MS-54[Management Information Systems ].pdf

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For more solved assignments go to www.myignou.in

MS-54 SOLVED ASSIGNMENT 2015PROVIDED BY WWW.MYIGNOU.IN

Course Code : MS-54

Course Title : Management Information Systems

Assignment Code : MS-54/TMA/SEM-I/2015

Coverage : All Blocks

Note: Attempt all the questions and submit this assignment on or before 30th April, 2015 to the

coordinator of your study center.

Q1. What is the role played by business information in anorganization? Define Management Information System and discuss

various characteristics expected of a good MIS.

Ans:

Role played by business information in an organization

Communication

For many companies, email is the principal means of communication betweenemployees, suppliers and customers. Email was one of the early drivers of the

Internet, providing a simple and inexpensive means to communicate. Over the years,

a number of other communications tools have also evolved, allowing staff to

communicate using live chat systems, online meeting tools and video-conferencing

systems. Voice over internet protocol (VOIP) telephones and smart-phones offer

even more high-tech ways for employees to communicate.

Inventory Management

When it comes to managing inventory, organizations need to maintain enough stock

to meet demand without investing in more than they require. Inventory

management systems track the quantity of each item a company maintains,

triggering an order of additional stock when the quantities fall below a pre-

determined amount. These systems are best used when the inventory management

system is connected to the point-of-sale (POS) system. The POS system ensures that

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each time an item is sold, one of that item is removed from the inventory count,

creating a closed information loop between all departments.

Data Management

The days of large file rooms, rows of filing cabinets and the mailing of documents is

fading fast. Today, most companies store digital versions of documents on servers

and storage devices. These documents become instantly available to everyone in the

company, regardless of their geographical location. Companies are able to store and

maintain a tremendous amount of historical data economically, and employees

benefit from immediate access to the documents they need.

Management Information Systems

Storing data is only a benefit if that data can be used effectively. Progressive

companies use that data as part of their strategic planning process as well as thetactical execution of that strategy. Management Information Systems (MIS) enable

companies to track sales data, expenses and productivity levels. The information can

be used to track profitability over time, maximize return on investment and identify

areas of improvement. Managers can track sales on a daily basis, allowing them to

immediately react to lower-than-expected numbers by boosting employee

productivity or reducing the cost of an item.

Customer Relationship Management

Companies are using IT to improve the way they design and manage customer

relationships. Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems capture every

interaction a company has with a customer, so that a more enriching experience is

possible. If a customer calls a call center with an issue, the customer support

representative will be able to see what the customer has purchased, view shipping

information, call up the training manual for that item and effectively respond to the

issue. The entire interaction is stored in the CRM system, ready to be recalled if the

customer calls again. The customer has a better, more focused experience and the

company benefits from improved productivity.

Management Information System

Management information systems (MIS) is the study of people, technology, organizations, and the

relationships among them. MIS professionals help firms realize maximum benefit from investment

in personnel, equipment, and business processes. MIS is a people-oriented field with an emphasis

on service through technology. Management information systems are typically computer systems

used for data managing to make searching, analyzing data, and spring information easier.

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Management information systems are distinct from other information systems in that they are used

to analyze and facilitate strategic and operational activities.

Management information system, or MIS, broadly refers to a computer-based system that provides

managers with the tools to organize, evaluate and efficiently manage departments within an

organization. In order to provide past, present and prediction information, a management

information system can include software that helps in decision making, data resources such asdatabases, the hardware resources of a system, decision support systems, people management and

project management applications, and any computerized processes that enable the department to

run efficiently.

Management Information System Managers

The role of the management information system (MIS) manager is to focus on the organization's

information and technology systems. The MIS manager typically analyzes business problems and

then designs and maintains computer applications to solve the organization's problems.

Various characteristics expected of a good MIS.

Relevance

Information should be relevant to the strategic decision that company management is

currently reviewing. Because companies may review several business opportunities at one

time, avoiding information not relating to the decision is essential.

