Tag: Security

Bush administration’s continuous emphasis on the issue of privatization of social security services has generated much hype in the recent years. Many a social security scholars and workers take into account its bad effects on the socio-cultural sector and economic domain of United States rather than eulogizing it. They put forward many negative effects of this privatization of social security. One of the prime negative effects is that a system that is carved out to offer benefits to employees and their kin upon retirement, disability, or bereavement is going to be treated like a commodity.

It is a public service and is not a commercial service. From the very start of social security system in 1935, the program was based on the basis principle that magnitude of the remuneration package would depend on the income of employees over their professional time span. Contrary to this, Bush administration’s new privatized security system would take into account the   amount of funds that a worker would invest in his or her own personal account. Ultimately, this will lower the magnitude of benefit and there would be a great uncertainty on the part of the workers about their investments, margin over investments and remuneration. This would not only result into socio-economic maladies for their but psychological and mental health of the workers would be in danger too.

Some scholars are of the view that “Rate of return” calculations, made by the proponents of privatized social security overlook the “value of Social Security’s insurance protections”. So privatization of Social Security would divert the money that is currently used to finance existing insurance program into investment accounts (this proposed to be created for each worker). So from what sources this amount, that is being used to carry on current payments to recipients of a variety of Social Security insurance and other benefits, will be collected?

It would generate a cause and effect phenomenon. For example Treasury of States have to borrow huge amounts from the private sectors and other financial institutes instantaneously in order to pay the insurance and other retirement benefits to the already retired and/or their families. This would cause negative impact on the national economy and federal deficit would go up. National saving would decline and it will effect the long-tern economic development.

Another negative impact of the privatization of social security is that remuneration on the finances of workers through individual accounts would be totally dependent on the market trends. Furthermore scholars argue that individual investors are more prone to perform badly in the market than collective investments. In the above case brokerage houses, banks and mutual funds would be beneficial.

Social Security programs does not take into account the gender differences and its patterns and procedures treat men and women on equal terms, But is a biological and cultural truth that women get the worst provided by the social security. So in this way, she will be the most hard-hit in the privatization process of social security. Caroll L. Estes as early as 2004 take into consideration the negative impact of privatization of Social security and says;

Negative effects are particularly harsh for those older women who do not conform to the model of family status as married with male breadwinner and for those already disadvantaged by race, ethnicity, and class. (Estes, 2004)

References

Anrig Grig, Jr., ; Wasow, Bernard. Twelve Reasons Why Privatizing Social Security is a

Bad Idea. The Century Foundation. 2004. Available online:

http://www.socsec.org/publications.asp?pubid=503

Estes, Caroll L. Social Security privatization and older women: A feminist political

economy perspective. Journal of Aging Studies. Vol.18. No. February 2004,

Pages 9-26

Feldstein, Martin. Privatizing Social Security. Journal of Economic Literature, Vol. 37,

No. 2 (Jun., 1999), pp. 685-686

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The public police industry has never had a close relationship with the private security profession. Public police officers have typically viewed private security as “law enforcement wanna-bes” (p. 247, Clifford, 2004). Private security is viewed this way because the training requirements are different and in many ways less extensive than what is required of public police officers (Australian Institute of Criminology, 1998). This has been a controversial issue in the past but in recent years has been changing for the better.

Private and public security agencies have begun to bridge the gaps between the two industries. Private security professionals have been given a bad reputation in the past because of the many abuses of power and the misunderstandings of the main goals of private security. Take for example, Allan Pinkerton started his own security firm in the 1800s and was not very well liked by many for the program he devised to protect railroad companies from internal threats (Clifford, 2004). Many people thought he and his company were out to get them which brought about negative feelings toward him.

This very same feeling that security companies are out to get people is still alive today and some security professionals are even less respected today. Many people view private security in a negative light because they believe them to be minimum wage help and uneducated. This feeling toward private security has led to stereotypes in which they are called “Rent-a-Cops” and other derogatory names. Currently, many individuals are working to change the negative image that is associated with private security.

Police officers also have been given a bad reputation because of the actions of some people who have been on-the-job in the past. Many law suits and uprisings have been a result of the American people’s inability to trust and their dislike of police officers. However, like the security industry, they too, are working to make the industry more professional and regain the trust of the people. There has been an increase in the training as well as the policies and procedure which police officers must follow while performing their duties in order to protect the communities and the constitutional rights of each individual.

The two industries have made few attempts to integrate in the past but this fact is changing (Gunter & Kidwell, 2004). There has been a shift toward increasing public and private security cooperation and abilities to work together in recent years which has been increasing the level of safety that both industries have been able to provide. The private security industry has almost unlimited funding has made available resources for new technology which it has begun to share with law enforcement to increase the efficiency of both operations.

One example is Bank of America and their security professionals working with government agencies to provide information and resources regarding identity theft including strategies and training to detect and prevent this crime from happening (White, 2008). Another example, Target has built its own crime labs in an effort to thwart crime against their company which have also made available to local police agencies to aid in the investigation of crime (International Association of Chiefs of Police, 2012).

These cooperative efforts are helping to prevent crime as well as bringing the two industries together for a common goal. Public and private policing agencies, however, have different objectives and liabilities in mind with respect to their duties (Li, 2009). Public policing has the safety and security of the public and property in an entire jurisdiction in mind (Li, 2009). They are not focused on just one property in general but all properties and individuals in that particular jurisdiction.

Private security on the other hand, is only concerned with the property or area they contracted to protect. The often look out for the interests of the people or businesses that employ them and must remain profitable businesses themselves (Clifford, 2004). Public police are employed by the government and must uphold the Constitution and funding is done with taxpayer money. They have many restrictions which have been derived from the Constitution and they must strictly adhere to the document (Clifford, 2004).

