Online Degrees in Cyber-Security: A Deterrent to Cyber Criminals
Thanks to the internet, the world has become more interconnected than ever before. The internet has become an intricate element of our modern lifestyles, to the extent that it is almost unimaginable to picture a world without it. Additionally, critical national infrastructure relies heavily on the internet; from tax collection systems, student loan application systems, coordination of traffic signals, to the national power grid.
Despite the numerous benefits the internet has facilitated, increased connectivity has resulted in a recent surge in internet fraud and crime. To capitalize on the availability of tons of personal data online, cybercriminals have become more adept at hacking websites and databases to mine this data. Identity theft, cyber terrorism, cyber espionage and cyber fraud are some of the emerging security threats. To counter these worrying trends, cyber security has become a vitally important aspect of the information technology world.
Cyber security entails adopting measures and practices to protect an organization’s data and information, both online and offline. These security measures are centered on computers and networks to prevent hackers and other unauthorized persons from accessing or manipulating information stored in databases or an organization’s website. Many higher education institutions have launched cyber security programs to address the need for cyber security professionals. The programs are either offered on-campus or online in order to offer flexibility to prospective students.
Some of the best online schools for degrees in cyber security include:
University of Phoenix: Offers a three years bachelor’s program in Informational Systems Security and a Bachelor’s in Organizational Security and Management.
Florida Tech University: Offers a graduate degree in Information Technology in Cyber Security.
Kaplan University: Offers a bachelor’s program in Information Security and Forensics.
American Intercontinental University: Offers a Bachelor of Science degree in Information Technology- Information Assurance and Security.
Bryant & Stratton College online: Has two degree programs in AAS Security Technology and AAS Networking Technology.
Capella University: Offers several degrees ranging from a B.Sc. in Information Assurance and Security, a B.Sc. in Network Technology, to a B.Sc. Network Security.
Colorado Technical University-Online: Offers a B.Sc. in Information Technology-Security and M.Sc. in Computer Science- Digital Systems Security.
Upon completion, graduates are able to take up technical and managerial positions that involve implementing various security measures such as securing servers, designing more secure networks, auditing organizations cyber security levels and proposing corrective measures, and offering solutions to emerging cyber security situations. Job titles for graduates range from network architect, network security specialist, project manager, network engineer to systems administrator. Furthermore, there are various avenues to advance the degree opening opportunities in consultancy and training. Typically, online cyber security degrees are available at the associate’s, bachelor’s, master’s and doctorial levels.
These degree programs equip the graduates with the necessary skills to counter cybercriminals and provide protective measures that will deter them from causing havoc. Nevertheless, there are calls from some quarters that cyber security programs should not be offered as an undergraduate program, but from the graduate level onwards. Those in favor of this school of thought base their argument on the idea that undergraduate program are supposed to be general, not trade courses. On the other hand, training cyber security professionals right from the undergraduate level molds specialists who are masters in their trade. All in all, obtaining a degree in cyber security is not only in line with national needs to counter cybercrimes, but an avenue full of opportunity to invent internet security products.
Author Bio: Dennis M. is a freelance writer and a technical writer with a specialty in Information Technology trends. In his free time, he writes for Degreejungle.com an online resource for aspiring college students.
Startups Can Learn Four Lessons From OUYA
Can you imagine raising a million dollars in just over 8 hours? That’s exactly what OUYA, an upcoming Android-based video game console, accomplished shortly after launching their project campaign on the crowd funding website Kickstarter last July of this year. That is well past their $950,000 initial funding goal and the numbers are still climbing.
Boxer8, the LA-based developers behind OUYA is pitching it as platform that is made by developers, for developers, with independent game makes in mind. The console will be running Android 4.1 with features like a Quad-Core processor, Tegra 3 chip, a GPU powered by Nvidia with HD graphics they claim can rival those on commercial gaming consoles, 8GB internal storage, and built-in Bluetooth and Wi-Fi, all for the very friendly price of $99. All of the games coming out for it will be either free-to-play or have free gameplay aspects as well.
