Blog 14: Independent Component 1

• Literal
• I, Carlos Cerrillos affirm that I completed my independent component which represents 32.5 hours of work.
• My main source of information regarding company needs for computer requirements was my mentor Maria, I worked with her to plan how we would go about replacing everyone's computers. The article "The Nuts and Bolts of Making BYOD Work." by Brent Gatewood was helpful due to the laptops-as-desktops scenario being similar to a BYOD infrastructure.
• Independent Component 1 Log
• Interpretive
• The work I did was essential to my senior project as an important part of IT deals with setting up new technologies, making sure that they work & that the employees have the knowledge to use them, which applied to my earlier EQ.

 The only new desktop we purchased as the employee doesn't need to work on the go.

 A picture I took of the office printer's model number so I could find the drivers online.

 Optimizing settings for the printer & creating presents for Color/BW/Double-sided.

 Installing those necessary programs.

 A little Gandalf reference while I was waiting for loading bars >_>

 A shot of the HP laptops we chose.

 Working on two computers at once, the other laptop is connected to the monitor in the background and can be seen on the left.

 Another computer.

 Yay! The 2TB WD drives arrived!!

 Fitting two of the hard drives at the bottom of the server case.

 A shot of one of the WD hard drives.

 Two more of the 5 hard drives at the top& the arrow points to the CD drive that I had to remove.

 Wiring up the power for drives.

 Enabling the drives in the server's BIOS.

 Checking in the operating system to see if all the drives are being properly detected.

 Stickers that come with the drives.

 My hands would have been dirtier if the server hadn't been cleaned a few months back.

Semi unrelated, but while I was at the Jeved office I noticed that Ale had put up the flyers I had made for AgaveGirls (a part of Jeved) over the last year. If you look closely you can see the reflection of my Tardis slippers, it was Sunday, and I wanted to go to mentorship in comfort x]. I felt proud of my work being displayed :]


• Applied
• This component help me understand the foundation of my topic by working on the back bone of IT which is the actual hardware, and learning what it takes to set it all up. Along with teaching the employees how to make the most of their technologies.

Blog 13: Lesson 2 Reflection

1) What are you most proud of in your Lesson 2 Presentation and why?

• I felt most proud of my PowerPoint as I believe that it was able to deliver the content I was trying to teach in an efficient way in case the class was not paying attention to what I was saying. I also believe that it was a great PowerPoint as it followed the 1/3 rule and wasn't too text heavy.

2A) What assessment would you give yourself on your Lesson 2 Presentation?

• I would give myself a P on this presentation.

2B) Explain Why you deserve that grade using evidence from the Lesson 2 component contract.

• I feel I deserve a P because I met all the P considerations along with no concerns with any professionalism, organization/creativity, answer justification or audience involvement.

3) What worked for you in your Lesson 2?

• I met the time requirements and was able to deliver my content effectively.

4) If you had a time machine, what would you have done differently to improve your Lesson 2?

• I would probably try to get more iPads or use the computer lab and allow students more time to research CRMs in the activity, or create set of hand outs that contained consolidated information. I also would like to include parts of an infographic in my next presentation.

5) What do you think your answer 2 is going to be?

• Something along the lines of making services in house or making sure that any work can be done on the go if needed.

Blog 9: EQ

1. I reviewed the rule of three for writing an EQ.
2. Review the following EQs
1. What is the most important factor in healthy weight loss?
• I believe this EQ does not meet the rule of 3 criteria, factor is not plural, and therefore a student may believe that there is only one best factor to health weight loss, which will go against the need for depth of research.
2. What is most important to securing a conviction in a criminal investigation?
• Just as my answer for the first EQ, I do not believe this meets the rule of 3 criteria, as its wording implies that there is only one correct answer; it also has a strange format.
3. What is most important in creating a hairstyle that best satisfies a customer?
• This EQ has the same problem as the first two, and "best satisfies" is ambiguous as each customer is different.
4. How can an Anesthesiologist best treat chronic pain?
• This EQ could potentially have some problems as well, as chronic pain can be caused by different things.
3. Based on your review of the rule of 3 and your experience with assessing four EQs, please write another draft EQ for your senior project.
• What are significant factors that result in a successful IT department.

October Blog Post: IT & Internet Security

It goes without saying, security in IT is very important, without network security financial information for every person that uses a bank could easily have their information stolen and sold on a black market. A job in in network security can easily earn you six figures a year, and there is an ever increasing demand for network security analysts and the like ever increasing in a world that is moving many of its data to the cloud.

Plot of the salary for IS professionals throughout the US.

At Jeved management we have to worry about our online storage accounts with services such as Box and Dropbox being secure in the event of an information leak from the company. IT needs not worry just about the actual information being stored with the services being secure, but the databases owned by the companies that contain the financial and log-in information for each of the employees, as with any website that the company has its employees use.

Folder hierarchy for Jeved Management on their Box account.

In order to efficiently and effectively manage its employee's passwords, Jeved has an Enterprise account with a service called LastPass that allows the employees to have their passwords saved in a centralized database, and the IT at Jeved can set restrictions on passwords that require them to be complex.