Private security companies are not governed by the constitution and are afforded more freedoms when it comes to their policies and procedures (Clifford, 2004). Also, the personnel who employed by the private security industry are not nearly as liable for their actions as public police officers. Public police officers can actually be sued directly for violations of an individual’s constitutional rights. These differences and others have been the differences that have divided the public and private security industry for years. A good cooperative relationship is what the public and private security industry needs.

I believe this may begin to be achieved by more government regulation on private security companies as far as employee training and education. Many private security firms do not pay their employees well, they do not train them well, and they hire low class individuals. This must stop if the two industries will ever fully be cooperative. Likewise, public policing agencies must work toward involving private security companies in the safety of the community on a regular basis. More interaction between both industries will help develop a relationship of mutual respect between officers and agencies.

Data Security and Mobile Devices Introduction: Mobile devices such as smartphones, PDAs, tablets, and netbooks have become an integral part of everyday business operations. Millions of people log into their company’s secure network on mobile devices via wireless Internet or even accessing their email, making sensitive data more susceptible to data theft and hacking. Mobile technology is advancing at such a fast pace, making it harder for IT managers to keep up with newly emerging threats. Since the smartphone emerged in the business scene, cybercrime has increased exponentially.

Data security has now become the main focus for most IT managers in larger corporations. What are some of the risks associated with using mobile devices in business operations? Human error is the biggest risk associated with data security when it comes to using mobile devices. This is mostly due to loss of theft of a smartphone or other mobile device. In a study conducted in Washington DC last year, taxi drivers counted the number of mobile phones that were left behind in taxis over a six month period. Over eighty-three hundred phones were recovered.

That was almost twenty-five times the number of laptops that were left in the taxis during the same period. Although all corporate laptops are password protected, few have password protection on their mobile devices. (Phifer) “According to Credent Technologies, eighty-eight percent of mobile devices carry valuable information- from patient, customer and employee records, financial statements, and passwords,” (Phifer). Because so few people PIN-lock their phones, all of this sensitive data can easily fall in to the hands of a hacker.

Mobile users often auto save their username and passwords to avoid monotonous reentry. This gives the hacker access to any information available to theft victim. Another major risk associated with the use of mobile devices is mobile malware. Most mobile operating systems lack the anti-virus and other security feature that are found on laptops. This makes mobile devices susceptible to viruses such as Trojan and worms. Doombot is a Trojan virus that is designed to affect all mobile operating platforms such as Android, iOS, and blackberry. It is transferred through MMS and Bluetooth (Panda Security).

What are some techniques used by IT managers to minimize security risks with mobile devices? It is vitally important to the cyber security of a company for IT managers to constantly be assessing the security of their network. Some important steps managers are taking are education, visualization, conservative defaults, hard switching, and most importantly manager and employee training. Educating employees about the risks of using mobile devices is important because the human element poses the greatest risk to the cyber security of the company.

Its important for the firm to have a training program in place so all employees know how to protect themselves and the company. Visualization is also important in constant uphill battle of cyber security. Managers must constantly be looking for the latest threats against the network and try to find a solution before a breach occurs. Conservative default settings on the firm’s network prevent employees from viewing non-secure websites and also from downloading files from places from outside the company’s network.

This would allow employees to still download attached files from intra-company email but would prevent the downloading of files that might be infected with a virus. (Nykodym) IT managers also use outside contractors to monitor a company’s network security. Companies like BlueFire Mobile Security cater to the rapidly expanding reliance on mobile devices. Their services provide protection for lost or stolen devices, information encryption, and security while on the Internet. They also offer protection for a company’s wired network as well.

They provide intrusion prevention, firewall, authentication, and encryption for the entire network. Contracts with companies like BlueFire are often made with smaller firms or with firms who want to reduce the size and budget of their IT department. (Computer Security Update) How significant was the increase of cyber attacks when mobile devices became part of everyday life? Smartphones exploded on the business scene in the mid 2000s. They provided the convenience of accession of vital information from anywhere.

According to Sharia Panela’s article for GMA News , “between 2007 and 2012, small and medium businesses reported steadily increasing web attacks. Malware, phising, and other types of violation surged by 35 percent while email attacks soared by 12 percent” (Panela). All of these types of attacks are in a large part due to the lack of security on mobile devices. In Norton’s 2012 Cybercrime Report, the total price tag on consumer data cybercrime was $110,000,000,000. China leads the pack with a total loss of $46 billion and the Unites States coming in second with a total loss of $21 billion.

With Apps for everything from mobile banking to syncing work and personal email, people have more sensitive data on their phone than ever before. The Cybercrime report concludes with the changing face of cybercrime. The new frontier for hackers is social media websites and new mobile devices. (Palmer) Conclusion: With all of the new developments in cyber security hackers always seem to be one step ahead. Smartphones and other mobile devices have become such an important part of everyday business employees. These devices are a virtual candy store for hackers, a one-stop shop for all of the data stored on the device.

If the device is lost or stolen, it can be used to access the internal network of the firm and extract private data about customers or financial information. Mobile Security has come to the forefront of the IT department’s agenda in larger data driven firms. Although they implement measures to prevent security breaches, the human element is the most damning. Managers need to provide educational programs for their employees to learn about proper use of mobile devices on company networks. Works Cited “Computer Security Update. ” Computer Security Update. 8. 4 (2007): 1-4.

Web. 4 Nov. 2012. Nykodym, Nick. “Journal of Politics and Law. ” Journal of Politics and Law. 5. 1 (2012): 1-6. Web. 4 Nov. 2012. Palmer, Adam. “Norton Cybercrime Report 2012. ” Norton Cybercrime Report 2012. (2012): n. page. Web. 4 Nov. 2012. Panela, Sharia. “Personal gadgets raise risk of cybercrime in workplace. ” GMA News Online. GMA Network Inc. , 18 2012. Web. 4 Nov 2012. Phifer, Lisa. “Business Communications Review. ” Business Communications Review. (2007): 23-25. Web. 4 Nov. 2012. “Virus Encyclopedia . ” Panda Securities. Panda Worldwide, Web. 4 Nov 2012.

