Olivet Nazarene University

 

What are ways people can guard their home computers and online information from identity theft?

First, don't share sensitive information with anyone that you don't have to and don't trust.

For example, be wary when registering for free or special offers on the Internet. Once these organizations have your information, you are depending on them to protect your information.

Second, recognize and avoid social engineering scams where email or websites pose as trusted organizations requesting private information.

Financial information should only be exchanged over a secure website that can be recognized with a URL address beginning with https:// and your browser should indicate that it is connected to a secure site by usually a padlock icon.

Third, keep your operating system, browser, and other application software updated.

Fourth, use strong passwords and take the management of your passwords seriously.

Fifth, make sure you have anti-virus software installed and update its virus database regularly. You can also keep a system firewall turned on to protect against various other types of Internet attacks.

What are some up and coming technologies not widely known about yet?

WEB 2.0 technologies such as Instant Messaging, social networking (e.g. Facebook), portals (e.g. BlackBoard), and wikis (e.g. Wikipedia) are empowering all users to create useful web content without any assistance from IT professionals.

This truly is the democratization of our world. The power is being shifted to the masses who have access to the Internet where they can publish ideas and also collect and process information .

Bio-metric authentication could change the way we gain access to physical or information resources.

This is most commonly realized as fingerprint or retina scan access to buildings or computer systems. These systems continue to be perfected and price points will drop as they are accepted on a wide scale.

Alternative computing machine architectures are being tested such as quantum, chemical, and biological computers.

These may eventually surpass some of the limitations of today's solid state chip technologies. These could widely impact the future of computing as we know it.

With the rapid pace of technology and programming changing all the time, how do you stay up to date as a teacher?

Knowledge is advancing faster than anyone in any field can assimilate, even if learning were their full-time job. I teach a wide variety of classes for which new textbooks come out every time I teach those classes.

I review several books before selecting a text and then study them carefully with my students. When several experts in a sub-field agree that something is important, I listen. I listen to my students because they have investigated things they think are important.

I subscribe to some professional journals and read to keep current. There are also weekly technical news subscriptions that I read for trends and electronic news feeds.

This past spring semester, Olivet granted me sabbatical leave where I worked as a software engineer in Frederick, Maryland. I designed and developed a database application this summer.

I also attended a computer science educator conference this fall which helped to see what is important to a wider group of professionals.