WEEK 12-13 SESSION: PRESENTATION & EXAM

These 2 weeks consisted only of the presentation, each student had to go up in front of the class and give a presentation on what kind of Network Configuration they designed for the company Acme PLC and they had to calculate how much each piece of hardware will cost. There was no right or wrong answer only different methods.

Below contain’s each slide from my presentation:

*insert witty remark here*

We have an upcoming exam on the 22nd June which will cover infosec and various other things we covered in the week. we went through potential questions that could come up in the exam:

Question 1

You visited the Infosec Expo and attended a specialist seminar on behalf of  LSBU a university in a major city. The institute requested you write a report on your visit there. Summarise your main findings with special regard to these issues:

• BYOD, BYOX or COPE which of these was trending the most at the event?
• Enterprise apps – what are the major threats
• The Internet of things – should the institute be worried?

    You should reference any seminars you attended or literature you acquired.

Question 2

The use of videoconferencing is a major trend in business communications. This question focuses on the value it adds to enterprise operations.

Question 3

Communicating data from a transmitter to a receiver is one of the major challenges of enterprise network management.

Question 4

Data transmission in network communications occurs at the physical layer through the use of electromagnetic waves.

Question 5

This question is concerned with data link control and multiplexing

Question 6

This question focuses on the operation of the Internet, the network that hosts the e-commerce and m-commerce of the enterprise.

probably not going to be a next time………..

WEEK 11 SESSION: INFOSECURITY EUROPE VISIT

There was no Lecture or Tutorial session this week so instead, we were instructed by Paul and Patrice to attend an special Security Exhibition which is held once a year called Infosecurity Europe (infosec for short). The main aim of sending us there was to gather information for an exam question related to the exhibition itself and the secondary aim for me personally was to research on potential employers to work with when i graduate from university.

Whilst i was at Infosec, myself accompanied by a small group of classmates (Valdo Carvalho, Abdual Hassan & Yordan) conducted informal interviews with the aim of finding potential answers to the exam questions set to us.

This was the exam question set to us (see below):

Exam Question 1 – what you must consider after the event

You visited the Infosec Expo and attended a specialist seminar on behalf of El SBU a university in a major city. The institute requested you write a report on your visit there. Summarise your main findings with special regard to these issues:

• BYOD, BYOX or COPE which of these was trending the most at the event?
• Enterprise apps – what are the major threats
• The Internet of things – should the institute be worried?

 

Myself and my group spoke to 12 different companies making references to the exam question and they each gave there own unique interpretive answer. (Below are the names of the 12 companies that were interviewed and the recordings).

 

Absolute Computrace

Absolute Computrace allows organizations to persistently track and secure all of their endpoints within a single cloud-based console. Computers and ultra-portable devices such as netbooks, tablets, and smart phones can be remotely managed and secured to ensure—and most importantly prove—that endpoint IT compliance processes are properly implemented and enforced.

 

Cisco Security

 

Communication Security

 

iBoss Network Security

iboss Web security solutions deliver comprehensive protection 
across HTTP and SSL traffic and applications, securing all devices, including mobile, whether on- or off-network

 

Juniper Networks

Juniper Networks, Inc. is an American manufacturer of networking equipment founded in 1996 by Pradeep Sindhu. It is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California, USA. The company designs and sells high-performance Internet Protocolnetwork products and services. Juniper’s main products include T-series, M-series, E-series, MX-series, and J-seriesfamilies of routers, EX-series Ethernet switches and SRX-series security products. Junos, Juniper’s own network operating system, runs on most Juniper products.

 

Network Behavior

 

Professional Security System

 

Protect what matters

 

Serverchoice

In a world where the internet, mobile and the cloud have become central to everything we do, the importance of IT security has become paramount. The need for a company to protect itself against the various cyber threats, both established and emerging, has never been greater.

ServerChoice have invested heavily in our security measures. This naturally includes our world-class infrastructure, but also extends to our staff. We have created a ‘Security First’ company culture that underpins everything we do. ServerChoice are ISO 27001 accredited and we were one of the first companies in the UK to achieve PCI DSS v3.0 Level 1 Service Provider status, meaning our data centres and cloud platforms are compliant to the highest level achievable.

