Posted: February 21st, 2015
Please refer to the course profile to see how this assessment item relates to the course learning outcomes.
This assignment is designed to stimulate critical thinking outside of the classroom by requiring students to write a formal academic report. You will need to follow the AREA process described in chapters 2 and 3 of Your Business Degree (prescribed textbook for COIT20233) to analyse the assessment task, research relevant information, evaluate the information you find and to write an academic report in which you present your findings or outcomes and make recommendations on future practice. This assessment task will assess your skills in critical thinking, researching information, forming an opinion, academic writing, logical ordering of ideas and your ability to support your arguments with quotes from literature. These objectives will be measured by the ‘closeness of fit’ to meeting the assessment task, assessment requirements and assessment criteria listed below.
Please note that there is a wealth of material available on the Libguide website for this course that you should use to help you gather and evaluate relevant information for writing your report (http://libguides.library.cqu.edu.au/coit20233).
The report is to be based on the following scenario about security and privacy in cloud computing.
Recently increased use of mobile devices and the growth of the Internet in current business practices have led to the provision of Cloud Computing which relies on sharing computing resources rather than having local servers or personal devices handle software applications. Cloud Computing can be thought of as many different computers pretending to be one computing environment. It provides the delivery of computer and storage resources as a service to end-users using the Internet.
There is a significant benefit to organisations in the leverage of Cloud Computing services, not least of which is the potential for significant cost savings. But security concerns have led organisations to be wary of moving critical resources to the Cloud. Businesses and individuals are concerned about how security and integrity of their data can be maintained in this new environment. Providers of Cloud Computing argue that they have in place security benefits which they offer to their customers who choose to move their data and information systems to the Cloud.
For more information on Cloud Computing watch this video entitled “Cloud Computing in Plain English”:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=txvGNDnKNWw
You are the ICT manager of a large organisation (1000 employees) based in Melbourne. Your supervisor has asked you to research Cloud Computing and write a report to be presented at the next executive meeting. You are required to prepare a report that explores:
Your report should include recommendations that provide guidelines for the organisation with respect to implementing Cloud Computing practices.
Please note that you will need to make some assumptions about your organisation in order to write this report. These assumptions should be incorporated in the introduction to your report when you describe the organisation and outline the problem to be solved.
Specifically your report should include the following:
Please do NOT use ‘Body of the Report’ as a heading. Create meaningful headings that reflect the content of your report (approximately 1200 words).
Your response should be structured as a report (chapter 5 of textbook), written in accordance with standard academic writing principles (chapter 4 of textbook). The report must be written using your own words with any in text citations clearly marked (see Referencing Style subsection below). You may discuss the assessment task with other students and the lecturing staff but you must WRITE the report YOURSELF in your own words.
You will need to conduct research to support your arguments using AT LEAST NINE references in addition to your set textbook (that is, a minimum of ten (10) references in your reference list). At least six (6) of these references should be from refereed academic journals and books. All sources should be current i.e. 2009 onwards.
The assignment should demonstrate a logical flow of discussion, be grammatically correct and free from typographical, spelling
and grammatical errors. It should be prepared in MS-Word (or equivalent) using 12 point font, 1.5 line spacing and margins of 2.54 cm.
It is highly recommended that you submit your assignment to the Learning Skills Unit (Brisbane, Melbourne, Sydney students) or Communication Learning Centre (Rockhampton and Distance students) AT LEAST ONE WEEK before the due date so that it can be checked for spelling and grammatical errors.
References must be cited (in text) and a reference list provided in accordance with the Harvard (author-date) referencing style.
Helpful information on referencing techniques and styles can also be found on CQU’s referencing webpage:
http://www.cqu.edu.au/about-us/service-and-facilities/referencing
Marks will be deducted for poor referencing or having less than ten (10) references.
Use quotation marks for direct quotes and you must include the author, date and page number(s) with the quote as per the Harvard referencing standards.
ALL assignments will be checked for plagiarism (material copied from other students and/or material copied from other sources) using Turn-It-In. If you are found to have plagiarised material or if you have used someone else’s words without appropriate referencing, you will be penalised for plagiarism which could result in zero marks for the whole assignment. In some circumstances a more severe penalty may be imposed.
Useful information about academic integrity (avoiding plagiarism) can be found at:
http://www.cqu.edu.au/about-us/service-and-facilities/referencing
Before submitting your assignment you should check it against the detailed criteria below to ensure that you have satisfactorily addressed ALL the marking criteria.
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