Accurate

MIS information should be accurate and avoid any inclusions of estimates or probable

costs. Making decisions based on estimates can lead to cost overruns or lower profits from

future operations.

Timely

Many management decisions are based on information from a certain time period, such as

quarterly or annual periods. Information outside of the requested time frame may skew

information and lead to an improperly informed decision.

Exhaustive

MIS information gathering should resemble an upside-down triangle. The early stages of

information gathering should be exhaustive, including all types of company information. As

management narrows its decision-making process, the information is refined to include

only the most relevant pieces.

Cost-Effective



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The MIS needs to be a cost-effective and efficient system for gathering information. Most of

these systems are developed internally, creating costs that cannot be passed to clients.

Q2. Explain and distinguish the following concepts with reference to

their use in real-time systems:

i) Multiprocessing

ii) Time sharing

Ans:

Multiprocessing

Multiprocessing is the use of two or more central processing units (CPUs) within a singlecomputer system. The term also refers to the ability of a system to support more than one

processor and/or the ability to allocate tasks between them. There are many variations on

this basic theme, and the definition of multiprocessing can vary with context, mostly as a

function of how CPUs are defined (multiple cores on one die, multiple dies in one package,

multiple packages in one system unit, etc.).

Time Sharing

In computing, time-sharing is the sharing of a computing resource among many users by

means of multiprogramming and multi-tasking. Its introduction in the 1960s, and

emergence as the prominent model of computing in the 1970s, represented a major

technological shift in the history of computing.

By allowing a large number of users to interact concurrently with a single computer, time-

sharing dramatically lowered the cost of providing computing capability, made it possible

for individuals and organizations to use a computer without owning one, and promoted the

interactive use of computers and the development of new interactive applications.

Difference between the Multiprocessing and Time Sharing

Multiprocessing

The earliest computers were extremely expensive devices, and very slow in comparison to

recent models. Machines were typically dedicated to a particular set of tasks and operated

by control panels, the operator manually entering small programs via switches in order to

load and run a series of programs. These programs might take hours, or even weeks, to run.

As computers grew in speed, run times dropped, and soon the time taken to start up the

next program became a concern. Batch processing methodologies evolved to decrease



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these "dead periods" by queuing up programs so that as soon as one program completed,

the next would start.

To support a batch processing operation, a number of comparatively inexpensive card

punch or paper tape writers were used by programmers to write their programs "offline".When typing (or punching) was complete, the programs were submitted to the operations

team, which scheduled them to be run. Important programs were started quickly; how long

before less important programs were started was unpredictable. When the program run

was finally completed, the output (generally printed) was returned to the programmer. The

complete process might take days, during which time the programmer might never see the

computer.

The alternative of allowing the user to operate the computer directly was generally far too

expensive to consider. This was because users might have long periods of entering code

while the computer remained idle. This situation limited interactive development to those

organizations that could afford to waste computing cycles: large universities for the most

part. Programmers at the universities decried the behaviors that batch processing imposed,

to the point that Stanford students made a short film humorously critiquing it.They

experimented with new ways to interact directly with the computer, a field today known as

human–computer interaction.

Time Sharing

Time-sharing was developed out of the realization that while any single user would make

inefficient use of a computer, a large group of users together would not. This was due to thepattern of interaction: Typically an individual user entered bursts of information followed

by long pauses but a group of users working at the same time would mean that the pauses

of one user would be filled by the activity of the others. Given an optimal group size, the

overall process could be very efficient. Similarly, small slices of time spent waiting for disk,

tape, or network input could be granted to other users.

Implementing a system able to take advantage of this would be difficult. Batch processing

was really a methodological development on top of the earliest systems; computers still ran

single programs for single users at any time, all that batch processing changed was the time

delay between one program and the next. Developing a system that supported multiple

users at the same time was a completely different concept; the "state" of each user and

their programs would have to be kept in the machine, and then switched between quickly.

This would take up computer cycles, and on the slow machines of the era this was a

concern. However, as computers rapidly improved in speed, and especially in size of core

memory in which users' states were retained, the overhead of time-sharing continually

decreased, relatively.