It seems that people are liking the idea of OUYA very much. As of this writing, the yet-to-be released console has a total of 63,416 backers with a total of $8,596,474 in pledges and still counting. So what did OUYA do right? And how can you attract the same attention and funding for your startup company? Here are four lessons that you can take from OUYA’s book.
Have An Innovative Vision
From the get-go OUYA was clear with their vision: To provide a platform where everyone can enjoy games and be able to create and publish video games without the hefty price-tag. They believe that gaming should be an open ecosystem.
Have a clear vision on what your company and product or service is about. Know who you are. In today’s Social Media driven world, it will be easier to tell people your story, promote your vision, and attract the right kind of people to support you, if you are clear with about what your startup intends to accomplish.
Be Different (in A Good Way)
Android phones, sure. Android tablets, be my guest. But an Android gaming console? Clearly, Julie Uhrman (the creator of OUYA) and her team were thinking outside the box whent they conceptualized this project. Instead of focusing on fancier hardware specs, they thought about what would improve the gaming experience. Certainly, free-to-play games wouldn’t hurt, and although you can get many for your phone or tablet, it’s still quite a different experience to play games on your television.
Your startup need not re-invent the wheel, but you should understand your customers needs, even if those needs are not obvious or apparent. Nobody directly said that they wanted free yet quality video games on a cheap and open platform, until now.
Don’t Be Afraid to Take-On the Big Players
OUYA plans to give Nintendo, Microsoft, and Sony a run for their money. Remember, these guys have been around for decades and have spent billions in marketing to get where they are now. Only time will tell if OUYA can leave a mark in the gaming industry but the crucial lesson here is do not be afraid to challenge established industry players.
One big advantage that startups have is that their size allows them flexibility to quickly and efficiently adapt to meet the needs of their customers. Startups do not suffer from bureaucracy. Often, there are significant amounts of unsatisfied customers who are just looking for an alternative. With OUYA, they want to cater to gamers who are tired of paying so much for games and consoles. They also want to open opportunities for indie-game developers who, due to the prohibitive costs of developing for the big 3 (Wii, Xbox & PS3), would have been otherwise unable to deliver quality games to the market.
Keep Fans Excited and Encourage Inventiveness
One of the biggest selling point of OUYA is it’s controller. It is a beautifully crafted piece of hardware (with a built-in touchpad too). Along with the OUYA console itself, the hardware is something you wouldn’t mind having in your living room. Good design can get people pumped-up about your product.
OUYA is probably the only video game console that actually encourages users to hack their platform. They hope that by allowing unrestricted access to the software and hardware, the more inventive users can come up with even cooler and novel ways (and pheriperals) to improve the OUYA experience. Don’t be an Apple, allow people to discover creative uses for your product or services as well.
The developers also maintain a blog where fans and investors are kept in-the-loop with the latest exclusive titles coming out for the console, development news, and everything else to keep loyal fans happy until the console starts shipping by March 2013. A blog is a great way for startups to keep loyal users engaged with their product or service.
Jimmy Wentz is a freelance tech writer, gadget and gaming enthusiast, and social media junkie. He writes regularly about O2 and the latest news in the tech, gaming, and social media world.
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The Health Care Start-Up World: A Game of Thrones
Unless you’re living under a rock you will already know at least one of the three things I am about to share with you.
1. Our nation’s health care system is basically as organized as a contestant’s house on Hoarders.
2. Health Care Start Up companies, websites and mobile apps are going to make people Mark-Zuckerberg-rich in the next 5 years.
3. People are freaking crazy about Game of Thrones.
With these factoids in mind we’ve figured the best way to share our story as a true health start-up website would be by making some “Stark” comparisons to the HBO series many Americans can’t stop talking about. While the race for the crown in Game of Thrones is a bit more of a bloodbath than the world of health care start-ups, what with HBO’s writers killing off most characters right when they start to be endearing, there are certainly some similarities in the way we do battle. There are large and small houses companies competing for the throne, but what is important to note are the processes those companies go through and how they provide value.
