Light Bulbs Research Argument

Research Argument Essay In today’s world, people are more concerned about saving the environment than they have been in the past, and the choices that they make today about the light bulbs in their homes can play an important role in the future of the environment. Light bulbs are an every day object in homes across the World today and range from the less energy efficient incandescent light bulbs (normal light bulbs), the more energy efficient compact fluorescent light (CFL) bulbs, and the most energy efficient light emitting diode (LED) bulbs. In order to help save the environment people need to make the change to energy efficient lighting, which will also help them save money, and even though they need to be recycled, the process is easy. With all the talk about being â€Å"green†, as stated by Carolyn Milton, â€Å"for the new year I'm going to be more green conscientious,† making the simple change of a light bulb could be a good solution. Most American’s always talk about trying to save the environment and reduce emissions so they spend thousands of dollars to buy electric and hybrid cars, when if they would simply change out their outdated light bulbs they could make an even greater impact on reducing greenhouse-gases. As stated by Caplan, â€Å"Electric lighting currently accounts for 19% of the world’s electricity use, pumping as much greenhouse-gas pollution into the atmosphere ever year as half the world’s cars. In the debate about the deteriorating environment, power plants have always been referred to as a source of the world’s issues, but by making the switch to energy efficient light bulbs people can help reduce the amount of power plants, â€Å"Replacing a single incandescent bulb with a CFL will keep a half-ton of CO2 out of the atmosphere over the life of the bulb. If everyone in the U. S. used energy-efficient lighting, we could retire 90 average size power plants. Saving ele ctricity reduces CO2 emissions, sulfur oxide and high-level nuclear waste† (Energy Efficient Lighting). Energy efficient light bulbs save money by not only helping the environment but they can also leave more money in people’s wallets in the tough times of today. â€Å"An ENERGY STAR qualified compact fluorescent light bulb (CFL) will save about $30 over its lifetime and pay for itself in about 6 months† (Compact Fluorescent Light Bulbs for Consumers). People like to save energy, not only for the environment, but also because it can help save them money in the long run, â€Å"I would try any one that would use less energy,† Lacy Broughton. If a person switches to energy efficient light bulbs they will notice the difference in the price of their electricity bill because energy efficient light bulbs use less watts, â€Å"A single 18 watt CFL used in place of a 75 watt incandescent will save about 570 kWh over its lifetime. At 8 cents per kWh, that equates to a $45 savings† (Energy Efficient Lighting). By using energy efficient light bulbs you can also save money by not having to be inconvenienced in constantly having to change out and buy new light bulbs all the time, â€Å"Compact fluorescent bulbs have a higher lifespan as compared to incandescent light bulbs. They have a lifespan which ranges from 6,000 to 15,000 hours. This presents a definite contrast to the 750 hours to 1,000 hours that make up the life span of an incandescent bulb† (Dahne). The most common energy efficient light bulbs are the CFLs, which contain mercury and have to be recycled and disposed of properly when no longer in use. Some people avoid making the switch to energy efficient light bulbs because of the dangers that could come with mercury, but in reality, â€Å"A power plant will emit 10mg of mercury to produce the electricity to run an incandescent bulb compared to only 2. mg of mercury to run a CFL for the same time† (Energy Efficient Lighting). Disposing of CFLs is easier than people would like to admit since, â€Å"Burned out CFLs can be dropped off at Home Depot and Ikea stores† (Energy Efficient Lighting). If the mercury in CFL light bulbs is still concerning then people can always switch to LED lights, â€Å"that last five to 10 times as long as CFLs, contain no mercury and use far less energy† (Caplan). If every American home replaced just one light bulb with and ENERGY STAR qualified bulb, we would save enough energy to light more than 3 million homes for a year† (Compact Fluorescent Light Bulbs for Consumers). There are many choices for energy efficient light bulbs, some with mercury and some without, but overall all will help save the environment and save people their money. Saving the environment will not only help the lives of people living today, but will help the lives of all the people living for generations to come, so switch to energy efficient light bulbs and help save the world. Works Cited Broughton, Lacy. Discussion Interview. 1 November 2009. Caplan, Jeremy â€Å"Better Bulbs. † Time 174. 4 (2009): 54. Academic Search Complete. EBSCO. Web. 19 Oct. 2009. â€Å"Compact Fluorescent Light Bulbs for Consumers. † Energystar. gov. Energy Star. Web. 15 Nov. 2009. . Dahne, Tom. â€Å"Learn all About Fluorescent Bulbs. † Psychicarticles. co. uk. Psychic Articles, 03 Oct. 2009. Web. 15 Nov. 2009. . â€Å"Energy Efficient Lighting. † Eartheasy. com. Eartheasy. Web. 15 Nov. 2009. . Milton, Carolyn. Discussion Interview. 5 November 2009.

