To begin this assignment, students will pick a current event within the last year. The event must align with one of the six issues that are covered in your textbook.

These six issues are:

1. Ownership of Mass Media Businesses
2. Sports
3. Fake News
4. Advertising
5. Media Violence
6. Privacy

Write an 800-word essay in APA Style that identifies the key ideas of the event:

• How did the media shape the event/story?
• How did others react to the way it was portrayed in the media?
• Did others create movements based on the way the media portrayed the event?
• Did people react differently in other parts of the world?
• How was the event shaped by various information systems?

DO NOT include the questions within your essay and make sure you’re not summarizing the event. The essay should provide examples, sources, and facts to back up your claims. This project is going to require you to be resourceful. You will need to do research outside of your textbook. You will be required to use sources that are reputable and factual. Wikipedia and tabloids are not a good source to use.

Directions for Capstone Project Part 1: Introduction:

• Word count for the body of the essay: 800. Going under or over the word count will be counted against your overall grade for the assignment.
• Times New Roman 12pt. font double-spaced.
• Must be written in third person. DO NOT include yourself or your name in the essay.
• Needs to be in APA style: A cover page, running header, citations within the body of the essay, and a reference page at the end.
• Submit it as a Word document ONLY.
• Paragraphs should have proper punctuation, grammar, and structure. Practice the proper writing skills you learned in ENC 1101 & ENC 1102.
• You will need to do substantial research to support your claims before you start writing.
• View rubric to meet the expectations of the assignment.
• Similarity index within TurnItIn should be 25% or lower. Higher similarity indexes will receive an automatic zero.

Create an essay that addresses each of the following points/questions below. The purpose of this is to familiarize yourself with strategic planning and its tenets.

Be sure to begin with an outline about what you want to discuss in your essay. Pay attention to the topics below. Next, begin drafting and revising your ideas into a Word document that you will follow when recording/discussing the content in your essay. Be sure to ask for a peer review by a friend or family member. At first, just get ideas down. Once you have the content you want, you can finish editing it by paying attention to small details.

• Explain Porter’s generic business strategies and provide an example of each strategy.
• Describe Porter’s Five Forces Model. Why do organizations use Porter’s Model? Address any weaknesses you see in Porter’s Five Forces. Is the model still relevant today? Provide a Five Forces analysis (nothing extensive) of a Fortune 500 company of your choice.
• Research the mission statements of three Fortune 500 companies and address the following points/questions:

• What makes the missions statements impactful or not?
• Do the mission statements have any similarities between them, and if so, what are they?
• Do you find the lengths of the mission statements at all relevant?

If you had to revise or develop anew each of the mission statements, how would the new mission statements read?  Also, develop three objectives (for each company) that will help the companies fulfill their “new” missions.

Note: it is recommended to do a little research and/or gather some knowledge on the companies before developing their new mission statements and objectives.

Length: 1800 words not including title and reference page

Structure: Include a title page and reference page in APA style. These do not count towards the minimal word amount for this assignment.

References: Use the appropriate APA style in-text citations and references for all resources utilized to answer the questions. Include at least three (3) scholarly sources to support your claims.

M5D1: Business Management Systems

This activity addresses the following module outcome:

• MO2: Evaluate the connections between human resourcesinformation systems, business to employees’ communications, workforce productivity, and compliance with federal employment law. (CO2)

In preparation for this discussion, please read the required material and watch the assigned videos, then respond to the following:

In your initial post, answer the following questions from the textbook:

1. What are the key HR functions?
2. What are the benefits of moving HRISs to intranets or the cloud?
3. What concerns have deterred companies from implementing SaaS HR?
4. How can companies reduce the cost of recruiting qualified employees?
5. DescribeIT support for HR planning and control.

(Turban et al., 2017).

In your response, complete the following:

1. Identify additional SaaS HR concerns not listed by your fellow peers.

Your response should be substantive (at least 150 words) and include reference citations and, where applicable, use APA formatting.

After you have posted your introduction, be sure to come back periodically to read what others have posted.

Consult the Discussion Posting Guide for information about writing your discussion posts. It is recommended that you write your post in a document first. Check your work and correct any spelling or grammatical errors. When you are ready to make your initial post, click on “Reply.” Then copy/paste the text into the message field, and click “Post Reply.”

To respond to a peer, click “Reply” beneath her or his post and continue as with an initial post.

Evaluation

This discussion will be graded using the discussion board rubric. Please review this rubric, located on the Rubrics page within the Start Here module of the course, prior to beginning your work to ensure your participation meets the criteria in place for this discussion. All discussions combined are worth 20% of your final course grade.

As you will see in the rubric, to maximize your points on the discussions, you should make sure you adhere to the following:

• Consistently synthesize and tie in specific, relevant information and examples from course materials, and from own experiences or current events, to support ideas.
• Frequently make comments that build on what has already been said and extends the discussion, moving it forward. Encourage a deeper analysis of content by asking meaningful, relevant questions about postings.
• Posts are well-organized, clearly and concisely written. The posts are easy to read and free of spelling and grammatical errors. Sources, if applicable, are present and cited correctly. Posts are courteous and respectful of other viewpoints.

Reference:

Turban, E., Pollard, C., & Wood, G. (2017). Information Technology for Management (11 ed.): Wiley. Chapter 1 and 2.