As you can see Jeved is only using about 8% of the available features, it will be my job to setup and configure the rest of those features.

I am writing about network security and its role in IT as my research has been leading me towards articles that deal with having secure networks, but also due to a Cyber Security Fair that I attended at Cal Poly Pomona in which speakers presented on the importance of making sure things are secure in an age where there are increasing security threats everyday.

Cyber Security Fair Flyer.

An interesting and quite fun part of the Fair was on the idea of penetration testing which is where a company will hire a consultant to try to break into their system by any means necessary to find any security flaws that may exist. This included a hands on activity that made use of a $35 dollar computer the size of a credit card called the Raspberry Pi.

The Awesomeness that is the Raspberry Pi, I do own one, but I use it as a media center.

We used the Raspberry Pi to exploit weaknesses in a target computer to show how easy and scary it is for a "bad guy" to break into a computer or network and steal information or just wreck havoc. This presentation taught me that making sure your devices are up to date and have any security updates installed as our target computer was a desktop with Windows 7 that had little to no updates installed. This definitely showed the importance of making sure things are up to date as Windows 7 is what the computers at Jeved use, and is not an outdated OS either, meaning there are many more people in the world that are vulnerable to exploits.

A screenshot of metasploit being used to exploit a server, the very last line states that the user id # of the terminal that the exploit was able to open on the target server is id # 0, otherwise know as the root account which also a hacker to have full control over the server D:

Blog 8: Research and Working EQ

1.  What is your working EQ?

• What are significant factors that lead to a successful IT department?

2.  What is a possible answer to your working EQ?

• Full adaptation and use of new technologies or services in a workplace can be achieved through on-the-job training for employees.
• Extensive research of services and their implementation can help the transition between different services or workflows.

3.  What is the most important source you have used that has helped you come up with an answer to your working EQ?

• I feel that my most important source of information would have to be my mentor as she has on the job experience over many years, and I actually get to have hands-on experience. Besides that I feel my second most important source of information was the article titled "How IT workers learn in the workplace" because an IT department can be considered successful when the employees can properly use what has been put forth by the IT department, and one of the best ways to achieve that is through training.

4.  Who is your mentor, or where are you volunteering, and how does what you are doing relate to your working EQ?

• My mentor is Maria Tarozzi, IT Director at Jeved Management, and the actions she takes to improve the technology at Jeved Management are examples of possible answers to my EQ. Some of these examples include detailed documentation of services and their hiearchy, making sure all employees understand the services the company wants them to use, and searching for new services/technology to fit any of the company's needs.

Blog 7: Independent Component 1 Approval

1.  Describe in detail what you plan to do for your 30 hours.

• The company I am currently mentoring in, Jeved Management, is going to be purchasing new computers for the office workstations soon and I plan to help conduct the research as to what computers would be best. Ultimately I will help to set them up and make sure that all the programs and services that necessary are available.

2.  Discuss how or what you will do to meet the expectation of showing 30 hours of evidence.

• I plan to document the process of research, along with screenshots of working on computer configurations with in-depth descriptions, documentation and descriptions of the programs and services that are going to be used, and of course, photos of me in the office preparing and installing the new workstations.

3.  And explain how what you will be doing will help you explore your topic in more depth.

• IT departments at one time or another must get new gear for the company, either for everyone or just someone whose needs aren't being met, and it is their job to research the needs of the employees and find what it will take to meet those needs for the company with the budget at hand.

4.  Post a log on the right hand side of your blog near your mentorship log and call it the independent component 1 log.

September Post

It's the end of September, and I am not too satisfied with the amount of work I've put into my mentorship this month. I was able to put in some hours of work in the beginning of September working on some more service integrations with CloudHQ and Zapier. Unfortunately some of the passwords have been changed and I have not yet received an update on what they are, so I cannot show the CloudHQ dashboard (which is too bad because I really enjoyed using CloudHQ). But here is a screenshot of one of the "Zaps" that is being used in Zapier to sync Nimble (an online CRM) with Google Contacts.

Here is a screenshot of one of the "Zaps" that is being used in Zapier

to sync Nimble (an online CRM) with Google Contacts.

Something that I think was also important was creating an IT calendar of important dates for things such as password changes, quota checks, data archival, and domain renewals. I've learned that those are some important routine tasks that
con be influential in a successful IT department (Possible EQ answers!!!!), and that was all from making a calendar to help remind the staff make sure those tasks are not forgotten.

The image above is a Agenda view of the important IT dates

for Jeved Management until Jan 1, 2014.

By looking at the calendar you can see that a pretty big day (October 1st) is coming up, and I will surely be busy completing the routine tasks. But what just may be the most important tasks are the "Service Audit" and "Service Renewal". These two tasks require the IT staff to analyse the usage of the services that are being used and those that are not. Depending on the results, services such as Google Apps will be renewed, while services such as WiseStamp will be cancelled as it is no longer needed (we have decided to replace it with BrandMyMail). A properly conducted service audit can help the infrastructure set up by IT to run more efficiently and to remove any unnecessary expenses. Therefore, I am lead to believe that Service Audits are an essential part of a successful IT department.