Project - Secure Email

In this project we learned to digitally sign an email and to encrypt email. Unfortunately I sent my encrypted email but with the wrong subject. I replied to the signed email and didn't change the subject so at the last minute I sent Professor Means another email hoping to get a reply but I do show that I did send two emails. (see pictures below) Another part of the project was to find an article about secure emails.

In this article (see link) it discusses how an employee of the NSA used secure emails to send information to a reporter. So it demonstrates how even when a company or the government agency has secured emails, that there are ways around it. The reporter and NSA source purchased premium Hushmail accounts that allowed the users to send and recieve emails without disclosing the sender or recipient's identity. The Justice Department states that the NSA employee volunteered to disclose classified information about the NSA that he was not authorized to possess or disclose. How does a company protect from this? The decision of the Obama's administration to prosecute might have an impact on whistleblowers but what kind of impact does it have on keeping information from "leaking" out.

If I receive a reply on the mistake I made I will update my blog. I thought it might be best to turn in the project and take a hit on a few points for having the wrong subject than taking 25% for being late.

To make it worse I fell asleep and just woke up at 12:35am!!!!

Assignment - Database project

Although I have used a Access based program that was created for my other company, this was the first time that I have used it from beginning to end for my own use. Everything we did was new to me. We had to create a table, import data, run queries and reports. In the system that we used all I ever had to do was to input information and run reports.
I can see the usefulness of Access over Excel. Due to prior experience I know that Access allows multiple users which for many companies is great. Access also allows for a larger data storage.
I found this project much harder than excel.

Excel Project

This project was divided into two parts for me. The easy and routine part and the NEW and learning part. The first part of the project was to format and manipulate the raw data. This section was the easiest part of the project. I have worked with Excel and have taken various courses on working with Excel. The general formatting of the sheet was very easy. The manipulating of the data was a higher degree of difficulty but nothing that I found very hard. Working with equations is something I had to do almost daily in my previous job.

The second section of the project was to create two pivot tables. Although this topic has been covered in most of the Excel courses that I have taken, I feel that if you don't put this knowledge to practice you forget what you have learned. The first section I completed in much less than an hour. Creating the pivot tables took me more time. I encountered difficulties while working on the first pivot table. I keep looking at my numbers and they didn't look correct. I went round and round until I finally realized that I had to change it from sum to count. After that the second table was easier and quicker to complete.