts recommend reviewing policies annually. Policy review doesn’t have
to be as daunting a task as it sounds. Good policy management software will let you
set up workflows to collaborate with your policy review committee, gather feedback,
and track approvals.
2. a. Patents: A patent is a form of intellectual property that gives its owner the legal
right to exclude others from making, using, selling, and importing an invention for a
limited period of years, in exchange for publishing an enabling public disclosure of
the invention. In most countries patent rights fall under civil law and the patent holder
needs to sue someone infringing the patent in order to enforce his or her rights. In
some industries patents are an essential form of competitive advantage; in others they
are irrelevant. The procedure for granting patents, requirements placed on the
patentee, and the extent of the exclusive rights vary widely between countries
according to national laws and international agreements. Typically, however, a patent
application must include one or more claims that define the invention. A patent may
include many claims, each of which defines a specific property right. These claims
must meet relevant patentability requirements, such as novelty, usefulness, and non-
obviousness.
b. Trademarks: A trademark is a unique symbol or word(s) used to represent a
business or its products. Once registered, that same symbol or series of words cannot
be used by any other organization, forever, as long as it remains in use and proper
paperwork and fees are paid. Once a trademark has been granted, the owner receives
three key benefits A notice of claim to any other businesses thinking of using the
same symbol or word as its trademark, A legal presumption of ownership, which can
help fend off would-be users, and The exclusive right to use the claimed trademark.
c. Circuit layouts are the layout designs or plans (topographies) of integrated circuits
used in computer-generated equipment, also referred to as computer chip or semi-
conductor chip designs. These rights are handled by the Australian Government
Department of Communications and the Arts.

Activity 13

1. The intent of these procedures is to:

a) provide a systematic process for the reporting and investigation of compliance
breaches or potential breaches so they can be appropriately addressed.
b) reinforce the importance of compliance, so that all staff members are encouraged
to proactively raise compliance issues as soon as possible and address any
weaknesses in the control environment.
c) enable the gathering of information to facilitate monitoring and reporting of
compliance performance within the University; and
 d) ensure that no staff member is penalized or disadvantaged as a result of reporting
a compliance breach and that repercussions of breaches themselves are determined
on a case-by-case basis.
2. Five steps can help to assist in the review process of documenting, registering and
reporting matters related to intellectual property:
a. Identify and prioritize confidential information
b. Study current information flows and perform risk assessment
c. Determine appropriate access, usage and information-distribution policies
d. Determine appropriate access, usage and information-distribution policies
e. Review progress periodically
3. Five questions which might be considered when preparing to document and report
identified breaches in compliance requirements:
a. Which participants touch these information assets?
b. How are these assets created, modified, processed or distributed by these
participants?
c. What is the chain of events?
d. Is there a gap between stated policies/procedures and actual behavior?
e. What is the strength and weakness?
4. Summary:
 A digital workplace is important because it lowers the dependence on a physical
work location and allows flexibility in the way people work, how teams are
formed and how peers come together to share ideas and solve workplace
problems.
 Providing employees with seamless access to digital workplace applications,
regardless of time and location, increases productivity and supports collaboration
with colleagues, partners and customers.
 Digital services deliver digital content across multiple platforms and devices, such
as mobile and internet. Information is presented in a way that is easy to use and
understand.
 Digital workplace information should be structured in a way that helps people to
do their jobs and to coordinate work processes, practices and projects in ways that
deliver meaningful outcomes.
 Organisations should ensure that any policies and procedures introduced are
necessary and relevant, and that managers have the capacity and capability to
work within the policy framework.
 Every piece of content you create should be carefully designed to achieve your
goals, such as driving customers to your business or improving employee job
satisfaction. Information management requires an integrated approach to locating,
capturing, evaluating, retrieving and sharing an organisation’s information assets.
 IT data and systems are at risk of hacking, malware, viruses, spam and online
scams that may corrupt your hardware or allow criminals to steal private data.
Proper data and online security can protect your organisation from internal and
external threats.
  Whenever you locate and use digital information to support workplace operations,
you must evaluate information sources for reliability, accuracy and
appropriateness.
 Keeping up with digital trends and technologies, and incorporating them into
your daily business operations is essential if you want to remain competitive in the
digital marketplace.

