CSIT 534 Operating System (7)

INTERNET SECURITY, VIRUS & ANTIVIRUS

Trojan horses disguise themselves as valuable and useful software available for download on the Internet. They are programs that open a backdoor so the hacker can enter the client’s network at will.

Remote Access Trojans

Remote Access Trojans are the most frequently available ones. These give an attacker absolute control over the victim’s computers. The attacker can go through the files and access any personal information about the user that may be stored in the files, such as credit card numbers, passwords, and vital financial documents. A trojan horse is typically separated into two parts – a server and client. It is the client that is cleverly disguised as significant software and positioned in peer-to-peer file sharing networks or unauthorized download websites. Once the client Trojan executes on a computer, the attacker (i.e. the person running the server), has a high level of control over that computer, which can lead to destructive effects depending on the attacker’s purpose.

Password Sending Trojans

A Password Sending Trojan’s intention is to copy all the cached passwords, look for other passwords as they are keyed into a computer, and send them to particular email addresses. These actions are performed without the users’ awareness. Passwords for restricted websites, messaging services, FTP services, and email services come under direct threat with this kind of trojan.

Key Loggers

Key Loggers is a type of Trojan that logs victims’ keystrokes and sends the log files to the attacker. It then searches for passwords or other sensitive data in the log files. Most Key Loggers come with two functions, online and offline recording. Of course, they can be configured to send the log file to a specific email address on a daily basis.

Spyware is a program on the hard dirve that sends information about how you use a PC to marketers and advertisers. Antivirus software and firewalls do nothing to block spyware installed with a download that the user asks for. Spyware can be hidden under the Window’s Registry, where is harder to find.

Firewall manager software set up rules to filter out unwanted intrusions from internet. The firewall examines each packet, and if the outbound address of the data is on a list of banned internet locations it will block it. Another way to keep hacker out is all traffic thru a proxy file server, which examines all data based on the filtering rules and only forward packet obey the rules. Firewall manager also add the intrusions to a security log and reports to internet service provider or to helpdesk/IT staffs.

How Viruses Invade

Virus is created when a programmer intentionally infects a program or disk with computer code that has the capability to replicate itself, hide, watch for specific event to occur.

Boot record viruses target the master boot record. Program viruses look for executable .com and .exe program files and inserts its copy behind program header.

Memory resident virus can watch for attempts by antivirus software to find infected files and return phony information to hide from detection.

Viruses can traveler thru internet by email attachment or HTML hyperlink.

How Anti-virus Software Works

Anti-virus software inspects the master boot record, program files, and marco code for the present viruses. Signature scanners look at the contents of the boot record. Because stealth virus evades detection by signature scanners, heuristic detectors look for section of code triggered by time, routines to search for .COM and .EXE files, and disk writes that bypass the operation systems. To remove viruese in the memory, the software monitor all the modified program code, or programs that try to remain in memory after they are executed.

CSIT 534 Operating System (6)

NETWORK & INTERNET

To become part of a network, a PC uses a network interface (NIC) communicate signals pass from the PC’s RAM thru NIC to a LAN’s backbone. The NIC data can be sent along by cable or by wireless adaptor to the network. The most common network is Ethernet, which sends data from one node to another in packets format.

Packet format comes with Preamble, Destination Address, Source Address, Type, Data and CRC bits.

For a data or file travel thru a network, it must pass thru following layers to ensure the data gets throught intact and accurte

• Application layer converts a messages’s data nto bits and attaches a header to ID the sending and receiving computer
• Presentation layer translates data/file into ASCII code, compresses and encrypts the data as needed.
• Session layer set boundaries for beginning and end of the message and determine is half or full duplex.
• Transport layer protect the data and subdivides the data into segments and creates checksum test.
• Network layer selects a route for the message and forms segment into packets, count them and add header with address info.
• Data-link layer supervise the transmission. Keep a copy of each packet until it receive confirmation from next point.
• Physical layer encodes the packet into medium that will carry them (from digital to analog signal).

A net work uses hubs, switches and routers to move data to the right destination and to ward off intruders from the internet.

