Exam 17: Managing Information

The first company to gain first-mover advantage typically benefits from higher profits and larger market share.

____ are a hybrid of executive information systems and intranets.

Which of the following is NOT an example of a security problem that may threaten data and data networks?

The two basic methods of capturing information are continuous and periodic.

The term ____ refers to facts and figures that are in an unusable form.

What is data mining? Describe the two kinds of data mining. How can data mining be used to invade the privacy of individuals, given the large amount of data that is collected and stored electronically on people in their everyday transactions?

City of London For over a century, the city of London, England has had the worst traffic in Europe. Drivers spend half of their time not moving in their vehicles, and the average speed is 9 mph, down from 12 mph in 1903 when traffic consisted of horses and carriages instead of cars and trucks. To improve traffic, Ken Livingstone, the mayor of London, imposed a "Congestion Zone" fee of £8 (about $13) per day for any vehicle that enters the eight square miles of central London between 7 a.m. and 6:30 p.m. on weekdays. Drivers who come into the zone but don't pay will be fined any where from £60 ($96) to £180 ($290). The Transport for London and the consultants it hired broke the project into several different steps. First, 688 cameras were used in 203 locations to take accurate pictures of vehicles entering the congestion zone. At each camera site, a color and a black and white camera were used for each lane of traffic that was being monitored. In general, the cameras are only 90% accurate in reading the license plate numbers on the cars. But, with 688 cameras in total, multiple pictures are taken of each car, and partial pictures of license plates are matched with complete pictures, with the former tossed and the latter retained. Next, the pictures from the cameras are sent via a dedicated fiber-optic cable to an "image management store." Fiber-optic cables were needed because they're the biggest and fastest "pipes" available for sending data from one place to another. The lines were also dedicated so that the system was completely closed and secure. If other systems or networks went down, the congestion zone network would be unaffected. An "image management store" is basically a huge farm of networked, redundant servers. If one server goes down, you've got multiple backup servers running live with the same data. A huge farm of network servers was needed because the city anticipated processing a million pictures a day (again, remember that multiple pictures are taken of the 250,000 cars entering the zone each day). Once the pictures are snapped, transported via fiber-optic cable, and placed in the image management store, the next step is reading the license plate in the picture and then turning that image into readable text that actually matches license plate records already stored in government databases. Transport of London uses software that scans digitized documents-in this case, digital pictures-into ASCII text and then matches and compares multiple pictures of the same license plate. For example, imagine that a license plate is 12345678 and that the congestion cameras get three partial pictures (12345, 34567, and 5678) and one complete picture (12345678). The software had to be able to know that all four pictures were from the same vehicle, and then it had to know that it should use the last picture (12345678) and not the partial pictures when converting the picture to text. Finally, once the license plate was converted to text, the license plate number would then be matched with an existing license plate already recorded in a government database. At that point, congestion zone charges are linked with whoever owns the vehicles. -Refer to City of London. What basic method of capturing information does the City of London use to identify and fine automobile drivers that enter the city's "Congestion Zone"?

Which of the following statements about firewalls is true?

A(n) ____ allows companies to exchange information and conduct transactions by purposefully providing outsiders with direct, Web browser-based access to authorized parts of a company's intranet.

Electronic data interchange, or EDI, is the direct electronic transmission of purchase and ordering information from one company's computer system to another company's computer system.

The goal of an executive information system (EIS) is to ____.

Because they are inexpensive and easy to use, ____, which convert printed text and pictures into digital images, have become an increasingly popular method for capturing data electronically.

By examining checkout data, supermarkets have learned that people who are buying beer typically also buy a bag of salty snacks. As a result of this finding from ____, supermarkets often place displays of beer near the chips and pretzel aisle.

According to the resource-based view of information technology, sustainable competitive advantage occurs when information technology adds value, is different across firms, and is difficult to create or acquire.

A company has built a(n) ____ that will automate its purchasing transactions and other e-commerce activities with its small- to mid-size suppliers. It will provide thousands of the company's suppliers with secure access to critical trading partner information and will facilitate trading partner automation.

Electronic data interchange (EDI), extranets, and the Internet have proven to provide such a competitive advantage that managers are scrambling to find ways to use them in their own companies.

Two critical steps are required to make sure that data can be accessed by authorized users and no one else. They are ____.

Data encryption transforms data into complex, scrambled digital codes that can only be unencrypted by authorized users who possess unique decryption keys.

Bar codes and document scanners are common methods of electronically capturing data.

Why is information strategically important for organizations?