We’ll parallel our start-up, Save On Medical, to the House of Stark. Similar to them, we have a large, noble idea of what we’d like to accomplish in our kingdom industry. Our goal is to change the way patient-consumers shop for healthcare, giving them the appropriate tools and transparency to make their own self-governed decisions. The Starks value the kingdom and are focused on preserving what is best, just as everything we do is to benefit our patients.
One of the most important steps in becoming a successful start-up is bootstrapping and fighting the small battles successfully, while building resources for success. We did this by leveraging what we had; knowledge of the radiology industry, access to a network of providers and an experienced team dedicated to showing that a transformative application like ours could benefit providers and patients alike.
In Game of Thrones, the House of Stark toiled in the North for King’s Landing because they knew that in order to protect the kingdom they had to be successful there first. The radiology industry is our King’s Landing. This is where we have perfected our application model and built a foundation for growth into new areas of health care. Start-ups have to have a niche, a place where they can show proof of concept and succeed before they try to tackle larger markets and take on stronger battles.
We don’t want to rule the world though, we’re not Lannisters. Big businesses, large carriers and payers and health care systems? Those are the Lannisters, wanting to control the “gold.” They keep themselves a class apart to maintain control. This is why the health-care-world-Lannisters have convinced the media and patient-consumers that transparency into health care is simply impossible, because they do not want to give it. Well we’re here to tell you that transparency is possible and it’s for the best of the kingdom, so we’re giving it to you.
No more crying that “winter is coming” because, newsflash, for our health care system, it’s already here. Think about it: 48.6 Million uninsured, Medicare and Medicaid turmoil, health care tax debates, not to mention the astronomical prices we are paying for health care services, procedures and coverage. Don’t even get us started on the challenges of understanding those prices. Ladies and Gents, we’re in the Darkness and we just don’t have the ups to get back from North of the wall without the help of transparency and better patient education.
This is how we provide value. When patients are as in need as they are with this economic climate, we’ve tried to become a savior of sorts. To be a valuable start-up you have to be saving the day in some way. You don’t have to revolutionize the wheel, just build a better bridge to drive over. That is how we’ve been able to set ourselves apart from other sites like ours.
Here’s what we’ve done that other royal houses big companies aren’t even trying to do:
Full price transparency.
How we do it: Show average pricing in the region, which has been collected from extensive market research and secret shopping. Providers then list their Save On Medical self-pay rate directly on the site. This eliminates the need to call around to a number of facilities being transferred to 75 separate people only to hang up with inaccurate pricing.
Quality physician grading.
How we do it: All of our providers have been evaluated based on over 50 assessment points. These grading metrics take into consideration an aggregate of components including convenience, technology, patient satisfaction, report turn-around time etc. The grade is out of 100 and allows for easy patient comparison.
Online payment for better collections.
How We Do It: This allows patients to lock in the discounted Save On Medical rate by paying online ahead of time with a credit card or PayPal account. It is a win-win because the provider is able to collect the payment upfront without having to worry about collecting payments down the line and patients have less stress the day of their procedure.
Referring physician portal. COMING SOON!
How we WILL do it: We’ve created a platform for referring physician users so that they can easily refer their self-pay patients to the best provider for them, bridging the gap between referrals and scheduling. We’re working out the kinks with some test markets, before we make it available to the masses. It’s always important as a start-up to have some guinea pigs to help you out.
It hasn’t been an easy road, getting from point A (the idea of a great start-up) to point B (a valuable application adopted by your market.) A lesson learned from Lean Startup has helped us along, though. Always remember to build, measure and learn, then start the cycle over again. This process has helped us to evaluate our assumptions in light of successes and failures, recognizing when it is time to pivot or adapt.