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The concept was first described publicly in early 1957 by Bob Bemer as part of an article in

Automatic Control Magazine. The first project to implement a time-sharing system was

initiated by John McCarthy in late 1957, on a modified IBM 704, and later on an additionally

modified IBM 7090 computer. Although he left to work on Project MAC and other projects,

one of the results of the project, known as the Compatible Time-Sharing System or CTSS,

was demonstrated in November 1961. CTSS has a good claim to be the first time-sharing

system and remained in use until 1973. Another contender for the first demonstrated time-

sharing system was PLATO II, created by Donald Bitzer at a public demonstration at Robert

Allerton Park near the University of Illinois in early 1961. Bitzer has long said that the

PLATO project would have gotten the patent on time-sharing if only the University of

Illinois had known how to process patent applications faster, but at the time university

patents were so few and far between, they took a long time to be submitted. The first

commercially successful time-sharing system was the Dartmouth Time Sharing System.

A familiar example of time-sharing is provided by flight-reservation systems for air travel.

A system may have thousands of terminals in offices of airlines and travel agents across the

country. These terminals are tied to a central computer facility through an extensive set of

communication links. A request from a travel agent for space on a certain flight is input

directly to the central computer, where data on all flights are stored in a large hard-disk

memory bank. After the request has been keyed in, the CPU of the computer system

processes the request using the flight information stored on the disk. The output, such as a

flight confirmation, is then transmitted back to the agent. If the agent’s client buys a ticket,

the ticketing information is transmitted to the computer, which stores it for future use and

subtracts one seat from the space available.

Just as time-sharing systems let one computer work nearly simultaneously at many jobs,

multiprocessing systems have two or more CPUs assigned to a single function.

Multiprocessing systems are used for applications where the breakdown of a single main

computer cannot be tolerated, including flight-reservation systems and the strategic

defense systems used by the military. Often time-sharing and multiprocessing are

combined in the same system, as in the case of flight-reservation systems.

Q3. What are expert systems and how do they help in decision-making?

Can you give examples to illustrate the same? What kinds of decisions

can be appropriately programmed on expert systems? Give examples.

Ans:

In artificial intelligence, an expert system is a computer system that emulates

the decision-making ability of a human expert.Expert systems are designed to



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solve complex problems by reasoning about knowledge, represented

primarily as if –then rules rather than through conventional procedural

code.The first expert systems were created in the 1970s and then proliferated

in the 1980s.Expert systems were among the first truly successful forms of AI

software.

An expert system is divided into two sub-systems: the inference engine and

the knowledge base. The knowledge base represents facts and rules. The

inference engine applies the rules to the known facts to deduce new facts.

Inference engines can also include explanation and debugging capabilities.

An expert system is an example of a knowledge-based system. Expert

systems were the first commercial systems to use a knowledge-based

architecture. A knowledge-based system is essentially composed of two sub-systems: the knowledge base and the inference engine.

Expert system Decision to be madeExpert system: Personality profiler.

HR (Human Resources) want to assign

only one of a large group of people to a

new role. Each person answers a number

of psychological questions that the

expert system presents them with.

HR interrogates the expert system. It

provides a set of personality profiles

based on each persons' response. HR

make a short list of which people are

likely to be good at the job. HR interview

those people for a final decision. The

expert system is assisting them incutting down the work load but does not

make the ultimate decision.

Expert system: Sales mix modeler

A car company has a large number of

options on a new model they are

about launch. The car has a dozen

paint colour options, three engine

sizes, 24 optional accessories. The

expert system has a complete record

of what sold well in the past with

previous models and some trends for

the future.

The sales planner has the task of

picking three car combinations out of

the thousands of possible

configurations to make stock cars

ready for sale. These are the three

cars that will be pre-built in their

thousands by the factory, so he better

get it right. He uses the sales mix

expert system to put together a

number of scenarios. Each scenario is

then discussed with senior

management to make a final decision.