Data Masking

An Oracle White Paper July 2010 Data Masking Best Practices Oracle White Paper—Data Masking Best Practices Executive Overview †¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦ 1 Introduction †¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦ 1 The Challenges of Masking Data †¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦. 2 Implementing Data Masking †¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦.. 2 Comprehensive Enterprise-wide Discovery of Sensitive Data †¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦.. Enforcing Referential Relationships during Data Masking †¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦.. 4 Rich and Extensible Mask Library†¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦.. 6 Sophisticated Masking Techniques †¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦.. 7 High Performance Mask Execution †¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦ 9 Integrated Testing with Application Quality Management solutions11 Oracle’s Comprehensive Solutions for Database Security †¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦.. 12 Customer Case Studies †¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦. 2 Conclusion †¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã ¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦.. 13 Oracle White Paper—Data Masking Best Practices Executive Overview Enterprises need to share production data with various constituents while also protecting sensitive or personally identifiable aspects of the information. As the number of applications increases, more and more data gets shared, thus further increasing the risk of a data breach, where sensitive data gets exposed to unauthorized parties.Oracle Data Masking addresses this problem by irreversibly replacing the original sensitive data with realistic -looking scrubbed data that has same type and characteristics as the original sensitive data thus enabling organizations to share this information in compliance with information security policies and government regulations. This paper describes the best practices for deploying Oracle Data Masking to protect sensitive information in Oracle and other heterogeneous databases such as IBM DB2, Microsoft SQLServer.Introduction Enterprises share data from the ir production applications with other users for a variety of business purposes. Most organizations copy production data into test and development environments to allow application developers to test application upgrades. Retail c ompanies share customer point-of-sale data with market researchers to analyze customer buying patterns. Pharmaceutical or healthcare organizations share patient data with medical researchers to assess the efficacy of clinical trials or medical treatments.Numerous industry studies on data privacy have concluded that almost all companies copy tens of millions of sensitive customer and consumer records to non-production environments for testing, development, and other uses. Very few companies do anything to protect this data even when sharing with outsourcers and third parties. Almost 1 out of 4 companies responded that live data used for development or testing had been lost or stolen and 50% s aid they had no way of knowing if data in non-production environme nts had been compromised. 1 Oracle White Paper—Data Masking Best Practices The Challenges of Masking DataOrganizations have tried to address these issues with custom hand-crafted solutions or repurposed existing data manipulation tools within the enterprise to solve this problem of sharing sensitive information with non-production users. Take for example, the most common solution: database scripts. At first glance, an advantage of the database scripts approach would appear that they specifically address the unique privacy needs of a particular database that they were designed for. They may have even been tuned by the DBA to run at their fastest Let’s look at the issues with this approach. 1.Reusability: Because of the tight association between a script and the associated database, these scripts would have to re-written from scratch if applied to another database. There are no common capabilities in a script that can be easily leveraged across other databases. 2. Transp arency: Since scripts tend to be monolithic programs, auditors have no transparency into the masking procedures used in the scripts. The auditors would find it extremely difficult to offer any recommendation on whether the masking process built into a script is secure and offers the enterprise the appropriate degree of protection. 3.Maintainability: When these enterprise applications are upgraded, new tables and columns containing sensitive data may be added as a part of the upgrade process. With a script-based approach, the entire script has to be revisited and updated to accommodate new tables and columns added as a part of an application patch or an upgrade. Implementing Data Masking Based on Oracle Data Masking , Oracle has developed a comprehensive 4-step approach to implementing data masking called Find, Assess, Secure, and Test (FAST). These steps are: ? Find: This phase involves identifying and cataloging sensitive or regulated data across the entire enterprise.Typically car ried out by business or security analysts, the goal of this exercise is to come up with the comprehensive list of sensitive data elements specific to the organization and discover the associated tables and columns across enterprise databases that contain the sensitive data. ? Assess: In this phase, developers or DBAs in conjunction with business or security analysts identify the masking algorithms that represent the optimal techniques to replace the original sensitive data. Developers can leverage the existing masking library or extend it with their own masking routines. ? Secure: This and the next steps may be iterative.The security administrator executes the masking process to secure the sensitive data during masking trials. Once the masking process has completed and has been verified, the DBA then hands over the environment to the application testers. 