 

Vasko

 

Vormetric

Vormetric addresses industry compliance mandates and government regulations globally by securing data in physical, virtual and cloud infrastructures, through: Data Encryption, Key Management, Access Policies, Privileged User Control, and Security Intelligence.

 

Websense

Websense, Inc. is a global leader in protecting organizations from the latest cyberattacks and data theft. Websense® TRITON® comprehensive security solutions unify web security, email security, mobile security and data loss prevention (DLP) at the lowest total cost of ownership. Tens of thousands of enterprises rely on Websense TRITON security intelligence to stop advanced persistent threats, targeted attacks and evolving malware. Websense prevents data breaches, intellectual property theft and enforces security compliance and best practices. A global network of channel partners distributes scalable, unified appliance- and cloud-based Websense TRITON solutions.

 

on an informal note, here’s a few pictures and videos taken around infosec:

 

 

Till next time……….

 

 

 

 

 

WEEK 10 SESSION: CISCO PACKET TRACER COURSEWORK/PRESENTATION

In this session, my primary objective was to work on the coursework using Cisco Packet Tracer.

Coursework Spec:

ITIM Weeks 9-13 tutorial instructions

This task is going to take up the rest of your tutorial time, Weeks 9, 10 and 12. InfoSec is week 11 (no tutorial) and Week 13 is presentation time. This work will feed into your presentation.

Your task is to design a new network for Acme PLC. They are starting with a three floor building, furniture, electricity and no IT infrastructure at all.

They are looking to you to come up with a solution :- Internet, wi-fi, printing, applications, network equipment, VOIP, cloud, etc. (use your imagination).

Ground floor

• Reception area with receptionist.
• CEO’s office, Chief accountant’s office, CIO’s office, Head of HR’s office, network equipment room.

First floor

• Three offices with 6 desks in each.

Second floor

• One office with 6 desks and one meeting/conference room where meetings and presentations take place.

You should keep a detailed budget as you work toward your draft network design. There is no ideal answer to this problem. Each student will have a different answer.

 

In my version which i will make into a presentation, I have created a Ground Floor, First Floor, Second Floor:

 

GROUND FLOOR

 

The Ground Floor contains 5 PC’s belonging to the Receptionist, CEO, Head of Human Resources, CIO, and the Chief Accountant. They are all connected to the Ground Floor Switch which is also connected to the Printer. The Ground Floor also contains an Land-line phone and a WI-FI receiver which is also connected to the switch. The WI-FI receiver is installed on every floor so that external devices can connect to it (e.g. Tablet and PDA shown in the diagram). The switch is also linked to the router which is linked to the main ACME PLC server which also implements the intranet.

 

FIRST FLOOR

The First Floor contains 3 office with 6 desks in each so I created another switch and added 2 Printers instead of one due to the amount of PC’s and to slice the network traffic in half. i also too the liberty of adding a DCHP server so it can assign IP Address’s to any device connecting to the network. Also i added a WI-FI receiver on the floor so that external devices can connect to the network.

 

SECOND FLOOR

 

The second floor has it’s own switch which is connecting 6 PC’s. This floor will contain an office with up to 6 PC’s and a separate office only for conference meetings. I added a printer to this floor as well and well as another additional WI-FI receiver. I decided to Install a home VoIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol). The advantage to VoIP phone calls is that unlike regular long-distance calls, calls made through a VoIP phone service are free – there are no fees beyond the cost of your Internet access. To complement this i also added another IP Phone to act as a “Conference Phone” which can also be used.

I took the liberty of installing a Proxy Server. It is a server that sits between a client application, such as a Web browser, and a real server. It intercepts all requests to the real server to see if it can fulfill the requests itself. If not, it forwards the request to the real server. I decided to use this because since this a organisation, they are going to want to see what goes in and out of  there intranet, plus the organisation might want to prevent there employees from accessing specific websites.

 

I personally think it’s not bad for a first try, i tried to base my idea on an image of a topology I found on Google:

 

But the only thing I couldn’t really find was the firewall (you can imagine i wasn’t very happy with that). I will incorporate this into my Presentation when i present this to Paul in week 13. I actually enjoyed making this topology once i got the hang of it and I hope to use this in the future.