Expert system: Medical diagnostics

This contains a body of knowledge

The doctor meets a patient in the

clinic who has an unusual set of



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about thousands of diseases. It is used

by the doctors at a hypothetical clinic

to help diagnose patient illnesses

based on their symptoms.

symptoms. He loads those symptoms

into the expert system. It returns a

number of possible illnesses. The

doctor then phones a specialist

consultant to also ask their opinion

before making a decision. The expertsystem is assisting but not providing

the final answer.

Expert system: A loan approval

system

The expert system has a body of

knowledge about the results of past

loans made by the credit company. It

has knowledge about all the factors

that point to a low risk or high riskloan

The credit approval manager meets

the client and poses a number of

questions about their financial status

along with a history of their past

loans. This information is loaded into

the expert system. The system comes

back with a risk factor for the loan.The manager will use this as part of

his decision to approve the loan (or

not)

Kinds of decisions can be appropriately programmed on expert systems

In general, there are five types of expert system tools.

Inductive tools Simple rule based tools

Structured rule based tools

Hybrid tools

Domain specific tools

Inductive tools: Inductive tools generate rules from examples. Here a

developer feeds in a large number of examples from the machine’s

information base. The tools use an algorithm to convert the examples into

rules and determine the order the system will follow when questioning the

user.

Simple rule based tools: They use IF-THEN rules to represent knowledge.

They are useful for developing expert systems containing fewer than 500



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rules. The only problem with these tools is that they lack high end editing

facility for design of tools.

Structured rule based tools: They offer context trees, multiple instantiation,

confidence factors, and more powerful editors compared to simple rule based

tools. Here IF-THEN rules are arranged into sets. These rule sets act as

separate knowledge bases. One set of rules can inherit the information

acquired when other rule sets are examined. These tools are more useful

when we need to process large number of rules and rules can be sub divided

into sets.

Hybrid tools: Hybrid tools enable complex expert system development.

These tools use object oriented programming techniques to represent

elements of every problem as objects. Here graphical user interface can also

be provided to users.

Domain specific tools: They are specially designed to be used only to develop

expert systems for a particular domain. It provides special development and

user interface that make it possible to develop an expert system faster. They

are also referred as narrow tools.

Selection criteria for expert system tool:

The following criteria will help us to select the right kind of tool for design and

development of expert system.

Type of knowledge representation

Inference and control

Developer interface

User interface

System interface

Training and support

Example

The following are the examples of expert system shells.

Ex -sys



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Knowledge Pro

K-Vision

Age

Emycin

KAS

Leonardo Xi Plus

Savoir

Xpert Rule

Q4. Identify the most important factors inhibiting an organization’s

move towards a DBMS. Why should an organization be careful

about placing over reliance on “benchmark” tests in selecting a

DBMS?

Ans:

Important factors inhibiting an organization’s move towards a

DBMS.

Models

Probably the most fundamental choice to make in the DBMS hierarchy is the model

used to store, manage, and query databases. Besides affecting what software you

need to acquire, this affects the very way you will think about the data, and can be a

surprisingly hard choice to undo later on. Note that as I keep the discussion to

database models that are in significant current use; this is not meant to be a

comprehensive survey of DBMS methodologies through history since some

significant models, such as network databases, have been omitted because of a lack

of modern tools and practice.

Ad-hoc databases

The earliest databases were merely ordered aggregations of raw data, which onecould call an ad-hoc database. They are not stored so as to optimize storage or

queries (a query is a request for database records that conform to a given pattern),

but are usually designed to be read in as a whole by the application (although there

have been "random access" ad hoc database systems). Ad hoc databases are still

used quite often. From address books that are merely sequences of the address

information in files, to the bulk e-mail lists most notoriously used by spammers,



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these are most useful when you have fully anticipated the use of the represented

data and you are certain that more efficient or query-friendly formats won't ever be

necessary. In this case, you needn't read much further. Your DBMS is encoded in the

standard library of your favorite language: fwrite for C users, BufferedFileStream for

Java users, etc. Ad-hoc databases are very efficient and convenient if all the data is of

low volume, is typically accessed together by an application, and a single application

at that (that is, there is not much current or future need for sharing the data

between applications). However, they become very unwieldy, inefficient and

unmanageable once they grow beyond the size of available memory, as access

patterns change, and if they need to be shared between applications.