• Hubs – A hub receives incoming data packets from different nodes and places them into the memory buffer temporary if hub is busy with another packet.
• Switches – switch function is similar to hub but knows which of its connections lead to specific nodes.
• Routers - router function is similar to switch except that a router only delivery data to the specific address.

CSIT 534 Operating System (5)

HOW TRANSISTOR & MEMORY CARD WORKS (5)

Basically, the textbook did not well explain how transistor / flash memory works. I recommend all to read the presentation video from Sandisk Inc.

http://www.sandisk.com/business-solutions/ssd/movie-3-principles-of-flash-operation---flash-technology-tutorial-

CSIT 534 Operating System (4)

DATA STORAGE

RETRIEVING FILE FROM A DISK

When a user tries to open a file, the program call on its API and Window’s DLLs. Windows XP call on Installable File System (IFS) manager to pass control over to the appropriate file system driver (FSD) from one of the 4 storage systems (NRFS, VFAT, CDFS and Networks). Then the FSD get the disk location of the first cluster of the letter file from VFAT or from MFT (master file table). Finally the adapter take over, moving the read/write head to the correct series of disk cluster to retrieve he file and copied to the memory so the PC can work with it.

MIRROED DRIVE ARRAY (RAID)

As data integrity is more important than speed and there are only two hard drives, the best solution is mirrored drive array (RAID 1). Redundant array of independent drive (RAID) controller is to write every file to two or more drivers at the same time. A mirrored array can read the data twice faster as the controller reads alternate file cluster simultaneously. In case of a read failure, the controller simply reads the intact version of the file from the undamaged drive. If the damage is caused by a media defect, the controller automatically reads the data from the intact copy of the file on the other drive and writes it to a new, undamaged area on the drive where the defect occurred.

CSIT 534 Operating System (3)

WINDOWS OS

Window OS systems provide several files call DLLs (dynamic link libraries). These are collections of software code that perform common software functions. Its functions include displaying file open, file save, search and print dialog boxes. An application would like to take advantage of a DLL function first check with an API (application programming interface) to find out how to call the function. The application also passes along a specification for the type of information it expects the DLL to return to the application when the DLL has done its job. After all the function complete, the DLL puts the return information into memory and instruct Windows to remove the DLL routine from memory.

DATABASE

Database manager allow user to define a data type for the information that user would like to store. A record is a collection of data about a particular person, place or thing. The individual items are contained in fields. Several records with the same fields of information for entries constitute a table. Database manager carry out queries. These queries sort and filter the data to let the user see it from different perspective. Finally database manager present the data in a formatted, easy-to-read report. To create such report, the user need to storing data, creating indexes to allow fast sorting and relation in between fields so data from different table can be linked together.

CSIT 534 Operating System (2)

MICROPROCESSOR

CPU is composed of the ALU, accumulator and different kinds of registers (storage, address and general purpose) to process the data from instruction of the program. Dual core or multi core processors are designed for taking multi task works independently or corporately by combining with hyerthreading technology. Hyperthreading takes advantage of the fact that at any one time only part of a CPU’s computational power is being used. This means a dual core processor can simultaneously handle four threads or more if software and hardware are design for it.

PROGRAMMING LANGUAGE

Programs call interpreter and compliers translate commands written in higher level language in to machine language. Generally, complex software consists of one file that contains a master program- the kernel – surrounds by a collection of files that contain subprograms, or routines. The kernel call routines it need to perform certain task.

As a user types information into a program, it is stored as a variable. After a program has information in a variable, it can manipulate it with commands that perform mathematical operations on numbers or parse text string. Parsing is the joining, deletion, or extraction of some of the text characters to use them elsewhere in the program. When a variable is text, it is often called a string.

Interpreter and complier are both software programs that translate program source code that human understand into machine language.

CSIT 534 Operating System (1)

Boot-Up Process

Boot operation performs two major functions: One is Power on self test (POST) another one is search drives for an operation system. The most fundamental program from POST is Basic input / output system (BIOS), which will load the component records from CMOS and check all the associated hardwares such as CPU, memory, keyboard, hard drives to ensure system will work properly before boot – which is to transfer control of PC to the operation system.