Review our cookies information for more details Special report: Managing information A different game Information is transforming traditional businesses Feb 25th 2010 | from the print edition * * IN 1879 James Ritty, a saloon-keeper in Dayton, Ohio, received a patent for a wooden contraption that he dubbed the “incorruptible cashier”. With a set of buttons and a loud bell, the device, sold by National Cash Register (NCR), was little more than a simple adding machine. Yet as an early form of managing information flows in American business the cash register had a huge impact.

It not only reduced pilferage by alerting the shopkeeper when the till was opened; by recording every transaction, it also provided an instant overview of what was happening in the business. Sales data remain one of a company’s most important assets. In 2004 Wal-Mart peered into its mammoth databases and noticed that before a hurricane struck, there was a run on flashlights and batteries, as might be expected; but also on Pop-Tarts, a sugary American breakfast snack. On reflection it is clear that the snack would be a handy thing to eat in a blackout, but the retailer would not have thought to stock up on it before a storm.

The company whose system crunched Wal-Mart’s numbers was none other than NCR and its data-warehousing unit, Teradata, now an independent firm. A few years ago such technologies, called “business intelligence”, were available only to the world’s biggest companies. But as the price of computing and storage has fallen and the software systems have got better and cheaper, the technology has moved into the mainstream. Companies are collecting more data than ever before. In the past they were kept in different systems that were unable to talk to each other, such as finance, human resources or customer management.

Now the systems are being linked, and companies are using data-mining techniques to get a complete picture of their operations—“a single version of the truth”, as the industry likes to call it. That allows firms to operate more efficiently, pick out trends and improve their forecasting. In this special report * Data, data everywhere * All too much * »A different game * Clicking for gold * The open society * Show me * Needle in a haystack * New rules for big data * Handling the cornucopia Sources & acknowledgementsReprints Related topics * China * Nestle * IBM * Royal Shakespeare Company * Walmart

Consider Cablecom, a Swiss telecoms operator. It has reduced customer defections from one-fifth of subscribers a year to under 5% by crunching its numbers. Its software spotted that although customer defections peaked in the 13th month, the decision to leave was made much earlier, around the ninth month (as indicated by things like the number of calls to customer support services). So Cablecom offered certain customers special deals seven months into their subscription and reaped the rewards. Agony and torture Such data-mining has a dubious reputation. “Torture the data long enough and they will confess to anything,” statisticians quip.

But it has become far more effective as more companies have started to use the technology. Best Buy, a retailer, found that 7% of its customers accounted for 43% of its sales, so it reorganised its stores to concentrate on those customers’ needs. Airline yield management improved because analytical techniques uncovered the best predictor that a passenger would actually catch a flight he had booked: that he had ordered a vegetarian meal. The IT industry is piling into business intelligence, seeing it as a natural successor of services such as accountancy and computing in the first and second half of the 20th century respectively.

Accenture, PricewaterhouseCoopers, IBM and SAP are investing heavily in their consulting practices. Technology vendors such as Oracle, Informatica, TIBCO, SAS and EMC have benefited. IBM believes business intelligence will be a pillar of its growth as sensors are used to manage things from a city’s traffic flow to a patient’s blood flow. It has invested $12 billion in the past four years and is opening six analytics centres with 4,000 employees worldwide. Analytics—performing statistical operations for forecasting or uncovering correlations such as between Pop-Tarts and hurricanes—can have a big pay-off.

In Britain the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) sifted through seven years of sales data for a marketing campaign that increased regular visitors by 70%. By examining more than 2m transaction records, the RSC discovered a lot more about its best customers: not just income, but things like occupation and family status, which allowed it to target its marketing more precisely. That was of crucial importance, says the RSC’s Mary Butlin, because it substantially boosted membership as well as fund-raising revenue. Yet making the most of data is not easy. The first step is to improve the accuracy of the information.

Nestle, for example, sells more than 100,000 products in 200 countries, using 550,000 suppliers, but it was not using its huge buying power effectively because its databases were a mess. On examination, it found that of its 9m records of vendors, customers and materials around half were obsolete or duplicated, and of the remainder about one-third were inaccurate or incomplete. The name of a vendor might be abbreviated in one record but spelled out in another, leading to double-counting. Plainer vanilla Over the past ten years Nestle has been overhauling its IT system, using SAP software, and improving the quality of its data.

This enabled the firm to become more efficient, says Chris Johnson, who led the initiative. For just one ingredient, vanilla, its American operation was able to reduce the number of specifications and use fewer suppliers, saving $30m a year. Overall, such operational improvements save more than $1 billion annually. Nestle is not alone in having problems with its database. Most CIOs admit that their data are of poor quality. In a study by IBM half the managers quizzed did not trust the information on which they had to base decisions. Many say that the technology meant to make sense of it often just produces more data.

Instead of finding a needle in the haystack, they are making more hay. Still, as analytical techniques become more widespread, business decisions will increasingly be made, or at least corroborated, on the basis of computer algorithms rather than individual hunches. This creates a need for managers who are comfortable with data, but statistics courses in business schools are not popular. Many new business insights come from “dead data”: stored information about past transactions that are examined to reveal hidden correlations. But now companies are increasingly moving to analysing real-time information flows.

Wal-Mart is a good example. The retailer operates 8,400 stores worldwide, has more than 2m employees and handles over 200m customer transactions each week. Its revenue last year, around $400 billion, is more than the GDP of many entire countries. The sheer scale of the data is a challenge, admits Rollin Ford, the CIO at Wal-Mart’s headquarters in Bentonville, Arkansas. “We keep a healthy paranoia. ” Not a sparrow falls Wal-Mart’s inventory-management system, called Retail Link, enables suppliers to see the exact number of their products on every shelf of every store at that precise moment.