Hash-based databases

Early algorithm specialists were quick to attack the problem of inefficient queries by

coming up with systems for creating hashes of data records, which are compact keys

that uniquely identify the record. Hashes are easy to manage and with a key, one can

rapidly retrieve the entire record. Hash-based DBMSes, which use these techniques,

are quite popular because of their simplicity and the fact that they come for free

with most UNIX systems. They are very fast, and almost every programming

language provides APIs for their access, but they tend to be quite bare on features.

They are very well-suited to situations where an application wants to pluck records

one at a time from the database, using a well-defined key. An example is for userprofiles and authentication; where the application looks up a record by user ID, does

its thing with the data, and moves on. They are less well suited to situations where

records need to be cross-referenced, or the information in the records needs to be

sliced and diced in some clever way.

Hierarchical databases

An early development in DBMS was to organize information into regular records

containing other regular records in a more structured way. These are known as

hierarchical databases and have enjoyed a bit of a revival with XML's popularity,because XML has a general hierarchical structure. Hierarchical databases can be

quite suitable for data such as purchase histories that consist of tightly coupled

records of information, for example, customer information to purchases made to

support calls placed. The problem with hierarchical databases is that they have a

way of accumulating redundant data (which was one of the main claims of relational

databases in their battle to wrest dominance from hierarchical databases in the



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'70s). Another problem is that they can be hard to query flexibly in ways that go

against the tight coupling of the data hierarchies.

Relational databases

Relational databases are, of course, the current king of the hill in database

technologies. This doesn't mean that more data is kept in relational databases than

any other model, but rather that when one goes about asking about what the "real"

database model of choice is, he or she is most likely to be told to get relational

religion. There is some good reason for this. Relational databases are wonderful for

discouraging redundant data and for the speed of complex queries; they also have a

huge number of tools and APIs to support them. They are best used in situations

where a lot of records are being combined and cross-referenced to synthesize

results. An example might be the production data of a manufacturing firm, where

information about inventory, part specifications, personnel availability, costs, salesand supplies need to be thoroughly analyzed in order to make production decisions.

However, like any power tool, they can be quite dangerous. Relational DBMSes

(RDBMS) are designed to model very highly structured data which has been

modeled with mathematical precision. If one's database design is not up to snuff, not

only might the advantages of the relational model be lost, but the result can actually

be worse for maintainability than with less stringent models. If you do opt for

relational databases, be sure you understand concepts such as normalization and

referential integrity. These days, almost every RDBMS uses the Structured Query

Language (SQL) for description and querying of the records.

Object databases

Object databases emerged as a way to translate the techniques of object-oriented

programming to data storage models. The data are organized as distinct objects,

each of which belongs to a class, which might use inheritance to acquire aspects of

other classes. Each object can have a set of attributes of simple types such as integer

and string, and relationships to other objects. As you can imagine, they provide a

very natural API for access using object-oriented languages such as C++, Java and

Python. Object databases can be a great choice for this reason, but it can also seduce

programmers into poor data design: techniques that make sense when the data lives

in memory can be very slow and resource-intensive when the data is stored on disk.

Semi-structured databases



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The emergence of XML has enlivened another corner of database modeling: semi-

structured databases. As RDBMS took over the universe, many developers lamented

that their rigorousness made them unsuitable for modeling data designed directly

for human consumption, that is, more loosely organized records including

structured documents and systems that made it easy to make changes in the model.

Efforts to provide DBMSes that accommodated such "semi-structured" data thrived

in academia until XML took them to the mainstream. Most XML formats define semi-

structured data, and so XML -- whether directly stored in files or in an XML

repository -- provide a great deal of flexibility, especially in web-based systems

where the documents are as important as the structured records. The main

drawback is lack of efficiency. The data typically take up much more of the available

resources than with other database models, and queries can be slow and

cumbersome to set up. Semi-structured databases are very strong where documents

and more structured data coexist, such as Intranets and web-based applications.