2 Oracle White Paper—Data Masking Best Practices ? Test: In the final step, the production users execute application proces ses to test whether the resulting masked data can be turned over to the other non-production users. If the masking routines need to be tweaked further, the DBA restores the database to the pre-masked state, fixes the masking algorithms and re-executes the masking process.Comprehensive Enterprise-wide Discovery of Sensitive Data To begin the process of masking data, the data elements that need to be masked in the application must be identified. The first step that any organization must take is to determine what is sensitive. This is because sensitive data is related to specific to the government regulations and industry standards that govern how the data can used or shared. Thus, the first step is for the security administrator to publish what constitutes sensitive data and get agreement from the company’s compliance or risk officers. A typical list of sensitive data elements may include:Person Name Bank Account Number Maiden Name Card Number (Credit or Debit Card Number) Busi ness Address Tax Registration Number or National Tax ID Business Telephone Number Person Identification Number Business Email Address W elfare Pension Insurance Number Custom Name Unemployment Insurance Number Employee Number Government Affiliation ID User Global Identifier Military Service ID Party Number or Customer Number Social Insurance Number Account Name Pension ID Number Mail Stop Article Number GPS Location Civil Identifier Number Student Exam Hall Ticket Number Credit Card Number Club Membership IDSocial Security Number Library Card Number Trade Union Membership Number Oracle Data Masking provides several easy-to-use mechanisms for isolating the sensitive data elements. 3 Oracle White Paper—Data Masking Best Practices ? Data Model driven: Typical enterprise applications, such as E-Business Suite, Peoplesoft and Siebel, have published their application data model as a part of their product documentation or the support knowledge base. By leveraging the published data models, data masking users can easily associate the relevant tables and columns to the mask formats to create the mask definition. ?Application Masking Templates: Oracle Data Masking supports the concept of application masking templates, which are XML representations of the mask definition. Software vendors or service providers can generate these pre-defined templates and make them available to enterprises to enable them to import these templates into the Data Masking rapidly and thus, accelerate the data masking implementation process. ? Ad-hoc search: Oracle Data Masking has a robust search mechanism that allows users to search the database quickly based on ad hoc search patterns to identify tables and columns that represent sources of sensitive data.With all the database management capabilities, including the ability to query sample rows from the tables, built into Enterprise Manager, the Data Masking a can assist enterprise users rapidly construct the mask definition – th e pre-requisite to mask the sensitive data. For deeper searches, Oracle provides the Oracle Data Finder tool during data masking implementation to search across enterprises based on data patterns, such as NNN-NN-NNNN for social security numbers or 16 or 15 digit sequences beginning with 3, 4 or 5 for credit card . numbers.Using the combination of schema and data patterns and augmenting them with published application meta data models, enterprises can now develop a comprehensive data privacy catalog that captures the sensitive data elements that exist across enterprise databases. To be clear, this is not a static list. This is a dynamic living catalog managed by security administrators that needs to be refreshed as business rules and government regulations change as well as when applications are upgraded and patched and new data elements containing sensitive data are now discovered. Enforcing Referential Relationships during Data MaskingIn today’s relational databases (RDBMS), data is stored in tables related by certain key columns , called primary key columns, which allows efficient storage of application data without have to duplicate data. For example, an EMPLOYEE_ID generated from a human capital management (HCM) application may be used in sales force automation (SFA) application tables using foreign key columns to keep track of sales reps and their accounts. When deploying a masking solution, business users are often concerned with referential integrity, the relationship between the primary key and the foreign key columns, in a database or across databases. 4Oracle White Paper—Data Masking Best Practices CUSTOMERS EMPLOYEES ? ? ? EMPLOYEE_ID FIRST_NAME LAST_NAME Database enforced Application enforced ? ? ? CUSTOMER_ID SALES_REP_ID COMPANY_NAME SHIPMENTS ? ? ? SHIPMENT_ID SHIPPING_CLERK_ID CARRIER Figure 1:The Importance of Referential Integrity Oracle Data Masking automatically identifies referential integrity as a part of the mask definition creation. This means that when a business user chooses to mask a key column such as EMPLOYEE_ID, the Oracle Data Masking discovers all the related foreign key relationships in the database and enforces the same mask format to the related foreign key columns.This guarantees that the relationships between the various applications tables are preserved while ensuring that privacyrelated elements are masked. In applications where referential integrity is enforced in the database, Oracle Data Masking allows these relationships to be registered as relate d columns in the mask definition, thereby applying the same masking rules as applied to the database-enforced foreign key columns. 5 Oracle White Paper—Data Masking Best Practices Figure 2: Automatic enforcement of referential Integrity Rich and Extensible Mask LibraryOracle Data Masking provides a centralized library of out-of-the-box mask formats for common types of sensitive data, such as credit card numbers, phone numbers, nati onal identifiers (social security number for US, national insurance number for UK). By leveraging the Format Library in Oracle Data Masking, enterprises can apply data privacy rules to sensitive data across enterprise-wide databases from a single source and thus, ensure consistent compliance with regulations. Enterprises can also extend this library with their own mask formats to meet their specific data privacy and application requirements. Oracle White Paper—Data Masking Best Practices Figure 3: Rich and extensible Mask Format Library Oracle Data Masking also provides mask primitives, which serve as building blocks to allow the creation of nearly unlimited custom mask formats ranging from numeric, alphabetic or date/time based. Recognizing that the real-world masking needs require a high degree of