The system shows the rate of sales by the hour, by the day, over the past year and more. Begun in the 1990s, Retail Link gives suppliers a complete overview of when and how their products are selling, and with what other products in the shopping cart. This lets suppliers manage their stocks better. The technology enabled Wal-Mart to change the business model of retailing. In some cases it leaves stock management in the hands of its suppliers and does not take ownership of the products until the moment they are sold. This allows it to shed inventory risk and reduce its costs.

In essence, the shelves in its shops are a highly efficiently managed depot. Another company that capitalises on real-time information flows is Li & Fung, one of the world’s biggest supply-chain operators. Founded in Guangzhou in southern China a century ago, it does not own any factories or equipment but orchestrates a network of 12,000 suppliers in 40 countries, sourcing goods for brands ranging from Kate Spade to Walt Disney. Its turnover in 2008 was $14 billion. Li ; Fung used to deal with its clients mostly by phone and fax, with e-mail counting as high technology.

But thanks to a new web-services platform, its processes have speeded up. Orders flow through a web portal and bids can be solicited from pre-qualified suppliers. Agents now audit factories in real time with hand-held computers. Clients are able to monitor the details of every stage of an order, from the initial production run to shipping. One of the most important technologies has turned out to be videoconferencing. It allows buyers and manufacturers to examine the colour of a material or the stitching on a garment. “Before, we weren’t able to send a 500MB image—we’d post a DVD.

Now we can stream it to show vendors in our offices. With real-time images we can make changes quicker,” says Manuel Fernandez, Li ; Fung’s chief technology officer. Data flowing through its network soared from 100 gigabytes a day only 18 months ago to 1 terabyte. The information system also allows Li & Fung to look across its operations to identify trends. In southern China, for instance, a shortage of workers and new legislation raised labour costs, so production moved north. “We saw that before it actually happened,” says Mr Fernandez.

The company also got advance warning of the economic crisis, and later the recovery, from retailers’ orders before these trends became apparent. Investment analysts use country information provided by Li ; Fung to gain insights into macroeconomic patterns. Now that they are able to process information flows in real time, organisations are collecting more data than ever. One use for such information is to forecast when machines will break down. This hardly ever happens out of the blue: there are usually warning signs such as noise, vibration or heat. Capturing such data enables firms to act before a breakdown.

Similarly, the use of “predictive analytics” on the basis of large data sets may transform health care. Dr Carolyn McGregor of the University of Ontario, working with IBM, conducts research to spot potentially fatal infections in premature babies. The system monitors subtle changes in seven streams of real-time data, such as respiration, heart rate and blood pressure. The electrocardiogram alone generates 1,000 readings per second. This kind of information is turned out by all medical equipment, but it used to be recorded on paper and examined perhaps once an hour.

By feeding the data into a computer, Dr McGregor has been able to detect the onset of an infection before obvious symptoms emerge. “You can’t see it with the naked eye, but a computer can,” she says. Open sesame Two technology trends are helping to fuel these new uses of data: cloud computing and open-source software. Cloud computing—in which the internet is used as a platform to collect, store and process data—allows businesses to lease computing power as and when they need it, rather than having to buy expensive equipment.

Amazon, Google and Microsoft are the most prominent firms to make their massive computing infrastructure available to clients. As more corporate functions, such as human resources or sales, are managed over a network, companies can see patterns across the whole of the business and share their information more easily. A free programming language called R lets companies examine and present big data sets, and free software called Hadoop now allows ordinary PCs to analyse huge quantities of data that previously required a supercomputer. It does this by parcelling out the tasks to numerous computers at once. This saves time and money.

For example, the New York Times a few years ago used cloud computing and Hadoop to convert over 400,000 scanned images from its archives, from 1851 to 1922. By harnessing the power of hundreds of computers, it was able to do the job in 36 hours. Visa, a credit-card company, in a recent trial with Hadoop crunched two years of test records, or 73 billion transactions, amounting to 36 terabytes of data. The processing time fell from one month with traditional methods to a mere 13 minutes. It is a striking successor of Ritty’s incorruptible cashier for a data-driven age. from the print edition | Special report Recommend 140 * * * Submit to reddit * inShare2 * View all comments (4) Related items TOPIC: China » * Recommended economics writing: Link exchange * Trade: Mexico rising * The Economist: Digital highlights, November 24th 2012 TOPIC: Nestle » * Consumer goods in Africa: A continent goes shopping * Schumpeter: Pretty profitable parrots * Nestle buys Pfizer Nutrition: Feeding little emperors TOPIC: IBM » * Schumpeter: Taking the long view * IBM’s mainframes: Old dog, new tricks * Phase-change memory: Altered states TOPIC: Royal Shakespeare Company » * William Shakespeare: A digital reinvention Culture: Going for gold * Green architecture: The retrofit revolution More related topics: * Walmart Want more? Subscribe to The Economist and get the week’s most relevant news and analysis. * Print edition X Feb 27th 2010 Feb 20th 2010 Feb 13th 2010 Feb 6th 2010 * Next in The world this week X Politics this week * Next in The world this week X Business this week * Next in The world this week X KAL’s cartoon * Next in Leaders X Technology The data deluge Businesses, governments and society are only starting to tap its vast potential * Next in Leaders X Argentina and the Falklands The beef in Buenos Aires

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Review our cookies information for more details Special report: Managing information A different game Information is transforming traditional businesses Feb 25th 2010 | from the print edition * * IN 1879 James Ritty, a saloon-keeper in Dayton, Ohio, received a patent for a wooden contraption that he dubbed the “incorruptible cashier”. With a set of buttons and a loud bell, the device, sold by National Cash Register (NCR), was little more than a simple adding machine. Yet as an early form of managing information flows in American business the cash register had a huge impact.

It not only reduced pilferage by alerting the shopkeeper when the till was opened; by recording every transaction, it also provided an instant overview of what was happening in the business. Sales data remain one of a company’s most important assets. In 2004 Wal-Mart peered into its mammoth databases and noticed that before a hurricane struck, there was a run on flashlights and batteries, as might be expected; but also on Pop-Tarts, a sugary American breakfast snack. On reflection it is clear that the snack would be a handy thing to eat in a blackout, but the retailer would not have thought to stock up on it before a storm.