 

 

Till Next Time……………

WEEK 7 SESSION: CO-OP AND BASIC NETWORKING CONCEPTS

The Cooperative Group

Excerpt from IT Infrastructure and Management lecturer on Tuesday:

Dear Mr Sutherland,

We appreciate your concerns about your ability to govern the Co-op group. We believe there are possible uses of technology to add value to your organisation’s future operations, in order to turn things around:

Dawn of a new Era

• Personal video conferencing = more meetings, greater productivity and better results across the organisation.
• Large scale physical rooms replaced by smaller virtual footprint
• Face to face video conferencing more transparent
• Social interaction is taken away with video conferencing?

The rise of Video conferencing innovation will power corporate growth

• Video conferencing saves money on travel, time costs
• Natural-disaster-proof and health-epidemic-proof communications
• Business transactions can be supplemented by video

VC goes viral

• Human resource management can be complemented
• Mobile meetings ad-hoc and post-hoc
• If you are quick to adopt you can be 2-5 years ahead of competition (ref)
• VC is as destructive as a phone call but more productive

The new rules for VCA

• New etiquette and protocols, e.g. turn taking machine, dress code
• Back light
• Eye contact
• Special case job interview

Genius of collaboration

• The best minds have used the technology
• Telepresence for core business of banking
• BYOX, cross platform video, etc.

Truly Unified

• Share rich media and facilitate ENG (Electronic News Gathering)
• Browser/mobile app as a client for the server technology – therefore inclusive to everyone
• Connection performance is important
• Need to balance cost of system versus savings in utilisation

Tuesday’s lecture with Paul was about The Cooperative Bank. we talked about how Euan Sutherland the Chief Executive of the Co-op Group resigned from his post on Tuesday 11th March 2014 because he deemed the company “Ungovernable”. Our task was to come up with new business ideas that could benefit the Co-op Group to become a stronger company. To do this we used various case studies that will come up in the exam and they are all listed above.

BBC NEWS REPORT (11/3/14): http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-26525590

 

Basic Networking Concepts

In the tutorial, we were discussing (in lengthy detail) about Networking, we talked about Networking Fundamentals, Major types of networks, Networking media, Types of servers, Topologies and Planning in network design.

**I tried to upload the slides, but i couldn’t so I uploaded the images instead**

Here’s a few diagrams that cover these things:

Till next time…………….

Week 3 Session: Blogging & Video Conferencing

BLOGGING

 

In the lecture i had on Tuesday, the things we covered was Blogging and Video Conferencing. What i’m going to talk about first is Blogging. Our lecturer Paul Carden talked the type of things that are usually considered actual “Blogging” and also described them as “Blogging Levels” from Level 1-8 with 1 being the lowest and 8 being the highest:

Paul mentioned that just posting assignments on your blog site is not considered “blogging”, posting assignments is just like posting something on a noticeboard showing information not pure understanding. “Journaling” is not blogging just documenting your Life Story in short, simple updates. Posting links to websites is not called blogging it’s called “Laziness”. A typical blog is reflecting writing that articulates a deep understanding of something that caters for the audience and over a long period of time it builds on older posts, links and commenting that my curious reader, is TRUE blogging.

Here is an example of a “far from perfect so-called blog”: NOT BLOGGING .

** This is a little off topic but i personally found this funny and good advice of how NOT to treat your BLOG .**

*** Another side note, i don’t want to get sued for using links so i’m just going to shout out to all the owners of the sites i pasted if they happen upon this post (which i doubt but still i’m just covering my ass). ***

And here is a much better example of a well structured blog: REAL BLOGGING .