Languages

Since most databases a vital organ for a complete application, the interface between

the database and the application development language is quite important. The

DBMS of choice should have a natural and efficient API in your programming

language of choice, and preferably more than one, since competition improves

quality across the board. Because developer effort is usually more expensive thanrun-time resources, it is probably most important that you choose a DBMS that

supports the APIs and languages with which you are comfortable. It's often worth

even going to a database model that is less suitable to the data in question if it is

more suitable to the skills of the available developers.

Devices

Of course the DBMS of choice must work on the platform used by the rest of the

application (or must at least be accessible from this platform), but there might be

other platform needs as well. Be sure to consider who might end up using yoursystem, and choose a DBMS that would run on other important platforms in future.

This is not always directly obvious; for instance, do you think your database might

grow until it is too much for your current hardware to handle? If so, does your

DBMS run on platforms that support clustering? Does it have special features to take

advantage of clustering?



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Features

Probably the most important general features to consider in your DBMS hunt are

security-related. Consider how thoroughly the DBMS requires authentication from

users and keeps an audit trail of the accesses. But security goes beyond keeping out

malicious users. Be sure your backup supports backup and restore, not just byarchiving your raw database files, but also the ability to integrate into incremental

backup regimens. It might be enough to have options to dump to or restore from

structured text (which can be incrementally backed up using tools such as diff), and

of course direct integration into the backup software for the system as a whole is

even better. Structured text dump and restore are also a boon for interchange with

other systems. Examples include comma-delimited formats and dumped sequences

of SQL commands.

“Benchmark” tests in selecting a DBMS

Benchmarking is a process of comparing an organization's or company's

performance to that of other organizations or companies using objective and

subjective criteria. The process compares programs and strategic positions of

competitors or exemplary organizations to those in the company reviewing its

status for use as reference points in the formation of organization decisions and

objectives. Comparing how an organization or company performs a specific activity

with the methods of a competitor or some other organization doing the same thing

is a way to identify the best practice and to learn how to lower costs, reduce defects,

increase quality, or improve outcomes linked to organization or company

excellence.

Organizations and companies use benchmarking to determine where inputs,

processes, outputs, systems, and functions are significantly different from those of

competitors or others. The common question is, What is the best practice for a

particular activity or process? Data obtained are then used by the organization or

company to introduce change into its activities in an attempt to achieve the best

practice standard if theirs is not best. Comparison with competitors and exemplary

organizations is helpful in determining whether the organization's or company's

capabilities or processes are strengths or weaknesses. Significant favorable input,

process, and output benchmark variances become the basis for strategies,

objectives, and goals. Often, a general idea that improvement is possible is the

reason for undertaking benchmarking. Benchmarking, then, means looking for and



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finding organizations or companies that are doing something in the best possible

way and learning how they do it in order to emulate them. Organizations or

companies often attempt to benchmark against the best in the world rather than the

best in their particular industry.

OVERRELIANCE COULD LEAD TO

- it may restrict the focus to what is already being done.

-By emulating current exemplary processes, benchmarking is a catch-up

MANAGERIAL tool or technique rather than a way for the organization or company

to gain managerial dominance or marketing share.

-can kill creativity.

-may not generate new ideas.

-may not be a competitive analysis.

-What is best for someone else may not suit you

-Poorly defined benchmarks may lead to wasted effort and meaningless results.

-Incorrect comparisons

-Reluctance to share information

Q5) Differentiate among Trojans, Worms and Viruses. Give one example

for each.“Computer virus is a major threat to computer security.” Justify

the statement.

Ans:

Trojan: Trojans are malicious programs that perform actions that have not

been authorized by the user. These actions can include:

Deleting data Blocking data

Modifying data

Copying data

Disrupting the performance of computers or computer networks

Examples:



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In order for a Trojan horse to spread, you must, in effect, invite these

programs onto your computers--for example, by opening an email attachment.

