Write an opinion/response/feedback on the posts mentioned in the word document. The responses should have references and also valid in-text citations (APA Format) (total 6 responses)

(These posts are posted by Professor and other students, so when you write the response please relate to their statements.

Post 1

Phishing emails are dangerous. They are hard to detect, looks real-like it to be from a person or company. Phishing email usually has some malicious PDF or Word document attached in it, which when opened will harm the user’s computer by installing malware and also can steal important information such as login credentials and bank account information by hacking the system.

Recently one of my friend received an email from irs.net saying that they received incorrect information on the tax refund account. For refund, he needs to click on the link given in the email. He got a little suspicious because usually IRS sends physical mails regarding tax information but he got an email. So he searched about it online and got to know that most of the IRS email extensions are irs.gov, not irs.net.

Usually phishing emails have a difference in the domain name with an extra character or different extensions. So look at the email address clearly not just the sender. Usually, phishing contains poor spelling and grammar. Never open the link or download the attachments. Spam emails are never fully effective, so it’s up to us to read the context of the email carefully and look for anything suspicious.

Post 2

I think phishing attacks are very common around the globe. It is a very easy tool used by hackers to get into your system and which helps to take away the data or any kind of personal or banking information of a particular user. Normally, these types of email or text messages would have some kind of offer attach to it which works as bait and can easily trick normal users who are not aware of such acts. I remember the first time I received something of this sort was when I was in High school. At that time I received a text saying I have won $100,000 as lucky draw from Coco-Cola all I had to do is send them my personal and banking details which would help them transfer the amount. I am so glad at that point I wasn’t aware of my banking details or i would have easily given that up. For a 15-year-old boy, $100,000 trick was enough to fall for the trap. I still remember filling all the personal information in and when I figured it would also need banking information I went to my dad to get the details and he was so surprised to see the kind of traps these hackers are using. To this day I get a lot of phishing emails as I am aware of such things I feel lucky as I still hear a lot of stories of people get tricked for such things.

I believe if you ever get emails with an offer that you aren’t sure how you received then it’s for the best you don’t click on it. If by chance you have to make sure you report to the IT department right away as you might know the motive of that email and end up losing all the information and also your job. A lot of firms are very strict about this but I also feel they should be the ones educating their employees so such events never take place.

Post 3

JC Penny stores shutdown which happened in 2019 and the same situation is to happen in 2020. J.C. Penney’s results were in line with management’s outlook, this type of performance clearly isn’t sustainable. The department stores set for closure during the fiscal second quarter of this year are in tough locations and are less productive when compared against the rest of Penney’s fleet. The company is anticipating recording a pretax charge of about $15 million associated with these closures. It declined to provide a list of locations. The closing stores employ more than 1,000 people, many on a part-time basis. The net sales fell 9.5 percent during the fiscal fourth quarter and 7.1 percent in fiscal 2018. Sales have fallen for three consecutive years, now.

Regarding the Cost Volume Profit analysis (CVP Analysis), the first step being the breakeven point which talks about the activity level in which the company’s expenses are equal to their revenues. However, in the case of J.C.Penny the company is not breaking even meaning the expenses are higher than the revenue earned. In other words, the contribution margin (Sales – Variable costs) is not able to cover the fixed expenses and that is the reason the stores are shutting down due to reduction in revenue and increase in the fixed expenses. The company is unable to sell the required break even units ( Fixed costs / Contribution per unit ) leading to at least recovery of its costs even though not making profits. With its new CEO, Jill Soltau, Penney hopes the steps it’s been taking so far like getting out of the appliance business and investing more in apparel will turn things around.

Post 4

Cost Volume profit analysis was used by business managers to estimate the profitability of their company products or services. Cost Volume profit analysis is based on determining break-even point between cost and sales volume through which where businesses can lose money or gain profit, It shows how changes in the sale price, sales volume and cost can impact profits. CVP Analysis is useful for setting up flexible budgets which indicate costs at various levels of activity.

Payless Shoe Source is closing down in the United States. Payless first filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in April 2017 and closed an estimated 400 stores as a way to reorganize and save money on the accumulated debt. It filed for bankruptcy for the second time on February 15, 2019 with the clear intention of closing all 2,100 locations in the United States and Puerto Rico. The company also closed its e-commerce site. The high debt of the organization, caused by an unreasonable extension plan that moved too rapidly, ultimately killed the organization. And, poor merchandise collection and lack of exciting offers weren’t competitive and couldn’t drive sales to balance the debt trouble.

Post 5

Cyber security is now a board-level risk across the entire spread of industry. However, it is a broad subject with many unknowns, and some might say there’s no real way to ever discover or quantify those unknowns. Among all the threats to the information systems, cyber terrorism is the major threat in my opinion. Cyber terrorism has become very popular in recent years. The nature of the terrorism threat facing society has changed considerably in the last 20 years. Previously, governments and insurers structured their mitigation strategies and responses to deal with attacks that were large in scale.

Traditionally, most cyber-attacks have been carried out by criminal organizations, with most incidents failing to register on an enterprise risk scale of businesses that faced significant setbacks. These days companies are totally dependent on their computer systems and data for and compromise on these would severely jeopardize the enterprise even overnight left with nothing the next day. Hence it is always necessary to have in place an effective disaster recovery, business continuity management systems to prevent and protect critical systems and to recover them with minimum losses. Some of the major cyber-attacks if I could quote in the recent times would be Wannacry Attack which is a ransom ware that attacks around 150 countries by encrypting data and making it available only on payment of a huge ransom. The cyber-attack from initially been targeted to consumers have now moved on to affecting economic and political sectors like banking, government organization. A hack on these can completely pull down the functioning of a whole country.

Post 6

In information technology, threats can be caused due to it’s vulnerability. Threats can be anything that take advantage to breach security and negatively alter, erase, harm object or object of concern. There can be physical threats like fire, hurricane, sabotage, terrorism and something else. Physical threat cause damage to computer system hardware and infrastructure. Over 90% of data breach is caused due to human error, causing companies somewhere between $1.25 million to $8.19 million.

According to me sabotage is the greatest threat to the information system, damage can be accidental or on purpose and carried out on individual person or industrial sabotage. Insiders have knowledge that provide them with the capability to cause maximum interruption to an agency by sabotaging information system. They do it by destroying hardware and infrastructure, changing data, entering incorrect data, deleting software, planting logic bombs, deleting data, planting a virus.