Sara McFarland
http://Myatlantichealthsolutions.com
Dublin Web Summit 2012 – The Diary Of Rolio, A First Time Summit Attendee
Some of the biggest names in technology descended upon Dublin recently for the Web Summit, joined by 250 startup exhibitors in an event that has well and truly marked itself on the annual tech calendar. The event was quite an adventure for us, team Rolio, as we were successfully accepted to exhibit in the Startup Village from over 600 applicants. In addition to this, Rolio was shortlisted as one of 100 finalists in Electric Ireland Spark of Genius startup competition. The competition had over 1000 applications from 36 countries, all vying for the €100,000 prize.
Having only launched in July 2012, this would be our first time representing Rolio at a conference. This is our story of the Web Summit 2012.
Preparations were intense; ranging from the Spark of Genius presentation, the creation of posters and bagging packs of Rolo chocolates to give away at our stand (Rolio – Rolo, see the link?). As the Web Summit approached our overriding emotion was a nervous excitement due to the uncertainty ahead of us. We arrived in Dublin the night before the Summit and were pleasantly surprised to see the helpful Web Summit team had a stand at the airport arrivals section to greet us.
The following morning we made our way to the Royal Dublin Society (RDS) and breezed through registration. Armed with our conference passes, drinks vouchers for the evening’s social events and a program schedule, we proceeded to our stand with a sense that it was all official now. The Startup Village consisted of two levels, the ground floor and the balcony; Rolio was positioned in the latter. We were a stone’s throw away from the refreshment point which served complimentary beverages, croissants, cakes and fruits. We setup our stand and shortly after greeting our fellow startup neighbours we received our first passer-by enquiring about Rolio. Our schedule for the day consisted of pre-arranged meetings with investors, the Spark of Genius presentation on stage and, of course, providing demonstrations of Rolio at our stand.
We hoped to fulfil our main goals of (a) improving recognition and exposure of our brand and product, (b) discovering how attractive we were to investors, and (c) gauging the general face to face feedback from people at our stand.
The Web Summit organisers had arranged a series of short meetings for Rolio with various investors, so we headed over with real anticipation for our first meeting. Unfortunately our excitement soon turned into frustration as we saw a hoard of eager startup founders besieging a single organiser, who was holding a laptop and frantically trying to direct people to their assigned investors, some of whom (including ours) were sadly no-shows. Thankfully, the afternoon session involved a simple queuing system for each investor and a two minute pitch. After pitching to one investor you could queue up and pitch to another investor. Despite the sometimes lengthy queues, this system was far more organised than the manic morning session. As for the meetings, think of them as a speed dating type process where you have two minutes to pitch your product and hope to spark some interest.
The time soon came for our participation in the Spark of Genius competition – a four minute presentation to the audience and a panel of judges, followed by two minutes of Q&A. Given the location of the pitching stage within the hubbub of a busy conference floor, it was definitely a nervous wait for our turn, but it was a fantastic experience. It was a great honour to be selected as a finalist and despite not progressing further in the competition, we were grateful to have received the opportunity to participate in such a competitive field.
Following the presentation, we grabbed a quick lunch in the food hall which served both hot food and a wide variety of salads and sandwiches. Overall, the catering throughout the Web Summit was excellent and complimentary.
At around 5pm we packed up for the day and there was an air of excitement amongst conference attendees about the planned evening events, especially on Twitter. The evening consisted of a group of venues (bars) which were exclusive to Web Summit attendees. The programme mentioned “You never know who you might bump into…” and this proved to be true. We recognised quite a few faces ranging from editors of TechCrunch, to judges and on-stage speakers whom we had seen earlier in the day. With five venues to choose from, we found the atmosphere relaxed in each with lots of interesting conversation and good music, including a selection of live bands. It’s an amazing sight witnessing techies attempt the Gangnam style! Once the midnight hour had arrived our tanks were running low and, with a long day ahead of us, we returned to our hotel for a well-deserved sleep.