Homework 2: Understanding Symmetric Ciphers
Purpose
This homework is designed to do several things:
• The proficiency problems may become part of your portfolio that demonstrates meeting the content
objectives of the course.
• Doing challenge problems and submitting them (and their revised version(s)) demonstrates some of
our overall objectives.
• Submitting your check in memo and homework problems are an opportunity to get feedback from
Dr. Bolkema.
Instructions
Do as many of the proficiency problems as you feel necessary to meet the objectives. The challenge problems
are optional but encouraged. Recall that you can submit up to three problems per week for direct feedback
from Dr. Bolkema.
Submit a check-in memo by Friday at noon (under the check in memos tab on Blackboard) by Friday at
noon that describes your progress on these problems (and some other things). There are specific questions
to answer there. This goes privately to Dr. B who will then give you feedback.
Content Objectives – Module 2
By doing this homework you will demonstrate that you are able to
1. Apply modular arithmetic algorithms for fast-powering, division, and finding greatest common divisors.
2. Implement symmetric ciphers involving modular arithmetic.
3. Discuss plaintext attacks on symmetric ciphers.
Proficiency Problems
1. (Objective 1)
(a) Use the Euclidean algorithm to compute gcd(291, 252).
(b) Use the square-and-mulitply algorithm to compute 17183 mod 256.
(c) Use the division algorithm to compute the quotient and remainder of 34787 divided by 353.
2. (Objective 1) Let a and b be positive integers.
(a) Suppose that there are integers u and v satisfying au + bv = 1. Prove that gcd(a, b) = 1.
(b) Suppose that there are integers u and v satisfying au + bv = 6. Is it necessarily true that
gcd(a, b) = 6? If not, give a specific counterexample, and describe in general all of the possible
values of gcd(a, b).
(c) Suppose that (u1, v1) and (u2, v2) are two solutions in integers to the equation au+bv = 1. Prove
that a divides v2 − v1 and that b divides u2 − u1.
3. (Objective 2) Let N be a large integer and let K = M = C = /N. For each of the functions
e : K × M → C
listed below, answer the following questions.
• Is e an encryption function?
• If e is an encryption function, what is its associated decryption function d?
• If e is not an encryption function, could you modify the given function into an encryption function
by using some smaller set of keys?
(a) ek(m) ≡ k − m mod N
(b) ek(m) ≡ k · m mod N
(c) ek(m) ≡ (k + m)
2 mod N
4. (Objective 2 & 3) Consider the affine cipher with key k = (k1, k2) whose encryption and decryption
functions are given by
ek(m) ≡ k1 · m + k2 mod p
dk(c) ≡ k
0
1
· (c − k2) mod p
where k
0
1
is the inverse of k1 modulo p.
(a) Let p = 541 and let the key be k = (34, 71). Encrypt the message m = 204. Decrypt the ciphertext
c = 431.
(b) Assuming that p is public knowledge, explain why the affine cipher is vulnerable to a known
plaintext attack. How many plaintext/ciphertext pairs are likely to be needed in order to recover
the private key?
(c) Alice and Bob decide to use the prime p = 601 for their affine cipher. The value of p is public
knowledge, and Eve intercepts the ciphertexts c1 = 324 and c2 = 381 and also manages to find
out that the corresponding plaintexts are m1 = 387 and m2 = 491. Determine the private key
and then use it to encrypt the message m3 = 173.
(d) Suppose now that p is not public knowledge. Is the affine cipher still vulnerable to a known
plaintext attack? If so, how many plaintext/ciphertext pairs are likely to be needed in order to
recover the private key?
5. (Objective 2 & 3) Consider the Hill cipher defined by
ek(m) ≡ k1 · m + k2 mod p
dk(c) ≡ k
−1
1
· (c − k2) mod p
where m, c, and k2 are column vectors of length n, and k1 is an n × n matrix.
(a) We use the vector Hill cipher with p = 7 and the key k1 =

1 3
2 2
and k2 =

5
4

.
(i) Encrypt the message m =

2
1

(ii) What is the matrix k
−1
1
used for decryption?
(iii) Decrypt the message c =

3
5

.
(b) Explain why the Hill cipher is vulnerable to a known plaintext attack.
(c) The following plaintext/ciphertext pairs were generated using a Hill cipher with the prime p = 11.
Find the keys k1 and k2.
m1 =

5
4

, c1 =

1
8

, m2 =

8
10
, c2 =

8
5

, m3 =

7
1

, c3 =

8
7

(d) Explain how any simple substitution cipher that involves a permutation of the alphabet can be
thought of as a special case of a Hill cipher.
6. (Objective 3) Explain why the cipher
ek(m) = k ⊕ m and dk(c) = k ⊕ c
defined by of bit strings is not secure against a known plaintext attack. Demonstrate your attack by
finding the private key used to encrypt the 16-bit ciphertext c = 1001010001010111 if you know that
the corresponding plaintext is m = 0010010000101100.
Challenge Problems
Justify your answers with complete sentences explaining your reasoning.
7. Let N, g, and A be positive integers. Prove that the following algorithm returns the value g
A mod N.
Input: positive integers N, g, and A.
1. Set a = g and b = 1.
2. While A > 0
i) If A ≡ 1 mod 2, set b = b · a mod N.
ii) Set a = a
2 mod N and set A = A/2.
iii) If A > 0, continue with loop at Step 2.
3. Return the number b, which equals g
A mod N.
8. Alice and Bob choose a key space K containing 256 keys. Eve builds a special-purpose computer that
can check 10, 000, 000, 000 keys per second.
(a) How many days does it take Eve to check half of the keys in K?
(b) Alice and Bob replace their key space with a larger set containing 2B different keys. How large
should Alice and Bob choose B in order to force Eve’s computer to spend 100 years checking half
the keys? (Use the approximation that there are 365.25 days in a year.)
9. Bob and Alice use a cryptosystem in which their private key is a (large) prime k and their plaintexts
and ciphertexts are integers. Bob encrypts a message m by computing the product c = km. Eve
intercepts the following two ciphertexts:
c1 = 12849217045006222, c2 = 6485880443666222.
Use greatest common divisors to find Bob and Alice’s private key