Impact of Telephone on Society - Essay Example

Impact of Telephone on Society November/ 17 Engineering designing & communication Section Assignment: Impact of Technology Mohamed Abdulkarim 200349491 Contribution to Human Health and Welfare The mobile computing technology incorporates small sensors that are used for receiving and processing health information. Likewise, these sensors consume very low power and intelligent, as they can take decisions. Moreover, apart from these sensors, there are devices that can be tagged on wrists of patient to collect and monitor health data. Likewise, this equipment incorporates sensors, electronic board, a display unit and wireless/Bluetooth connectivity to transmit data. All these items are integrated in portable equipment compatible with environments associated with healthcare. Moreover, the cloths utilized by healthcare are tailored via fiber incorporated by optical and electronic mechanisms. Furthermore, houses that are called as health smart homes are used for providing medical treatments that may lead to substantial cost cuttings. In addition, all the discussed healthcare technologies are incorporated with devices that can communicate wirelessly along with high value delivery, flexibility, quality in terms of health care and opportunity for the patients to cure early. Conclusively, the contribution of mobile computing assist and support the caregivers and health care providers to access patient information on immediate basis and prescribe, treat a patient regardless of their geographical location, genre, race, religion etc. Social Impact on Society via Technology Studies revealed that for improving the quality of health care, monitoring mechanisms must be efficient and effective. The effective monitoring mechanism will transfer information related to vital signs accurately and robustly, resulting in an instant transfer of medical information and response time from a caregiver or doctor. However, to make the monitoring mechanism effective, there is no solution so far except the integration of social networking sites empowered with mobile computing such as Mobile Health Monitoring (MHM) (Brahnam & Jain, ). After the integration, these systems have proven to be efficient and reliable, as they facilitate continuous connectivity of patient’s vital signs to the caregiver or doctors (Brahnam & Jain,). (Brahnam & Jain,) Magrabi along with other researchers has constructed a web based system that will be utilized for monitoring patients located at home and suffering from a disease called as cystic fibrosis. The system is fully equipped and works in a standard browser that becomes active whenever new data of a patient is transmitted. Moreover, the system also reviews patient medical history and sends reminders and suggestions via email to both the caregiver and the patient as well (Brahnam & Jain,). However, one problem is not addressed yet, which is the absence of instant monitoring mechanism of the patient’s body, as it will be achievable by incorporating sensors attached to the body. In contrast, the mobile health monitoring system comprises of micro sensors, wrist devices, health smart clothes and health smart homes. All these devices are capable of capturing vital signs and transmitting them to the social networking sites via mobile communication (Brahnam & Jain,). Negative Impact and Consequences There are some negative consequences by integration mobile devices into healthcare equipment, processes and treatments. For instance, there are radiations from microwave signals that are emitted by one of the devices capable of wireless connectivity and sensors. Moreover, a risk is always residing for exposing medical information of any patient to unauthorized users or hackers. Hu, Jiang, & Xiao (2008) performed a research on a healthcare system associated with cardiac patient. Likewise, the system has a low cost wireless sensor connectivity utilized for monitoring a patient with cardiac disease. The major objective of this application was to use the communication mechanism for establishing telecardiology sensor networking that will be acting as a monitoring mechanism for remote electrocardiography (ECG). Likewise, there were two more mechanisms that were integrated within the system i.e. wireless sensor network and mobile communication device that was available to the patients (Hu, Jiang, & Xiao, 2008). These systems were designed to identify and collect vital signs received from the patients via an ECG identification system. Moreover, the identified data is processed and transmitted to the wireless receiver that uses radio waves, as processing will be carried out after its transmission (Hu, Jiang, & Xiao, 2008). Correspondingly, the second mechanism was associated with the theory of wavelength analysis. Likewise, the activation of this theory was application to monitor and process patient data. Accordingly, the collected medical data is accessed via doctors and caregivers for reviewing, diagnosing or prescribing on any cardiovascular disease (Hu, Jiang, & Xiao, 2008). In addition, the recommended solution also has the capability of saving ECG signals, however, saving these signals is a time consuming activity along with a probability of human error (Hu, Jiang, & Xiao, 2008). Economical Contribution Threats are now transforming in a more intelligent attack mechanisms where firewalls, antivirus and generic security controls are not sufficient to mitigate risks associated with advanced persistent threats. In this modern era, mobile devices are no more for just receiving and making calls, we are moving towards mobile computing. Likewise, mobile operating systems are under development with more features and bundled applications. Similarly, for handling these advanced operating systems that are rich in features, powerful hardware architecture with quad core and octa-core processors is in demand. Besides, there are significant vulnerabilities and hidden risks that are embedded within these rich featured smart phones and tablets. Employees are habitual of using these devices all the time and at the workplace as well. This may lead to significant risks, as these devices are connected to internal wireless local area network/access