Unsurprisingly, the second day of the Summit started slowly, with many recovering from a late night! Things soon became busy again, and the day followed a very similar pattern to the first. Our biggest breakthrough came with the placement of a stand-up advertising banner which we brought over with us from England. Although we were initially told that the use of the banner would be permitted at our stand, this was subsequently prohibited by the organisers, most likely due to the 4000+ attendees who were expected. After some deliberation, we decided to ask Microsoft if we were able to place the banner on their stand, given that we are sponsored by them under their BizSpark Plus program for high potential start-ups. Microsoft kindly agreed and before long the Rolio banner stood in prime Web Summit real estate on the ground floor, where foot traffic was at its highest. The moral of the story, if you don’t ask, you don’t get! Again, we decided to end our Web Summit visit at 5pm and packed up with a sense of content at how our first tech conference had gone. We bade farewell to our neighbours and celebrated our hard work with a well-deserved night out in Temple Bar sampling the busy bars and nightlife Dublin had to offer – definitely recommended.
Startup Web Summit Top Tips
As a first time attendee at a tech conference, we thought we would provide some tips that we hope others will find useful for future events.
Business Cards – We cannot stress the importance of carrying business cards at all times. “You never know who you might bump into” and it is essential to have a quick and easy medium of exchanging contact details.
Use available resources – Be sure to use all available avenues for communication with people or companies you would like to speak to. E.g. Twitter, LinkedIn, E-mail, Facebook or specialist conference software like Bizzabo which was the networking partner app of the Web Summit. We discovered that contacting particular media attendees personally was a successful way to get them to visit our stand.
Be organised – Inevitably, you will meet and exchange contact details with lots of people and companies. Do not just collect the business cards into a pile – write brief notes with key information that may be useful in any follow-up communication. We found that we had a number of meeting commitments throughout the day so we would highly recommend a schedule of some sort to keep track of when and where these meetings are.
Preparation – We would highly advise attendees to take time to prepare. Most will have posters, giveaways or branded clothing for example, so don’t be the odd one out with nothing! It is also very important to have planned responses to important questions (e.g. facts and figures) that can be thrown at you.
Backup Plan – Always ensure you have a plan B. For example at our stand, we relied on the Summit’s WiFi connection to conduct live demonstrations of Rolio – this connection proved to be extremely intermittent on day one of the conference. Luckily we had created a short video of our application which allowed us to demo it without an Internet connection.
If you don’t ask you don’t get – A prime example of this was the stand-up banner which was kindly given prime placement in the Microsoft stand area.
Attend organised events – The evening’s events at venues in Dame Lane were very well attended. The relaxed environment away from the hustle and bustle of the RDS made it easier to talk to people, including those who may have been busy with their own commitments during the day.
Overall, the Web Summit was a huge success and full credit is due to Paddy Cosgrave and the whole team involved. The Web Summit is growing yearly and has certainly cemented its place as the biggest tech conference in Europe with over 4000 attendees from around the world.
We would like to thank everyone for being so welcoming and accommodating during our first tech conference. An experience we have thoroughly enjoyed and one that we will utilise as a springboard for future conferences. We hope to build on the contacts and connections made during the two days and hope to return to Dublin for the Web Summit in 2013, which will inevitably be bigger and better than ever before, giving its rival conferences across the pond a serious run for their money. Dublin, a Tech Capital? It certainly is. Dublin, THE Tech Capital, it certainly has potential and one day may well be!
Rozbeh Nassab & Myuran Balendran
http://www.rolio.com
SmartSignin – The Smart, Secure and Simple Identity in The Cloud
Do you feel annoyed by the numerous passwords that you have to memorize to gain access to your personal and business accounts on the web? Maintaining access control using passwords is important and it is the best line of defence against hackers, but maintaining many passwords can slow productivity and cause unwanted headache for individuals and enterprises. SmartSignin.com is a startup that promise to provide the smart, simple and secure way for consumers and enterprise users to take charge of their web ID’s, passwords and privacy.