The company whose system crunched Wal-Mart’s numbers was none other than NCR and its data-warehousing unit, Teradata, now an independent firm. A few years ago such technologies, called “business intelligence”, were available only to the world’s biggest companies. But as the price of computing and storage has fallen and the software systems have got better and cheaper, the technology has moved into the mainstream. Companies are collecting more data than ever before. In the past they were kept in different systems that were unable to talk to each other, such as finance, human resources or customer management.

Now the systems are being linked, and companies are using data-mining techniques to get a complete picture of their operations—“a single version of the truth”, as the industry likes to call it. That allows firms to operate more efficiently, pick out trends and improve their forecasting. In this special report * Data, data everywhere * All too much * »A different game * Clicking for gold * The open society * Show me * Needle in a haystack * New rules for big data * Handling the cornucopia Sources & acknowledgementsReprints Related topics * China * Nestle * IBM * Royal Shakespeare Company * Walmart

Consider Cablecom, a Swiss telecoms operator. It has reduced customer defections from one-fifth of subscribers a year to under 5% by crunching its numbers. Its software spotted that although customer defections peaked in the 13th month, the decision to leave was made much earlier, around the ninth month (as indicated by things like the number of calls to customer support services). So Cablecom offered certain customers special deals seven months into their subscription and reaped the rewards. Agony and torture Such data-mining has a dubious reputation. “Torture the data long enough and they will confess to anything,” statisticians quip.

But it has become far more effective as more companies have started to use the technology. Best Buy, a retailer, found that 7% of its customers accounted for 43% of its sales, so it reorganised its stores to concentrate on those customers’ needs. Airline yield management improved because analytical techniques uncovered the best predictor that a passenger would actually catch a flight he had booked: that he had ordered a vegetarian meal. The IT industry is piling into business intelligence, seeing it as a natural successor of services such as accountancy and computing in the first and second half of the 20th century respectively.

Accenture, PricewaterhouseCoopers, IBM and SAP are investing heavily in their consulting practices. Technology vendors such as Oracle, Informatica, TIBCO, SAS and EMC have benefited. IBM believes business intelligence will be a pillar of its growth as sensors are used to manage things from a city’s traffic flow to a patient’s blood flow. It has invested $12 billion in the past four years and is opening six analytics centres with 4,000 employees worldwide. Analytics—performing statistical operations for forecasting or uncovering correlations such as between Pop-Tarts and hurricanes—can have a big pay-off.

In Britain the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) sifted through seven years of sales data for a marketing campaign that increased regular visitors by 70%. By examining more than 2m transaction records, the RSC discovered a lot more about its best customers: not just income, but things like occupation and family status, which allowed it to target its marketing more precisely. That was of crucial importance, says the RSC’s Mary Butlin, because it substantially boosted membership as well as fund-raising revenue. Yet making the most of data is not easy. The first step is to improve the accuracy of the information.

Nestle, for example, sells more than 100,000 products in 200 countries, using 550,000 suppliers, but it was not using its huge buying power effectively because its databases were a mess. On examination, it found that of its 9m records of vendors, customers and materials around half were obsolete or duplicated, and of the remainder about one-third were inaccurate or incomplete. The name of a vendor might be abbreviated in one record but spelled out in another, leading to double-counting. Plainer vanilla Over the past ten years Nestle has been overhauling its IT system, using SAP software, and improving the quality of its data.

This enabled the firm to become more efficient, says Chris Johnson, who led the initiative. For just one ingredient, vanilla, its American operation was able to reduce the number of specifications and use fewer suppliers, saving $30m a year. Overall, such operational improvements save more than $1 billion annually. Nestle is not alone in having problems with its database. Most CIOs admit that their data are of poor quality. In a study by IBM half the managers quizzed did not trust the information on which they had to base decisions. Many say that the technology meant to make sense of it often just produces more data.

Instead of finding a needle in the haystack, they are making more hay. Still, as analytical techniques become more widespread, business decisions will increasingly be made, or at least corroborated, on the basis of computer algorithms rather than individual hunches. This creates a need for managers who are comfortable with data, but statistics courses in business schools are not popular. Many new business insights come from “dead data”: stored information about past transactions that are examined to reveal hidden correlations. But now companies are increasingly moving to analysing real-time information flows.

Wal-Mart is a good example. The retailer operates 8,400 stores worldwide, has more than 2m employees and handles over 200m customer transactions each week. Its revenue last year, around $400 billion, is more than the GDP of many entire countries. The sheer scale of the data is a challenge, admits Rollin Ford, the CIO at Wal-Mart’s headquarters in Bentonville, Arkansas. “We keep a healthy paranoia. ” Not a sparrow falls Wal-Mart’s inventory-management system, called Retail Link, enables suppliers to see the exact number of their products on every shelf of every store at that precise moment.

The system shows the rate of sales by the hour, by the day, over the past year and more. Begun in the 1990s, Retail Link gives suppliers a complete overview of when and how their products are selling, and with what other products in the shopping cart. This lets suppliers manage their stocks better. The technology enabled Wal-Mart to change the business model of retailing. In some cases it leaves stock management in the hands of its suppliers and does not take ownership of the products until the moment they are sold. This allows it to shed inventory risk and reduce its costs.

In essence, the shelves in its shops are a highly efficiently managed depot. Another company that capitalises on real-time information flows is Li & Fung, one of the world’s biggest supply-chain operators. Founded in Guangzhou in southern China a century ago, it does not own any factories or equipment but orchestrates a network of 12,000 suppliers in 40 countries, sourcing goods for brands ranging from Kate Spade to Walt Disney. Its turnover in 2008 was $14 billion. Li ; Fung used to deal with its clients mostly by phone and fax, with e-mail counting as high technology.