As ROM BIOS tell CPU to execute a program from hard driver’s boot section. A specific code name NTLDR (NT LoaDeR), tell CPU where to find more code on the drive. In Window’s XP, this specific code is NTDETECT.com. NTDETECT displays the list onscreen and passes it along to the Window Registry, where other program have access to the information.

REGISTRY

Window Registry is a hierarchical database of configuration setting that controls all aspects of how Windows looks and works. At the very top of the Registry are five root keys that each control how Windows works.

• HKCR (Hkey Class Root) – root key contains information about file type
• HKCU (Hkey Current User) – control the settings of the user current logged into Windows
• HKLM (Hkey Local Machine) – contain information about the computer hardware and OS
• HKU (Hkey User) -- control the user-by-user settings Windows uses to display the Desktop
• HKCC (Hkey Current Config) – control configuration data of the current hardware profile.

BUS 596 Independent Study Chapter 14~16

Strategic Decisions Chapter 14~16 Vertical Integration, Expansion & Entry to New Business

Vertical Integration presents how a company takes internal or administrative actions to accomplish the financial growth. The costs of scheduling, coordinating operations, and response to emergencies may be lower if the firm is fully integrated. Tapered integration is partial integration backward or forward, the firm purchasing the rest of its needs on the open market. Vertical integration decision could be more than cost saving and investment purpose. A better customer service, improvement of product development, key component acquisition, and delivery cycle time can also make the firm consider the vertical integration. Acquiring key patents is the current trend on vertical integration. This will allow the firm to enter possible higher return business by integrating more features to the future products, further raising mobility barrier.

Capital expansion measures the amount of capital involved and the complexity of the decision-making. Without the correct estimation the future demand and costs of inputs from the competitor movement, overbuilding will be a major concern and can repeatedly and severely impact the whole industry. As the product demand is cyclical and selling commodity-like product, it is more likely to face capacity overbuilding issue from time to time. Currently DRAM companies experience oversupply issue is one of the typical examples. A thoughtful consideration of production technology is the key of capital expansion. One approach to capacity expansion in a growing market is the preemptive strategy, in which the firms seek to lock up a major portion of the market to discourage the competitors from expanding and to deter entry. Texas Instrument plays well on this strategy previously on DRAM and now using it for analog IC market.

Entry into new business requires the appropriate costs & benefits analysis, which includes facilities & inventory investment costs, proprietary & technology expense and estimated cash flows. In a highly fragmented industry, the entrant may affect many firms but have only limited impact. Prime target for the internal entry fall into one of the following categories: lower entry cost than others, having distinctive ability to influence industry structure, positive effects on a firm’s existing businesses and in effectual retaliation expected from competitors.

BUS 596 Independent Study Chapter 11~13

Chapter 11~13 Transition of Industry Maturity &, Strategy to Declining and Global Industries

Slowing growth means more competition from market and competition will become more cost and service oriented. However, the mature industries may regain their rapid growth by adjust the manufacturing, marketing and sales strategy to satisfy the needs of supplicated customers. More matured products basically will have more people understand the technology know-how and the international competition will increase. The sophisticated cost analysis will help the company to squeeze more on where it can save. Process innovation, design for manufacture and the cheap asset from the distressed company will also help on lowering down the unit cost on products. The matured company may force to make the selection on one of the following strategy alternatives – cost leadership, differentiate or focus. The company that is prided itself on pioneering and on a high quality product may find it is very unused to engage in price completion and in aggressive marketing. As the firm cling to “higher quality” as an excuse for not meeting aggressive pricing and resent to take right reaction on price competition could have further low cost position on certain market in the long run.

Strategies for the declining industries can be categorized as follow:

Targeting for leadership position in terms of market share; creating a stronger position in a particular segment; diversification and then identifying the advantage of strength, or liquidating the asset and phase out as soon as possible

Global industries are industries with organizations that make operational and production decisions based on global supply and demand and global market conditions established by integrated markets around the world. Large financial corporation, health care equipment pharmaceutical, software, semi-conductor, consumer electronics, automotive, media, and oil companies all fall into this category. The firm can tailor products to fit different circumstances among the foreign markets. The cost basis could also be different as the need to compliance to the local regulation. Globalization does provide the firm be able to manufacturing product with large economic scale from marketing perspective. In general the firm is good on global competition having good reorganization on the brand name and well organized logistic system and planning control to satisfy the need from worldwide customers. As the firm know the foreign government taxation law and incentive well, it to take the full advantage to maximize the profit margin.