 

 

 

VIDEO CONFERENCING

 

Another thing that dear Paul discussed was Video Conferencing, this mainly involves using a Webcam that was used during the MSN days LOL:

(Source: http://www.supertintin.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/webcam_logitech_quickcam_messenger_oem.jpg )

Nowadays having sessions can be done using a mobile device:

(Source: http://cdn1.mos.techradar.futurecdn.net//art/mobile_phones/iPhone/iPhone%205S/Press/5S%20fancy%20colors-380-80.jpg  )

Not only can Video Conferencing be done on a one-to-one basis, it can also be done on a wider scale like for presentations, group projects, international business meetings or just to chat to a friend. Below, i’m including a few extracts from the lecture that was discussed:

EXTRACT FROM LECTURE

Aim

Reproduce real world event – A video conference

Business Case

To develop administrative and technical skills for unified communications (video conferencing)

Schedule

1. What’s a good project? Kevin Grant
2. Plenary or Panel
3. Audience response feedback

Plan

1. Project Team – Clear roles (Prince 2)

Roles – Project manager, presenters, technical support [technical manager, testers {Internet public, internet LSBU, wi-fi lsbu, desktop lsbu, mobile}, webcam support, sound engineer, mobile/txt support]

Issues (Organisation, contributions, skills management, delivery)

1. Research and lessons learned 1
2. Budget
3. Deadlines and dates
4. Prepare presentations (3 slides max) and design audience response (AR) questions
5. Book AR units/mics
6. Audit/check VC roles on Adobe Connect, especially presenters
7. Test or dry run and re-assess risks/lessons learned 2 – Presentations/audience response/plenary/clients/recording/outside speakers/screen share/browser
8. Get slides from presenters
9. Upload slides 45 minutes before event
10. Start meeting 30 minutes before and set up welcome screen
11. Start recording
12. The EVENT

Also we discussed the risks that come with Video Conferencing and how to manage them:

Risk Management

Risk                                                                Mitigation

Speakers not available                                   Have a substitute speaker or two

A/V PC stack upgrades                                  System restore/Email external

infrastructure partners about the event.

A/V PC stack failure                                       Configure laptop with webcam and mic

Internal Network failure                                  Organised network support

Client Quality of service/Experience              VC Chat/Mobile number

(End of Extract)

————————————————————————————————————————-

Another thing we did was use Adobe Connect. Adobe Connect is a web conferencing platform for web meetings, e Learning, and webinars. It powers mission critical web conferencing solutions end-to-end, on virtually any device, and enables organizations from leading corporations to the U.S. Department of Defense to fundamentally improve productivity. How the process works is the session has Hosts & Presenters who are responsible for organizing and maintain the session and then there’s the Participants who’s soul purpose is simply get involved in the session and contribute in any way they can.

(Source: http://media.dexigner.com/article/22594/Adobe_Connect_9_Webinars.jpg )

What’s good about this application is that you can also use your mobile device to connect to the conference by using the camera on their phone. Another addition is that you can use Social Media to get involved as well (Twitter, Facebook etc.).

 

**** One more side note i like to add that i am enjoying my lessons very much and i’m enjoying using WordPress to blog about it as well. I have this feeling that i am going to burst into tears when it comes to the actual coursework so i am just bracing myself for that day. ****

 

 

 

Till next time………….

 

Week 2 Session: Networking Fundamentals

In my Week 2 session, i was asked to look at the sorts of information that businesses store, manage and transport across the network – audio, image, video and data.

First off i was required to do a Speed test (see below):

• Ping = 22ms
• Download Speed = 96.39mbps
• Upload Speed = 22.97mbps

Then we downloaded a “Large Image” from Google and we monitored the time it took for each image to download:

(source: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cc/ESC_large_ISS022_ISS022-E-11387-edit_01.JPG)

• jpg format download time = 1.7 seconds (file size = 1.02MB)
• bmp format download time = 1.4 seconds (file size = 34.8MB)
• gif  format download time = 1.5 seconds (file size = 6.38MB)
• png format download time = 1.8 seconds (file size = 11.8MB)

We also used another piece of software called  Irfanview to save the image into different formats (jpg, bmp, gif, png) and they came up with each various file size shown above.

After a small lecture, we had the opportunity to re-create a typical network in a chosen computer lab using Microsoft Visio 2010 (see below):

As this is my first attempt, obviously it’s not going to be the best looking one but i’m able to break it down easily. i tried to keep to the floor plan as best i could so on the left there is 3 rows of 6 PC’s and on the right there is 4 rows of 3 PC’s linked up via Ethernet cables and they are all linked to a network switch which is then linked to the router which is linked to the server which is linked to the cloud (strategic guess).

And that is what i’ve covered and gained from this lesson today.

till next time………..