Question 1

 Policies and procedures can fulfill employers' obligations and responsibilities under
certain legislation such as work health and safety and discrimination legislation.
Policies and procedures provide employees with a clear understanding of what is
expected of them. All organisations who employ staff should have well documented
policies and procedures, at the very least, for the following reasons:
- Policies and procedures can fulfill employers’ obligations and responsibilities
under certain legislation such as work health and safety and discrimination
legislation.
- Policies and procedures provide employees with a clear understanding of what is
expected of them.
- Policies and procedures provide a fair, predictable and consistent approach to
managing the workplace and workplace issues. Avoiding the need make it up as
you go which in almost all cases will result in a problem.
- Being able to refer to a set of policies and procedures can save time when
inducting new employees and for training purposes.
- Policies and procedures and a written employment agreement are valuable
reference tools in managing workplace issues arising from employee misconduct
or inappropriate behavior.

The general protections provisions in the Fair Work Act 2009 (Cth) (“the Act”)
provide broad protections to employees and others in relation to adverse action taken
by employers if that action is taken for a prohibited reason. Adverse action broadly
includes doing, threatening or organizing any of the following:

a. An employer against an employee, dismissing them, injuring them in their

employment, altering their position to their prejudice or discriminating between
them and other employees.
b. Adverse action may also be taken outside the employment relationship by
prospective employers against prospective employees, principals against
independent contractors and industrial associations against others.
c. Taking adverse action is not, on its own unlawful, however, it is unlawful to take
adverse action because of a prescribed reason, such discrimination, industrial
activities or asserting a workplace right.
d. Once an employee has established they have suffered adverse action and have
alleged the action is within the scope of a prescribed ground, it is presumed that
 the employer’s action was taken for that reason unless the employer proves
otherwise.

Question 2

 Digital tools have the potential to revolutionize the operation of any organization,
while at the same time befuddling even the most tech-savvy people. While each
nonprofit has its own unique needs and challenges; my method of evaluation was
similar for each. I encourage all organizations to consider using this approach to
improve their use of digital technologies. My approach involves the following 6 steps:
1) Learn about the organization and the staff
2) Assess and build digital literacy
3) Review the organization’s current use of digital tools
4) Identify tools that can make an organization more efficient, saving time and
money
5) Identify tools that can increase the effectiveness of the organization
6) Evaluate available resources and find opportunities to leverage new resources

Question 3

 The issue of managing your intellectual property (IP) is becoming an increasingly

important topic. The reason is that the world is placing an increasingly greater value
on ideas. As the world becomes smaller and more integrated, entrepreneurs and
companies are no longer able to isolate themselves and operate “under the radar”.
Products and services are now sourced globally and so your unique product, design,
features, etc. are now in the global spotlight. This also means that if someone else has
put a patent on it, it will be discovered in time. For technology companies in
particular, the world is moving at an unbelievable pace. The reality is that everyone
has an IP risk to their business. If you make, use, sell, offer for sale, distribute, supply
or import a product or service that has features that give you a competitive edge, you
have a potential IP exposure.