BUS 596 Independent Study Chapter 9&10

Chapter 9&10 Strategy in Fragmented &Emerging Industries

As no firms having a significant market shares we name it the fragmented industries. Fragmented industries vary greatly in their technical sophistication. Companies in the analog IC industry fit into this category, which the competitors all have high diverse product differentiation for the needs of different markets. To overcome fragmentation, the firm can create economics of scale on manufacturing thru technology innovation, make acquisition or spin off the aspects so the key staffs can be more focus and responsive the needs from market. Increasing the value added on product & service, specializing product type to satisfy need of different customers, better delivery time and focus on high growth geographic area.

No firms would like to be the victim of technology evolution.

Emerging industries have been created by technological innovation, shifts of cost, new customer needs, or sociological changes that make a potentially viable business opportunity. There are no rules of the game in the emerging industry. To survive timing on identifying is also critical. Threatened entities from the emerging industry can be mitigated by lowering the unit costs from the forging profit or aim to make product more competitive. Forecasting industry development is more important than formulating competitive strategy directly. The device of scenarios is an effective analysis tool to forecast the need from the emerging market. By tracking the feedback from market and competition, further digest the scenario result can improve the product development and maintain the technology leadership.

BUS 596 Independent Study Chapter 8

Chapter 8 Industry Evolution

Understanding the process of industry evolution is to predict future need of strategy change so the firm will benefit most. Industry Product lifecycle and growth of sales follow the S curve. The stages of lifecycle includes introduction, growth, maturity and decline. Each individual function from the firm may react differently. Change of industry boundaries could may supplier or buyer intend to integrate forward and backward. Author also highlights that continuous innovation may not pay if the diffusion period is short and buyers’ loyalties to pioneering firms are not strong enough. The diffusion of knowledge is to maintain position on existing know-how, ensure leading position on the technology development, or strategic position must be shore up.

BUS 596 Independent Study Chapter 6&7

Chapter 6 & 7 Strategy Towards Buyers & Suppliers, Industrial Structural Analysis

Selection of buyer can after the firm’s growth rate and reduce disruptive power of buyers. For example, selling ICs to highly price competitive consumer electronic product lines is different from sale to the high quality orientated automotive makers. The buyers with the greatest potential can also be the most powerful in exercising their power as everything down to the end is cost driven. Four board criteria determine selection of buyer and strategy should apply: Purchasing need v.s. the firm’s capability, growth potential, structure position and cost of servicing. As the buyer tries to switch the supplier, it may face the high fixed cost of switching since redo the qualification & audit of new supplier will be required. If the selling product does not have the advantage of cost leadership, another way to raise the barrier for the buyer to switch is by persuading the customer to design the firm’s product with the custom varieties and assistance training. Since the one with the final authority to decide the purchase may not from the purchasing department but the one use the equipment most; therefore, the following value-added tactics become critical to win buyers – responsive customer service, engineering assistance, rapid delivery, honor credit and user friendly features of the products. Other factors can attract buyers to make final decision making include resale value, revenue generating capacity, maintenance and installation cost.

Without well manage the supplier quality, the firm may pay for the penalty if the gross product not match the spec or the high percentage of field failures occur at the end customer site.

Industrial structural analysis is to understand how firms’ differing competencies in marketing, cost cutting, management, organization to develop the strategy make company profitable and survive in the long term. The general strategy options include – specialization, brand identification, push/pull, channel selection, quality of product, technology innovation, vertical integration, cost position, service, financial leverage, and relationship management. The 1^st step of structural analysis is to characterize the strategies of major competitors along with different strategy options. For high tech companies the innovation and specialization plus vertical integration will have more dominate effect than brand identification, cost, service and financial leverage. The author also highlights that the highest payoff is in creating a new strategic group. A technological evolution/revolution change will block all the possible competitor to grab the market share. The comparison between Apple and Nokia complete at cellar phone market is a typical example.