The PWSteal. Trojan is a Trojan .Govware Trojans, Trojan Horse

Trojan viruses are most likely to gain entry into a computer by way of an

email attachment. When a user opens an attachment it executes the code,

allowing it to install. Another way is through various messengers that

create connections between computers.

When the code is executed the virus goes to work infecting file after file.

The virus designer will ultimately gain control over the computer and

will be able to access all available files. An infected computer will begin

to operate slowly and will exhibit pop-ups from time to time. Eventually

the computer will cease to operate, or crash.

Antivirus software is a good way to protect your computer from Trojan

horse and other types of viruses. Regular updates to this software are the

key to preventing viruses. It is also good practice to delete emails from

unknown sources without opening them.

Once a computer is infected, the virus is extremely difficult to eradicate.

The best protection is prevention.

I Love You Virus

One well-known Trojan virus was the "I Love You" virus that infected

millions of computers worldwide. The virus exploited users through a

Visual Basic script that was attached to an email. This virus infected

computers in the United States, Asia and Europe forcing businesses to

completely shut down email servers.

Worms

Computer worms are similar to viruses in that they replicate functional

copies of themselves and can cause the same type of damage. In contrast

to viruses, which require the spreading of an infected host file, worms

are standalone software and do not require a host program or human



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help to propagate. To spread, worms either exploit a vulnerability on the

target system or use some kind of social engineering to trick users into

executing them. A worm enters a computer through a vulnerability in the

system and takes advantage of file-transport or information-transport

features on the system, allowing it to travel unaided.

Examples:

The entire document will travel from computer to computer, so the

entire document should be considered the worm. PrettyPark.Worm is a

particularly prevalent example.

Viruses

A computer virus is a type of malware that propagates by inserting a

copy of itself into and becoming part of another program. It spreads from

one computer to another, leaving infections as it travels. Viruses can

range in severity from causing mildly annoying effects to damaging data

or software and causing denial-of-service (DoS) conditions. Almost all

viruses are attached to an executable file, which means the virus may

exist on a system but will not be active or able to spread until a user runs

or opens the malicious host file or program. When the host code isexecuted, the viral code is executed as well. Normally, the host program

keeps functioning after it is infected by the virus. However, some viruses

overwrite other programs with copies of themselves, which destroys the

host program altogether.

Viruses spread when the software or document they are attached to is

transferred from one computer to another using the network, a disk, file

sharing, or infected e-mail attachments.

Examples:

Examples of macro viruses include W97M.Melissa, WM.NiceDay, and

W97M.Groov.

Computer virus is a major threat to computer security



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Computer security threats are relentlessly inventive. Masters of disguise and

manipulation, these threats constantly evolve to find new ways to annoy, steal and

harm. Arm yourself with information and resources to safeguard against complex

and growing computer security threats and stay safe online.

Computer Virus Threats

Perhaps the most well-known computer security threat, a computer virus is a

program written to alter the way a computer operates, without the permission or

knowledge of the user. A virus replicates and executes itself, usually doing damage

to your computer in the process. Learn how to combat computer virus threats and

stay safe online.

Spyware Threats

A serious computer security threat, spyware is any program that monitors youronline activities or installs programs without your consent for profit or to capture

personal information. We’ve amassed a wealth of knowledge that will help you

combat spyware threats and stay safe online.

Hackers & Predators

People, not computers, create computer security threats and malware. Hackers and

predators are programmers who victimize others for their own gain by breaking

into computer systems to steal, change or destroy information as a form of cyber-

terrorism. What scams are they using lately? Learn how to combat dangerous

malware and stay safe online.

Phishing Threats

Masquerading as a trustworthy person or business, phishers attempt to steal

sensitive financial or personal information through fraudulent email or instant

messages. How can you tell the difference between a legitimate message and a

phishing scam? Educate yourself on the latest tricks and scams.

Documents

MS-54[Management Information Systems ].pdf