IT management has given me greater awareness of what it takes to keep a company working efficiently and safely. The biggest take away for my career would be practicing better safeguard of company data and the added knowledge of SAP.

The threats to cyber-security are ever present and always evolving, and not usually susptected. In my line of business, maintaining a tight hold of personal and company data is vitally important and if compromised, could cost millions of dollars. In 2011, a company encrypted server was hacked into and the result was that several plants on the east coast shutdown. After the investigation was complete, they found that someone didn’t properly log out of their intranet account, leaving their information vulnerable. Soon, someone else was able to bypass the encryption and use this employee’s information to create havoc and disrupt company operations. the result of this heinous crime costed the company several hundred million dollars, all because an employee forgot to log out when he left for home that day. All of this may have been prevented if the employee had properly logged out of his account before going home for the day.

In the SAP section, I gained greater familiarity with the software and learned some sweet shortcuts to navigating this complex system. In my line of work, SAP is a necessity and many positions require knowledge of it. In the assignment, I was able to locate purchase orders and other valuable information. I will be using this new helpful knowledge and will give me an edge in climbing my career pursuits.

By Ian Chapler 2/20/20

My time in this class has been nothing short of a great experience. I’ve gained valuable tools and insights for important IT matters like Tableau, SQL, and creating databases. I’ve built on my work experience with SAP and learned just how powerful this enterprise resource planning (ERP) software is for a company. Lastly, I’ve discovered the utmost importance of having a strong cyber-security software and practices in place to prevent stealing of information.

In the coffee chain assignment, I discovered how useful Tableau can be for someone wanting to look at several data sets and analyze them into usable information. Tableau takes many different data sets and compiles them into one software package that streamlines the process of having to look several data sets and making sense of them.

In the SAP assignment I was able to locate a purchase order and retrieve pertinent data such as the unit price, how much was paid, the location of the sale, and other useful data. This is a very powerful tool, especially for larger companies, where a sales manager and procurement specialist can look up important information in real time as the sale happens, making the supply chain run smoothly and more efficient than the old way of having separate servers and paper trails. This tool takes down the silos and builds bridges for everyone to gain from.

In the cybersecurity lecture, what intrigued me the most was when professor Thomas asked for a show of hands of who knew that their personal data was stolen in the equifax breach of 2017. I kept my hand down because I wasn’t aware if my data was stolen or not. After checking in Lifelock.com, I became aware that my personal data was actually compromised. I never thought that something like this would happen to me. So now I pay much closer attention to who I give my personal data too.

• 

My IT business experience.

January 25, 2020

I’ve come to learn that IT is one of the most important departments in the company.  IT employees are essentially on the front lines of the field interacting with employees to keep all the vital online programs functioning. 

Like I mentioned in class, my experience with IT has been as a user.  I use the programs to do my job.  These programs are essential for the company to stay profitable and competitive.  Without the help of our IT department employees, things would go from bad to worse in a very short amount of time. 

One example of this was from when I worked in the LA area, for a large industrial gasses company.  Our local plant had just lost intranet communications with our remote operating center in New Jersey and I was the first to respond.  When I arrived on scene, I took manual control of the plant, which wasn’t my normal responsibility nor had I any training to do.  Since I was the only one there, I then found myself on the phone with two different people.  The remote operator in New Jersey was telling me what to do as I fed him information from my control screen, and the IT engineer was helping me troubleshoot the network communications issue.  The IT engineer and I soon discovered that the plant router had been unplugged probably by the janitor who had just been in the control room area cleaning.  I simply plugged the router back in and within a few minutes, had restored communications with the remote operator.  I could then finally relax and take a break.  If it hadn’t been for the quick troubleshooting instinct of the IT engineer, we would have likely had to shut down the plant and would lose several hundred thousand dollars in production. 

This is an example post, originally published as part of Blogging University. Enroll in one of our ten programs, and start your blog right.

You’re going to publish a post today. Don’t worry about how your blog looks. Don’t worry if you haven’t given it a name yet, or you’re feeling overwhelmed. Just click the “New Post” button, and tell us why you’re here.

Why do this?

• Because it gives new readers context. What are you about? Why should they read your blog?
• Because it will help you focus you own ideas about your blog and what you’d like to do with it.

The post can be short or long, a personal intro to your life or a bloggy mission statement, a manifesto for the future or a simple outline of your the types of things you hope to publish.

To help you get started, here are a few questions:

• Why are you blogging publicly, rather than keeping a personal journal?
• What topics do you think you’ll write about?
• Who would you love to connect with via your blog?
• If you blog successfully throughout the next year, what would you hope to have accomplished?

You’re not locked into any of this; one of the wonderful things about blogs is how they constantly evolve as we learn, grow, and interact with one another — but it’s good to know where and why you started, and articulating your goals may just give you a few other post ideas.

Can’t think how to get started? Just write the first thing that pops into your head. Anne Lamott, author of a book on writing we love, says that you need to give yourself permission to write a “crappy first draft”. Anne makes a great point — just start writing, and worry about editing it later.

When you’re ready to publish, give your post three to five tags that describe your blog’s focus — writing, photography, fiction, parenting, food, cars, movies, sports, whatever. These tags will help others who care about your topics find you in the Reader. Make sure one of the tags is “zerotohero,” so other new bloggers can find you, too.