BUS 596 Independent Study Chapter 4&5

Chapter 4 & 5 Market Signals & Competitive Moves

Market signals can be analyzed from the quarterly or annual report or the queries during conference calls from the financial analysts. For high tech industry, the announcement of technology breakthrough can be further validated by the filed patents and technical papers being published. From a company’s historical traits and the leadership characteristics it’s easy to distinguish the real intention or just bluffs from the announcement. It is less likely that a prestigious company targets for high margin, high quality segment business will switch over to high growth, high competitive and low margin business in short period of time, unless there is a dramatically change on the leadership. The most common announcement we observed is the stock buyback plan as the company dealing with an unreasonable stock price correction. This action in general is to mitigate the shock to the investors and bring back confidence of the financial institution. Ironically In general stock buyback plan will only state the amount of buyback but no execution timeline.

The strategy of competitive moves is an interesting topic. The author stated that if all the competitive cooperate they all can make a reasonable profit while retaliate vigorously will just kill each others. I cannot fully agree author’s view since now Federal Trade Commission from US or European will further investigate the case of monopoly or antitrust if there is any under-table agreement under among competitors. The cases of Samsung, LG and other manufactures conspire to fix, raise and maintain the price of DRAMs & LCDs eventually got over 100 million fine from the federal litigations. In addition, some of the top management executives were prosecuted. To me the way to make a successfully competitive move is when only few competitors in the market and the dominate one with financial advantage that can react promptly to threat to make the others yield.

BUS 596 Independent Study Chapter 2&3

Chapter 2 & 3 Generic Strategies & Framkwork for Competitor Analysis

Overall cost leadership, differentiation and focus are three generic alternatives to outpace other competitors. Goal of competitive strategies is not to terminate other competitors but to ensure the combination of the firm's key functional features perform better than others. A low cost position does protect the firm against all five competitive forces. However, low cost is not always the best leverage for high tech industries or consumer electronics with short product life cycle, especially when new comers always use the price cutting strategy. The key to make a firm to survive is by focusing the need of specific customer(s).

Differentiation can be achieved by feature of design, brand image, technology, service and dealer network. Differentiation will generate higher returns and down play the buyer’s power and create loyalty of the customer. The author highlights that “stuck in the middle” is the extremely poor strategy situation. The book also took SHARP as the example of adopting aggressive brand recognition strategy (i.e. differentiation) in parallel with cost leadership to compete with Sony and Panasonic. Similar strategy has been adopted by Samsung.

The goal of competitor’s analysis is to develop a profile of the likely strategy changes each competitor might take, initiate and response to the range of feasible strategic moves. The analysis includes 4 major components: future goals, current strategy, assumptions and capabilities. Identifying the competitor to be examined and knowing their goals and strategic positions can mitigate the conflict and possible hostile retaliation. Knowing the competitor’s weakness will help the firm take advantage from it. Figure 3-2 summaries the area of strength and weakness should further investigate, which includes following key items: CEO ability, marketing & selling, operations, research & engineering, overall costs, financial strength, product and channel of distribution, core capabilities, ability to grow, response to change and ability to adapt to change. Figure 3-3 list functions of competitor intelligence system should cover. In addition Appendix A & B covers techniques of competitor and industry analysis.

BUS 596 Independent Study Chapter 1

Independent Study --- Competitive Strategy written by Michael Porter

Chapter 1

Competitive Strategy is to develop a top level tactical plan by accessing existing and possible actions to be taken by competitors through benchmark itself verse other competitors in terms of cost, differentiation and the focus from its products & services on all functional perspectives. The author believes that understanding industry structure is an essential starting point. Chapter 1 gives the generic idea of structure analysis through understanding the five fundamental forces. These five forces are composed of suppliers, buyers, substitutes, potential entrants and industry competitors. A good structure analysis will allow company itself to create a defendable position by SWOT analysis. Six major factors raise barriers to entry for the potential competitors. They are: scale economics, intangible assets, product differentiation, capital requirement, switching costs and government policy. The company in high entry barriers but low exit barriers will generate high and stable returns