But thanks to a new web-services platform, its processes have speeded up. Orders flow through a web portal and bids can be solicited from pre-qualified suppliers. Agents now audit factories in real time with hand-held computers. Clients are able to monitor the details of every stage of an order, from the initial production run to shipping. One of the most important technologies has turned out to be videoconferencing. It allows buyers and manufacturers to examine the colour of a material or the stitching on a garment. “Before, we weren’t able to send a 500MB image—we’d post a DVD.

Now we can stream it to show vendors in our offices. With real-time images we can make changes quicker,” says Manuel Fernandez, Li ; Fung’s chief technology officer. Data flowing through its network soared from 100 gigabytes a day only 18 months ago to 1 terabyte. The information system also allows Li & Fung to look across its operations to identify trends. In southern China, for instance, a shortage of workers and new legislation raised labour costs, so production moved north. “We saw that before it actually happened,” says Mr Fernandez.

The company also got advance warning of the economic crisis, and later the recovery, from retailers’ orders before these trends became apparent. Investment analysts use country information provided by Li ; Fung to gain insights into macroeconomic patterns. Now that they are able to process information flows in real time, organisations are collecting more data than ever. One use for such information is to forecast when machines will break down. This hardly ever happens out of the blue: there are usually warning signs such as noise, vibration or heat. Capturing such data enables firms to act before a breakdown.

Similarly, the use of “predictive analytics” on the basis of large data sets may transform health care. Dr Carolyn McGregor of the University of Ontario, working with IBM, conducts research to spot potentially fatal infections in premature babies. The system monitors subtle changes in seven streams of real-time data, such as respiration, heart rate and blood pressure. The electrocardiogram alone generates 1,000 readings per second. This kind of information is turned out by all medical equipment, but it used to be recorded on paper and examined perhaps once an hour.

By feeding the data into a computer, Dr McGregor has been able to detect the onset of an infection before obvious symptoms emerge. “You can’t see it with the naked eye, but a computer can,” she says. Open sesame Two technology trends are helping to fuel these new uses of data: cloud computing and open-source software. Cloud computing—in which the internet is used as a platform to collect, store and process data—allows businesses to lease computing power as and when they need it, rather than having to buy expensive equipment.

Amazon, Google and Microsoft are the most prominent firms to make their massive computing infrastructure available to clients. As more corporate functions, such as human resources or sales, are managed over a network, companies can see patterns across the whole of the business and share their information more easily. A free programming language called R lets companies examine and present big data sets, and free software called Hadoop now allows ordinary PCs to analyse huge quantities of data that previously required a supercomputer. It does this by parcelling out the tasks to numerous computers at once.

This saves time and money. For example, the New York Times a few years ago used cloud computing and Hadoop to convert over 400,000 scanned images from its archives, from 1851 to 1922. By harnessing the power of hundreds of computers, it was able to do the job in 36 hours. Visa, a credit-card company, in a recent trial with Hadoop crunched two years of test records, or 73 billion transactions, amounting to 36 terabytes of data. The processing time fell from one month with traditional methods to a mere 13 minutes. It is a striking successor of Ritty’s incorruptible cashier for a data-driven age. rom the print edition | Special report * Recommend 140 * * * Submit to reddit * inShare2 * View all comments (4) Related items TOPIC: China » * Recommended economics writing: Link exchange * Trade: Mexico rising * The Economist: Digital highlights, November 24th 2012 TOPIC: Nestle » * Consumer goods in Africa: A continent goes shopping * Schumpeter: Pretty profitable parrots * Nestle buys Pfizer Nutrition: Feeding little emperors TOPIC: IBM » * Schumpeter: Taking the long view * IBM’s mainframes: Old dog, new tricks * Phase-change memory: Altered states TOPIC: Royal Shakespeare Company » William Shakespeare: A digital reinvention * Culture: Going for gold * Green architecture: The retrofit revolution More related topics: * Walmart Want more? Subscribe to The Economist and get the week’s most relevant news and analysis. * Print edition X Feb 27th 2010 Feb 20th 2010 Feb 13th 2010 Feb 6th 2010 * Next in The world this week X Politics this week * Next in The world this week X Business this week * Next in The world this week X KAL’s cartoon * Next in Leaders X Technology The data deluge Businesses, governments and society are only starting to tap its vast potential * Next in Leaders

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The conception of human rights and freedoms is the cornerstone of American traditions, law and the indicator of democracy. The approach of prevailing interest in personal privacy, property privacy and non-interference of state authorities in private affairs is the basic ground for modern organization of American society. For centuries the courts have been standing safeguards of protection of persons against unreasonable intrusion of the State, generally interpreting the Constitution and the Bill of Rights with preference of personal human rights protection.

Nonetheless in the end of the 21st century there appeared several factors which so much influenced our society that the matters of homeland security and protection raised with extraordinary emphasis and the thesis that the national security is more important than human rights causes no surprise. This research is focused on this controversial issue and contains the analysis of the reasons which changed the scale; the overview of national security vs. uman rights from the points of view of internal and external national policy; the argumentation pro and contra preponderance of national security over personal human rights with the examples of concrete rights and evidence; the conclusion.

So why the validity of what was right earlier should be now the subject of reconsideration? Among the reasons which preconditioned giving more political and legal importance to the national security over protection of individual rights and freedoms the general reason is the need to prevent U. S. citizens, infrastructures and lands from the increased threat of terrorist attacks, the protection of U. S. borders from potential foreign invasion. Another important factor which influenced the change in traditional legal and political doctrine is the globalization.

Once, the rights of U. S. citizens guaranteed by the Bill of Rights have been expanded and extrapolated around the world. Close political, economical and cultural communications of the U. S. A. with all countries of the world and the U. S. hegemonic influence as of the world leading power have another side of the movement. The amount, the value and the accessibility of international communication on any level: governmental, regional, local or private, has risen extraordinary in comparison to earlier times due to technological revolution. Our state and people have been under the influence of other cultures and societies, as this exchange is bilateral.

