Review the most current results of FORTUNE Magazine’s annual ranking of America’s “100 Best Companies to Work For.” Explore the website of at least three of the companies noted. Develop a two- to three- page paper that addresses the following:

1. When reviewing the descriptions of the work environments, identify elements that appear to foster employee motivation and group cohesion among employees. 
2. Relate your analysis to the material presented in the chapters assigned for reading this week. For example, there may be elements that support George Homans’ theory, or another theory of exchange in groups.

Identifying Potential Risk, Response, and Recovery

In Assignment 1, a videogame development company recently hired you as an Information Security Engineer. After viewing a growing number of reports detailing malicious activity, the CIO requested that you draft a report in which you identify potential malicious attacks and threats specific to your organization. She asked you to include a brief explanation of each item and the potential impact it could have on the organization.

After reviewing your report, the CIO requests that you develop a follow-up plan detailing a strategy for addressing all risks (i.e., risk mitigation, risk assignment, risk acceptance, or risk avoidance) identified in Assignment 1. Further, your plan should identify controls (i.e., administrative, preventative, detective, and corrective) that the company will use to mitigate each risk previously identified.

Write a four to five (4-5) page paper in which you:

1. For each of the three (3) or more malicious attacks and / or threats that you identified in Assignment 1, choose a strategy for addressing the associated risk (i.e., risk mitigation, risk assignment, risk acceptance, or risk avoidance). Explain your rationale.
2. For each of the three (3) or more malicious attacks and / or threats identified in Assignment 1, develop potential controls (i.e., administrative, preventative, detective, and corrective) that the company could use to mitigate each associated risk.
3. Explain in detail why you believe the risk management, control identification, and selection processes are so important, specifically in this organization.
4. Draft a one (1) page Executive Summary that details your strategies and recommendations to the CIO (Note: The Executive Summary is included in the assignment’s length requirements).
5. Use at least three (3) quality resources in this assignment (no more than 2-3 years old) from material outside the textbook. Note: Wikipedia and similar Websites do not qualify as quality resources.

Your assignment must follow these formatting requirements:

• Be typed, double spaced, using Times New Roman font (size 12), with one-inch margins on all sides; references must follow APA or school-specific format. Check with your professor for any additional instructions.
• Include a cover page containing the title of the assignment, the student’s name, the professor’s name, the course title, and the date. The cover page and the reference page are not included in the required page length. 

The specific course learning outcomes associated with this assignment are:

• Explain the concepts of information systems security as applied to an IT infrastructure.
• Describe the principles of risk management, common response techniques, and issues related to recovery of IT systems.
• Describe how malicious attacks, threats, and vulnerabilities impact an IT infrastructure.
• Explain the means attackers use to compromise systems and networks, and defenses used by organizations.
• Use technology and information resources to research issues in information systems security.
• Write clearly and concisely about network security topics using proper writing mechanics and technical style conventions. 

4. Estimating the volume of loans that will be made at a credit union is crucial to effective cash management in those institutions. In the table that follows are quarterly data for a real credit union located in a midwestern city. Credit unions are financial institutions similar to banks, but credit unions are not-for-profit firms whose members are the actual owners (remember their slogan, “It’s where you belong”). The members may be both depositors in and borrowers from the credit union.

a. Estimate a multiple-regression model to estimate loan demand and calculate its root mean squared error.

b. Estimate a time-series decomposition model to estimate loan demand with the same data and calculate its root-mean-squared error.

c. Combine the models in parts (a) and (b) and determine whether the combined model performs better than either or both of the original models. Try to explain why you obtained the results you did.

5. HeathCo Industries, a producer of a line of skiwear, has been the subject of exercises in several earlier chapters of the text. The data for its sales and two potential causal variables, income (INCOME) and the northern-region unemployment rate (NRUR), are repeated in the following table:

a. Develop a multiple-regression model of SALES as a function of both INCOME and NRUR:

Use this model to forecast sales for 2008Q1–2008Q4 (call your regression forecast series SFR), given that INCOME and NRUR for 2004 have been forecast to be:

b. Calculate the RMSE for your regression model for both the historical period (1998Q1–2007Q4) and the forecast horizon (2008Q1–2008Q4).

c. Now prepare a forecast through the historical period and the forecast horizon (2008Q1–2008Q4) using Winters’ exponential smoothing. Call this forecast series SFW, and fill in the RMSEs for SFW:

d. Solely on the basis of the historical data, which model appears to be the best? Why?

e. Now prepare a combined forecast (SCF) using the regression technique described in this chapter. In the standard regression:

Is the intercept essentially zero? Why? If it is, do the following regression as a basis for developing SCF:

f. Calculate the RMSEs for SCF:

Did combining models reduce the RMSE in the historical period? What about the actual forecast?

6. Your company produces a favorite summertime food product, and you have been placed in charge of forecasting shipments of this product. The historical data below represent your company’s past experience with the product.

a. Since the data appear to have both seasonality and trend, you should estimate a Winters’ model and calculate its root-mean-squared error.

b. You also have access to a survey of the potential purchasers of your product. This information has been collected for some time, and it has proved to be quite accurate for predicting shipments in the past. Calculate the root-mean-squared error of the purchasers’ survey data.

c. After checking for bias, combine the forecasts in parts (a) and (b) and determine if a combined model may forecast better than either single model.