It aggregates all the users websites and enables a 100% Single Sign on from any platform or device, behind or in front of a firewall, without collaboration from any 3rd party and implementation takes just minutes. For enterprises, additional features are available that allow enterprises utilizing the cloud to authorize users access to apps based on roles, provisioning, automatic password resets, audits, and add new employees or delete ex-employee from active directory with just 1 click.
SmartSignin promise to provide secure Identity as a service product on the market. Its cookie-less architecture, PKI free multifactor authentication and its patented “Smart Key” algorithm, developed in joint venture with Ganita labs, at the University of Toronto, all to try to avoid any single point of failure in the system.
Mirekusoft.com – Registry Cleaner Software
Mirekusoft.com is a website that provides users with a registry cleaner software. Users can install an application software called Monitor that allow them to see the impact of installing an application has on their computers and fully remove it when they decide to uninstall.
It can help solve problems that are occurred when a program does not uninstall properly.
Install the Monitor software as way to help improve application and system performance. Computer users get tired of installing applications that leave significant amount of items behind when they are uninstalled. These items gradually slow the system and sometimes lead to problems installing other applications.
TweeVt.com
TweeVt.com is a site that provides realtime polls using just tweets or Facebook updates. Real time polling in SocialMedia where users can create their own voting categories, nominate and vote with tweets & wall posts. Furthermore users can use smartphones for polling purposes. A twitter user for example can be nominated by other users for a subject he chooses.
Tweet voting is important for business purposes as well. Social media has become a very important part of any business plan to attract new customers using Twitter and Facebook. In addition to attract new customers businesses use social media to keep track of their customer’s behavior and feedback. Businesses can find a great benefit from a social media voting scheme.Voting tweets from twitter followers for example give businesses the tools to know their customers responses to upcoming products or products they had already bought.
What they say about themselves
“Many businesses rely on twitter for social media management, it’s because social isn’t just fun and games—it’s business. In fact, online interactions with your brand can span departments from customer service, Design Research to sales and marketing, making social media management much more than just simple tweets.
With constant engagement & asking for cosumers votes on variuos products/services . #TweeVts can make it easy for your team to collaborate on updates, monitor responses, track engagement, and analyze results across the most influential and fastest-growing global social communities.
Some examples:
– A car company asking for Users Yes/No vote for a upcoming car model
– A Game Portal site asking for Athelete Nominations for Years Best Athelete Award
– A Game maker/ Popular magazine asking users to nominate players/Models for its front cover
– A petition seeker trying to gauge public support for the petition.
– A Popular award type site asking users to Nominate Actors in dozens of category – we are sure webbyAwards can use something like this!.
Businesses can’t afford to be slow on the real-time web world – expect users to come to their site , logon & give view/vote, thats old style. With 200 million Twitter users and its viral feature, you must engage quickly and proactively On your brand to keep users engaged!”
Uk.gigajob.com
Uk.gigajob.com is a free job site for recruiters and job seekers in United Kingdom. This site is an extremely professional job search engine in UK to help people search jobs online. As a job seeker you can upload CV for free and browse 1000’s of job openings and vacancies in your area. Not just this site help jobs seekers, it also help employers and headhunters with free job posting. In just few simple steps, your job vacancy is displayed to prospective candidates and you are also free to search professionals CV from the huge resume database that the website managed to build.
What’s the elevator pitch for this startup? Free Job portal for job seekers to find jobs in United Kingdom and recruiters can post jobs for free. Unlike other job sites this site provides free service for employers to post jobs.
Free jobs posting service with easy submission process increased the the volume of jobs available for job seekers. As a result of that more people were encouraged to use the site to find jobs as soon as they are posted. The prospect for success for this site is to be expanded to cover other countries.
Socially!