Project 1

1. Digital applications are a strategic part of modernizing and digitalizing your business
processes. They are online services and applications, which combine data,
functionality and modern user interface to serve your customers – in any time and
place they desire. Digital applications can complement your current services, or they
can be your main channel to do business. The benefits of well designed and
implemented digital applications are improved end-user satisfaction and reduced cost
of customer service. We apply design thinking methodologies to understand how the
applications should be built to bring maximum value to the end-users and thus to your
business, too. A digital workplace is important because it lowers the dependence on a
physical work location and allows flexibility in the way people work, how teams are
formed, and how peers come together to share ideas and solve workplace problems.
Providing employees with seamless access to digital workplace applications,
regardless of time and location, increases productivity and supports collaboration with
colleagues, partners and customers. Digital services deliver digital content across
multiple platforms and devices, such as mobile and internet. Information is presented
in a way that is easy to use and understand. Digital workplace information should be
structured in a way that helps people to do their jobs and to coordinate work
processes, practices and projects in ways that deliver meaningful outcomes.
Organisations should ensure that any policies and procedures introduced are necessary
and relevant, and that managers have the capacity and capability to work within the
policy framework. Every piece of content you create should be carefully designed to
achieve your goals such as driving customers to your business or improving employee
job satisfaction. Information management requires an integrated approach to locating,
capturing, evaluating, retrieving and sharing an organisation’s information assets. IT
data and systems are at risk of hacking, malware, viruses, spam and online scams that
may corrupt your hardware or allow criminals to steal private data. Proper data and
online security can protect your organisation from internal and external threats.
Whenever you locate and use digital information to support workplace operations,
you must evaluate information sources for reliability, accuracy and appropriateness.
Keeping up with digital trends and technologies, and incorporating them into your
daily business operations is essential if you want to remain competitive in the digital
marketplace. Through prototyping and minimum viable products methodology, we
deliver digital applications in incremental fashion, adding customer value in each
phase. The applications do not exist in a vacuum, but they need to be connected into
your back-office platforms, such as ERP and CRM systems. Our deep knowledge
with architectures, system performance, integrations to other business systems, and
data migrations allow us to implement connected applications with ease. To speed up
development, we have selected open technology application platforms as a base of our
work. The final choice of technology depends on the nature of the project, and the
decision is based on the requirements of your business and your end-user needs.
Intellectual property (IP) is intangible property that is the result of human intelligence
and creation. It includes inventions, copyright, trademarks and brands, designs and the
application of an idea. To protect your idea under IP laws, it must be something new
or original. Until recently, IP was a specialized field that only applied to inventors,
and corporate research and development managers. But in today’s digital economy,
where ideas and innovation drive economic growth and business success, IP has
moved to the forefront as a key success factor in a wide range of professions and
industries. When applying digital solutions to work processes, you must identify your
IP obligations, review your digital processes for compliance, and document and report
IP issues as they arise. The unauthorized distribution of digital information and
materials among employees could create a potential liability and place your business
at legal, financial and reputational risk-trade secret (or confidential information) refers
to knowledge of an idea or process that is known only to people inside an
organisation. It is up to the organisation to protect that knowledge, such as by
 ensuring employees or distributors sign confidentiality agreements. Other types of IP
include circuit layouts and plant breeder’s rights. Circuit layouts are the layout
designs or plans (topographies) of integrated circuits used in computer-generated
equipment, also referred to as computer chip or semi-conductor chip designs. These
rights are handled by the Australian Government Department of Communications and
the Arts. Plant breeder’s rights are exclusive commercial rights for a registered variety
of plant. These rights protect plant breeders and give them a commercial monopoly
for 20–25 years. This encourages innovation, and means that new plant varieties are
freely available to anybody when the protection period lapses.The legal basis for plant
breeder’s rights in Australia can be found in: Plant Breeder’s Rights Act 1994 (Cth),
and Plant Breeder’s Rights Regulations 1994 (Cth). Examples include cotton plant
with insect resistance, grapevines and the pink iceberg rose. Copyright protection is
provided under the Copyright Act 1968 (Cth) and gives copyright owners exclusive
rights to copy the work, perform it in public, broadcast, publish or make an adaptation
of it. Each country has its own copyright laws. In Australia, copyright laws became
the responsibility of the Australian Government Department of Communications and
the Arts in 2015. While there is no such thing as international copyright, there are
international treaties that govern it. The oldest and most important of these is the
Berne Convention, which was first signed in 1886 in Berne, Switzerland. The Berne
Convention sets minimum standards for copyrighted works. Digital innovations be
integrated into workplace operations While the workplace began transforming as far
back at the agricultural and industrial revolutions, the widespread proliferation of
information technology forever changed the ways in which employees connect,
collaborate and communicate. As workplace demographics continue to shift,
employers struggle to meet the varying needs of a multi-generational workforce. As
the use of the Internet and mobile devices grows, the pace of change continues to
accelerate. These changes are further exacerbated by ongoing demands to increase
productivity and cut costs, making it harder for employees to meet market
expectations. Together, these trends are reshaping the work environment.

