Discussion Post

You work for a medium-sized IT firm and your boss mentions that recently a number of employees have received calls from individuals who didn’t identify themselves and asked a lot of questions about the company and its computer infrastructure. At first, he thought this was just a computer software vendor who was trying to sell your company some new product, but no vendor has approached the company. He also says several strange e-mails requesting personal information have been sent to employees. There have also been outsiders searching your company’s trash dumpsters for recyclable containers. Your boss asks what you think about all of these strange incidents. Respond and be sure to provide recommendations on what should be done to secure your company’s private and personal data – both electronically and in terms of what data may be going in the dumpster.  Include a detailed response on why employees should never answer any questions about their company’s computer infrastructure to nonauthorized individuals. 

Directions:

 For each discussion, you are required to write an initial post (300 words) and one secondary post (200 words).  The discussion forums will be worth 30 points apiece—20 points for the initial post and 10 points for the secondary post.  For your initial post, you must have two (2) academic peer-reviewed articles for references. References must be current within the last 5 years or points will be deducted.  You may include academic journal reviews.  
All discussions must be completed on-time and must include in-text citations and references in APA style formatting. If you do not use in-text citations or they are not in APA format you will lose points.  If you do not have references or if they are not in APA format, you will lose points. (You do not need citations and references for secondary posts).
You will lose 10% based on word count if your posts are too short.  For example, your initial post is 300 words, if you have 250 words you will lose 5 points.  50 words short times 10% (50 x .10 = 5).
 If any part of your post is copied and pasted (ANY POST), you will receive a “0”.  I will not ask you about it and you will not have a chance to resubmit the post. If you post an identical submission to another student’s post, you will receive a 0. 
 Discussions will run from Monday to Sunday, after which discussion postings will not count for grades. The post to your peer is due by Sunday evening by 11:59 p.m. ET. No discussions are accepted after the week ends.