points that are connected to the organizations’ computer network. For instance, a malware installs itself within the Smartphone or tablet and travels from the smart phone to the rogue access point and then to the targeted machines containing personal identification information. A very popular malware known as ‘flame’ was specially designed to perform surveillance, as it records voice, data, mobile contacts, emails, compromise Bluetooth application for fetching data from Bluetooth connectivity (Hatahet, Bouabdallah, & Challal, 2010). Internal attacks have the highest percentage of threat to the organizations assets rather than the hacker who makes it away from the outside network. As per Gartner, 70% of security incident occur internally i.e. from the organization premises (Dickerson, 2004). Similarly, these devices are used internally within the organization and may result in system compromise if not monitored and controlled properly. Checkpoint conducted a survey of around 800 Information Technology professionals from Germany, United States, Japan, Canada and United Kingdom. The results of the report revealed that almost 90% of IT professionals have mobile devices and almost 65% of them grants access to mobile computing devices to be connected to the organization’s network. Likewise, some of them have more than one mobile computing device running on two different mobile operating systems. As these devices have more than 50% personal data, the impact can be tagged as ‘High’. An administrative control for controlling and monitoring ‘Bring Your Own Device’ BYOD is to create BYOD policy and initiate information security awareness programming to increase awareness among an organization’s employees. Negative Impact and Consequences Spywares can be installed in the mobile devices that may collect all the personal data from the cell phone and transfer to the hacker. FLAME spyware is a good example, as it investigates and collects all the personal data from mobile devices and submits the data to the hacker. This is a cascading risk, as the hacker may have data related to the victim as well all the other people. Likewise, home addresses and personal information is extracted from the hacker resulting in a robbery due to an exposed wealth status. In order to mitigate risks and associated vulnerable issues from mobile computing, certification provides recognition and enables the organization to address and deploy processes associated with operations. Likewise, for an organization providing mobile services to be certified, time is required for addressing systems that are considered to be key assets and needs to be operational at all times. Moreover, effectively patch management practices comes into practice, where logs are created and can be monitored. One cannot mitigate risks completely but can negotiate with the available risk appetite and the threats that may affect the organization. For identifying any vulnerability, penetration testing is required along with secure code review of the applications that will be installed on the mobile device such as mobile operation system, mobile apps, mobile tools etc. Solution to Mitigate Highlighted Risks To mitigate risks, there are various tools available that can identity current and potential risks that can portray a vulnerability to the mobile operation system or a mobile application. For example, any activity related to change management needs to be addresses, whether it is in terms of hardware compatibility or software compatibility, as there is a risk of any vulnerability to be introduced if there are software and hardware compatibility issues. Furthermore, if there is any change in business process or procedures, it must be documented, approved and reviewed by the application owner, process owner and IT security or chief information security officer. For instance, if a change is about to be made in the mobile application, a change must be raised via a change request process along with the concurrence of relevant stakeholders (Mitigating security threats by minimizing software attack surfaces.2008). Following are the factors that need to be considered on all critical servers: Uninstalling unwanted software/applications Removal of default passwords Removal of default ports Removal of additional user accounts Make the source code repository password protected Scan the system on periodic basis Conclusion The cellular technology is a blessing, as it makes communication easier regardless of location, distance, weather conditions etc. The contributing of this technology to the society is massive in terms of advantages it portrays to the community. Likewise, its contribution to healthcare out weights any other benefits; however, there are some negative aspects as well such as microwave signals that may impact health. Moreover, there are numerous cyber hacking techniques introduced by this technology. Malware are now designed to penetrate in the system as well as in the cell phone. Flame is a good example, as it penetrates from one system to another and one mobile phone to another. Furthermore, if the cell phone is stolen, all the personal data, images, videos will be in the hand of a stranger, who can use it to blackmail the victim.References Dickerson, C. (2004). The top 20 IT mistakes. InfoWorld, 26(47), 34. Hatahet, S., Bouabdallah, A., & Challal, Y. (2010). A new worm propagation threat in BitTorrent: Modeling and analysis. Telecommunication Systems, 45(2), 95-109. doi:10.1007/s11235-009-9241-2 Mitigating security threats by minimizing software attack surfaces.(2008). Computer Economics Report, 30(5), 15-19. Brahnam, S., & Jain, L. C.Advanced computational intelligence paradigms in healthcare 5: Intelligent decision support systems (studies in computational intelligence) Springer. Hu, F., Jiang, M., & Xiao, Y. (2008). Low-cost wireless sensor networks for remote cardiac patients monitoring applications. Wireless Communications & Mobile Computing, 8(4), 513-529. doi:10.1002/wcm.488 Le, X. H., Khalid, M., Sankar, R., & Lee, S. (2011). An efficient mutual authentication and access control scheme for wireless sensor networks in healthcare. Journal of Networks, 6(3), 355-364. doi:10.4304/jnw.6.3.355-364 Read More