For instance, this led to increasing role of statutory law in the U. S. ystem of law which has been traditionally case-law system of law. So, many of our partner-countries have different traditions and regulations and many of them place national security and social interests prior to personal rights, justifying this with weighty arguments which in any case should be taken into consideration. The U. S. Patriot Act and the Homeland Security Act are bright evidence for the two previous arguments, the public support and the reasonability of the change of emphasized values.

Particularly the U. S. Patriot Act of 2001 was passed nearly unanimously by the Senate 98-1, and 357-66 in the House, with the support of members from across the political spectrum, which underlines public appreciation of placing more emphasis to national security prior to protection of individual interests of privacy. Improving the counter-terrorist protection, the Act proscribes profound changes in investigating procedures and contains numerous provisions far from democratic traditions and waiving protection of certain constitutional rights of almost any U. S. citizen (for instance, the Act expands the reasons for warrantless searches, simplifies the conditions of obtaining search and seizure warrants, expands the reasons for obtaining business records in criminal investigations etc) (The U. S. Department of Justice). Other national security questions which have evidently increased its importance over human rights protection in recent years are the illegal immigration, the development of international organized crime, the accessibility of public and private information on Internet etc.

In most of the cases opposing the concept of human rights to national security is erroneous and unreasonable construction because the national security is the concept which precludes the physical and mental security of all members of the society, and therefore includes and predetermines the possibility of exercising human rights and freedoms. Without security the well-being is impossible. Looking at the national security vs. uman rights question from the points of view of internal and external national security, one should first examine what concrete human rights may be waived or limited for the homeland security and protection purposes.

Natural human rights like the right for life are not the subject to address in this essay. The rights addressed in this essay are defined primarily in the U. S. Bill of Rights. These are civil ight for privacy, the right of peaceful protest, the right to personal freedom, the right to a fair trial and the right of equal protection, usually in the list of the rights which under certain conditions may be waived for the efficiency of homeland security and protection. The first argument supporting the statement that national security is more important than protection of individual rights is the increased threat of terroristic attacks, which are very dangerous, carefully planned, locally targeted and generously funded organized crimes.

This threat requires adequate actions. For instance, the problem of efficiency of security measures in the airports is one of the most important challenges in homeland security and protection policy, and the example that despite all actions taken the threat remains very realistic is the recent terrorist attempt of the Al-Qaeda bomber to blow-up plane while landing in Detroit, MI. on December 26, 2009. The second argument is the international experience and need to unity the efforts of international community in struggle with terrorism, nuclear threat and organized crime.

Kumar, C. Raj (2005) writes “The September 11, 2001 attacks in New York and Washington D. C. , and the December 13, 2001 attack on the Indian Parliament have intensified the debate regarding the necessity of formulating national security laws in India and the laws’ potentially serious impact on human rights and civil liberties. The strengthening of national security laws worldwide is apparently pursued with the objective of combating terrorism and other forms of internal and external threats to the States and the societies in which people live”.

Several security laws have been passed in India in response to the challenge of preventing terrorism and preserving national security. The laws are being criticized for violation of human rights, though the Supreme Court upheld their constitutional validity. This example illustrates that not only in the USA, but worldwide, there is a tendency of giving more importance to national security and international cooperation for this purpose. The third argument supporting the thesis is that the modern American law de facto prefers public interests to the interests of individual member of the society.

Numerous exceptions are legalized to justify deviation of constitutional rights, particularly in investigating procedures – the procedures which predetermine the following stages of criminal process. On the example of airport security, more attention of transportation security officers is currently devoted to passengers’ searches and seizures. A review of landmark cases related to airport searches illustrates that the private person rarely wins and that searches are almost always found to be reasonable and constitutional (Kornblatt, 2007).

In recent landmark case United States v. Hartwell, 436 F. 3d 174, 175 (3rd Cir. 006), the Supreme Court has acknowledged a few circumstances in which a search is reasonable in absence of wrongdoing, which typically involve administrative searches of ‘closely regulated’ businesses, other so-called ‘special needs’ cases, and suspicionless ‘checkpoint’ searches. The Court stated that suspicionless searches at checkpoints “are permissible under the Fourth Amendment when a court finds a favorable balance between ‘the gravity of the public concerns served by the seizure, the degree to which the seizure advances the public interest, and the severity of the interference with individual liberty.

Particularly the Supreme Court emphasized the importance of preventing terrorist attacks against airplanes, the prevailing of public interest in security checkpoints at airports. Under the “special needs” doctrine the government authorities are allowed to conduct searches in the absence of any suspicion of criminality in limited circumstances where the search is aimed not to gather evidence for the investigation of crime. These circumstances include: whether the government interest for the search program is immediate and substantial, whether the search program effectively advances the government interest, states Konblatt (2007).

In United States v. Skipwith, 482 F. 2d 1272 (5th Cir. 1973) the Fifth Circuit decided that some situations present a level of danger such that the reasonableness test is per se satisfied. The Court found that a balance must be struck between the harm and the need to determine what is reasonable: “When the risk is the jeopardy to hundreds of human lives and millions of dollars of property inherent in the pirating or blowing up of a large airplane, the danger alone meets the test of reasonableness. Therefore the case law suggests that in the case of conflict between private rights and public interests, generally protected by government, the latter prevail. The fourth argument supporting the thesis is that the most of American leaders and majority in American society, de-facto, support the governmental actions on improving public safety, therefore consenting with correspondent limitation of personal rights and freedoms.

It’s natural that almost any citizen wishes to reduce crime rates nd will willingly temporarily waive some civil rights like the freedom of movement for the purpose of protection of his life, health and private property. The idea of potential terrorist attack remains in the minds of our citizens and enriches the soil for reasonable and unreasonable expansion of state authorities’ powers. Hillary Clinton once stated unequivocally that national security is not only more important than human rights on the international stage, but that it takes domestic supremacy as well (Snedeker, 2007).