2. The network infrastructure is subject to myriad internal and external attacks through
services, protocols, and open ports. It is imperative that you understand how to
properly implement services and protocols, especially if the network has been in
existence for some period of time and some services are no longer needed or have
been forgotten. To stop many would-be attackers, you must understand how protocols
are used on the network, what common ports are used by network protocols, and how
to securely implement a wireless network. This chapter discusses these concepts to
help you understand how to use the proper network implementation of protocols and
services as a tool to protect and mitigate threats against network infrastructure based
on organizational needs. It also has a section specifically dedicated to wireless
security implementation based on organization requirements. The Internet Protocol
Security (IPsec) authentication and encapsulation standard is widely used to establish
secure VPN communications. The use of IPsec can secure transmissions between
critical servers and clients. This helps prevent attacks from taking place. Unlike most
security systems that function within the application layer of the Open Systems
Interconnection (OSI) model, IPsec functions within the network layer. Internet
Control Message Protocol (ICMP) is a protocol meant to be used as an aid for other
protocols and system administrators to test for connectivity and search for
configuration errors in a network. Ping uses the ICMP echo function and is the
lowest-level test of whether a remote host is alive. A small packet containing an
ICMP echo message is sent through the network to a particular IP address. The
computer that sent the packet then waits for a return packet. If the connections are
good and the target computer is up, the echo message return packet will be received.
The differences between IPv4 and IPv6 are in five major areas: addressing and
routing, security, network address translation, administrative workload, and support
for mobile devices. These are NetBIOS ports that are required for certain Windows
network functions such as file sharing. But these ports also provide information about
your computer that can be exploited by attackers. They also contain vulnerabilities
that are widely used to break into systems and exploit them in various ways. Secure
Shell (SSH), Secure File Transfer Protocol (SFTP), and Secure Copy Protocol (SCP)
are all protocols that operate on port 22. SSH is used to securely access a remote
computer. SFTP is used for FTP access and encrypts both commands and data. SCP is
used to securely transfer files to a remote host. The Internet Protocol Security (IPsec)
authentication and encapsulation standard is widely used to establish secure VPN
communications. The use of IPsec can secure transmissions between critical servers
and clients. This helps prevent network-based attacks from taking place. Unlike most
security systems that function within the application layer of the OSI model, IPsec
functions within the network layer. IPsec provides authentication services and
encapsulation of data through support of the Internet Key Exchange (IKE) protocol.
The asymmetric key standard defining IPsec provides two primary security services:
a. Authentication Header (AH): This provides authentication of the data’s sender,
along with integrity and nonrepudiation. RFC 2402 states that AH provides
authentication for as much of the IP header as possible, as well as for upper-level
protocol data. However, some IP header fields might change in transit, and when
the packet arrives at the receiver, the value of these fields might not be predictable
by the sender. The values of such fields cannot be protected by AH. So, the
protection provided to the IP header by AH is somewhat piecemeal.
b. Encapsulating Security Payload (ESP): This supports authentication of the data’s
sender and encryption of the data being transferred along with confidentiality and
integrity protection. ESP is used to provide confidentiality, data origin
authentication, connectionless integrity, an antireplay service (a form of partial
sequence integrity), and limited traffic-flow confidentiality. The set of services
provided depends on options selected at the time of security association
establishment and on the placement of the implementation. Confidentiality may be
selected independently of all other services. However, the use of confidentiality
without integrity/authentication (either in ESP or separately in AH) might subject
traffic to certain forms of active attacks that could undermine the confidentiality
service.
Protocols 51 and 50 are the AH and ESP components of the IPsec protocol. IPsec
inserts ESP or AH (or both) as protocol headers into an IP datagram that immediately
follows an IP header. The protocol field of the IP header will be 50 for ESP or 51 for
AH. If IPsec is configured to do authentication rather than encryption, you must
configure an IP filter to let protocol 51 traffic pass. If IPsec uses nested AH and ESP,
you can configure an IP filter to let only protocol 51 (AH) traffic pass. IPsec supports
the IKE protocol, which is a key management standard used to allow specification of
separate key protocols to be used during data encryption. IKE functions within the
Internet Security Association and Key Management Protocol (ISAKMP), which
defines the payloads used to exchange key and authentication data appended to each
packet. The common key exchange protocols and standard encryption algorithms,
including asymmetric key solutions such as the Diffie-Hellman Key Agreement and
Rivest-Shamir-Adleman (RSA) standards; symmetric key solutions such as the
International Data Encryption Algorithm (IDEA) and Digital Encryption Standard
(DES); Triple DES (3DES) and hashing algorithms, such as the message digest 5
(MD5) and Secure Hash Algorithm (SHA), are covered in detail in Chapter 12,
“Cryptography Tools and Techniques.” Although IPsec by itself does not control
access to the wireless local-area network (WAN), it can be used in conjunction with
802.1X to provide security for data being sent to client computers that are roaming
between access points (AP) on the same network. For better security, segment the
wireless network by placing a firewall between the WLAN and the remainder of the
network. Because IPsec is a solution to securely authenticate and encrypt network IP
packets, you can use IPsec to provide strong security between a Remote
Authentication Dial-In User Service (RADIUS) server and a domain controller, or to
secure traffic to a partner organization’s RADIUS servers. RADIUS provides
authentication and access control within an enterprise network and is explained in
greater detail in Chapter 10, “Authentication, Authorization, and Access Control.”
Many of the VPN solutions use IPsec, and, like a virtual private network (VPN),
IPsec is an excellent solution in many circumstances. However, it should not be a
direct alternative for WLAN protection implemented at the network hardware layer.