Barack Obama demonstrates balanced and reasonable national security policy, much less aggressive than previous President, but still attempts to save and multiply the best of recent achievements in homeland security and protection. Speaking on the other side, many intelligent people, social leaders and human rights activists strongly oppose the statement that national security is more important than personal human rights.

Jane Smiley, Pulitzer-Prize winning novelist and essayist defends the human rights priority with the popular historical argument: “The Founding Fathers understood the temptation on the part of governments to give and remove human rights arbitrarily, because they had experienced such things before the Revolutionary War, (…) recognized that although British Law customarily acknowledged various human rights, it was essential to name, codify, and write them down to make it less likely that they could be taken away”.

Nonetheless earlier in this essay it is proved that the historical experience of the U. S. is irrelevant for this situation, as there have been profound changes in international relations, technological abilities and domestic challenges in the U. S. policy which it never addressed earlier. Also, Smiley claims rolling back human rights, “even for some individuals, is to return to a more primitive, hierarchical, and un-American theory of human relations”. But what actually constitutes “the American theory of human relations” and why the proposed approach is more primitive?

Such claims seem to be more emotional than rational. On emotional level, no one likes limitation of his personal freedom and waiver of his personal benefits. Logical ratio easily proves that the individual benefits depend largely on the benefits available in the society, and in the society where access to information, persons and property can be easily gained with high-tech equipment the complex measures should be taken on the very high level to guarantee the security and wellness of all its members. National security strategies should take into consideration the relevance of human rights and development. The goal of protecting human security will supplement the existing strategies for protecting national security” states Kumar, C. Raj (2005). Searching for the balance between security and freedom we need to defend our nation, and each of us is its priceless part.

Works Cited

http://www.justice.gov/archive/ll/highlights.htm

On June 2002, President George Bush proposed to create the Department of Homeland Security – a move considered to be the most significant transformation of the US government whereby a single department has been tasked to protect America’s homeland from terrorist attacks. As noted in the Department’s website, the vision of the organization is to preserve the freedom of the United States and its homeland. Its mission is to lead the unified national effort to secure America.

It has aimed to prevent and deter terrorist attacks and protect against and respond to threats and hazards to the US. Furthermore, the organization has vowed, as part of its mission, to safe and secure borders, welcome lawful immigrants and visitors, and to promote the free flow of commerce. (US Department of Homeland Security website, 2002)

The organizational structure of the Department of Homeland Security has several components which involve resources within Federal, state and local governments. The following are the directorates and their components: Directorate for Preparedness, Directorate for Science and Technology, Directorate for Management, Office of Intelligence and Analysis, Office of Operations Coordination, Directorate for Policy, Domestic Nuclear Detection Office.

The Directorate for Preparedness works with state, local, and private sector partners to identify threats, determine vulnerabilities, and target resources where risk is greatest, thereby safeguarding our borders, seaports, bridges and highways, and critical information systems. The Office of the Directorate for Science and Technology is the primary research and development arm of the Department.  It provides Federal, state and local officials with the technology and capabilities to protect the homeland.

The Directorate for Management is responsible for Department budgets and appropriations, expenditure of funds, accounting and finance, procurement; human resources, information technology systems, facilities and equipment, and the identification and tracking of performance measurements. Finally, the Directorate for Policy works to enhance the nuclear detection efforts of Federal, State, territorial, tribal, and local governments, and the private sector and to ensure a coordinated response to such threats. (US Department of Homeland Security website, 2002)

Aside from the Offices of the Directorates, the US Homeland Department also has independent organizations including the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), Transportation Security Administration (TSA), Customs and Borders Protection, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), Federal Law Enforcement Training Center, Citizenship and Immigration Services, the US Coast Guard, and the US Secret Service.

The functions and main responsibilities of these agencies are as follows: FEMA prepares the nation for hazards, manages Federal response and recovery efforts following any national incident, and administers the National Flood Insurance Program. TSA protects the nation’s transportation systems to ensure freedom of movement for people and commerce. Customs and Borders Protection is responsible for protecting America’s borders in order to prevent terrorists and terrorist weapons from entering the United States, while facilitating the flow of legitimate trade and travel. ICE is responsible for identifying and shutting down vulnerabilities in the nation’s border, economic, transportation and infrastructure security.

Federal Law Enforcement Training Center provides career-long training to law enforcement professionals to help them fulfill their responsibilities safely and proficiently. Citizenship and Immigration Services is responsible for the administration of immigration and naturalization adjudication functions and establishing immigration services policies and priorities. The US Coast Guard protects the public, the environment, and U.S. economic interests—in the nation’s ports and waterways, along the coast, on international waters, or in any maritime region as required to support national security. (US Department of Homeland Security website, 2002)

Conclusion and analysis

The aftermath of 9/11 has made America more conscious of its homeland security. And rightfully, it is so. The loss of innocent lives and the repercussions it made to the economy of the United States will serve as a reminder that we have to be on vigilant on the evil motives of some countries.

The current structure of the US Department of Homeland Security has so far proven itself effective in carrying out its primary task of protecting America and its citizens against any threat to the nation’s freedom and independence.

After carefully identifying and studying the organization chart of the Department of Homeland Security, I am of the opinion that everything has been placed exactly where they should be. Obviously, the move to cluster all agencies related to security and the protection of America’s homeland was carefully thought out. So far, the issue on security and preparedness in terms of calamities, whether natural or otherwise, has been properly addressed by this Department. Since America has not yet experienced another 9/11, it would seem to me that the Department of Homeland Security has been doing its job perfectly.

References:

The US Department of Homeland Security [online]

Available at: http://www.dhs.gov/dhspublic/

Cited on: April 30, 2006

The White House [online]

Available at: http://www.whitehouse.gov/infocus/homeland/index.html

Cited on: April 30, 2006

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