flexibility, Oracle Data Masking allows security administrators to create user-defined-masks. These user-defined masks, written in PL/SQL, let administrators create unique mask fo rmats for sensitive data, e. g. enerating a unique email address from fictitious first and last names to allow business applications to send test notifications to fictitious email addresses. Sophisticated Masking Techniques Data masking is in general a trade-off between security and reproducibility. A test database that is identical to the production database is 100% in terms of reproducibility and 0% in terms of security because of the fact that it exposes the original data. Masking technique where data in sensitive columns is replaced with a single fixed value is 100% in terms of security and 0% in terms of reproducibility.When considering various masking techniques, it is important to consider this trade-off in mind when selecting the masking algorithms. Oracle Data Masking provides a variety of sophisticated masking techniques to meet application requirements while ensuring data privacy. These techniques ensure that applications continue to operate without errors after masking. For example, ? Condition-based masking: this technique makes it possible to apply different mask formats to the same data set depending on the rows that match the conditions.For example, applying different national identifier masks based on country of origin. ? Compound masking: this technique ensures that a set of related columns is masked as a group to ensure that the masked data across the related columns retain the same relationship, e. g. city, state, zip values need to be consistent after masking. 7 Oracle White Paper—Data Masking Best Practices Deterministic Masking Deterministic masking is an important masking technique that enterprises must consider when masking key data that is referenced across multiple applications.Take, for example, three applications: a human capital management application, a customer relationship management application and a sales data warehouse. There are some key fields such as EMPLOYEE ID referenced in all three applications and needs to be masked in the corresponding test systems: a employee identifier for each employee in the human resources management application, customer service representative identifiers, which may also be EMPLOYEE IDs, in the customer relationship management application and sales representative IDs, which may be EMPLOYEE IDs in the sales data warehouse.To ensure that data relationships are preserved across systems even as privacy-related elements are removed, deterministic masking techniques ensure that data gets masked consistently across the various systems. It is vital that deterministic masking techniques used produce the replacement masked value consistently and yet in a manner that the original data cannot be derived from the masked value. One way to think of these deterministic masking techniques is as a function that is applied on the original value to generate a unique value consistently that has the same format, type and characteristics as the original value, e. . a deterministic funct ion f(x) where f(x1) will always produce y1 for a given value x1. In order for the deterministic masking to be applied successfully, it is important that the function f(x) not be reversible, i. e. the inverse function f-1(y1) should not produce x1 to ensure the security of the original sensitive data. Deterministic masking techniques can be used with mathematical entries, e. g. social security numbers or credit card numbers, as well as with text entries, e. g. , to generate names.For example, organizations may require that names always get masked to the same set of masked names to ensure consistency of data across runs. Testers may find it disruptive if the underlying data used for testing is changed by production refreshes and they could no longer locate certain types of employees or customer records that were examples for specific test cases. Thus, enterprises can use the deterministic masking functions provided by Oracle Data Masking to consistently generate the same replacement mask value for any type of sensitive data element.Deterministic masking becomes extremely critical when testing data feeds coming from external systems, such as employee expense data provided by credit card companies. In production environments, the feed containing real credit card numbers are processed by the accounts payable application containing employee’s matching credit card information and are used to reconcile employee expenses. In test systems, the employee credit card numbers have been obfuscated and can no longer be matched against the data in the flat files containing the employee’s real credit card number.To address this requirement, enterprises pre-load the flat file containing data using tools such as SQL*Loader, into standard tables, then mask the sensitive columns using deterministic masking provided by Oracle Data Masking and then extract the masked data back into flat file. Now, the application will be able to process the flat files correctly just as they would have been in Production systems. 8 Oracle White Paper—Data Masking Best Practices High Performance Mask Execution Now that the mask definition is complete, the Oracle Data Masking can now execute the masking process to replace all the sensitive data.Oracle Enterprise Manager offers several options to clone the production database: ? Recover from backup: Using the Oracle Managed Backups functionality, Oracle Enterprise Manager can create a test database from an existing backup. ? Clone Live Database: Oracle Enterprise Manager can clone a live production data into any non production environment within a few clicks. The clone database capability also provides the option to create a clone image, which can then be used for other cloning operations.With the cloned (non-production) database now ready for masking, the Oracle Data Masking builds a work list of the tables and columns chosen for masking. Other tables that are not required to be masked are not touched. Furthe r, the tables selected for masking are processed in the optimal order to ensure that only one pass is made at any time even if there are multiple columns from that table selected for masking. Typically, the tables with the primary keys get masked first, followed by the dependent tables containing foreign keys.Once the mask work list is ready, the Oracle Data Masking generates mapping tables for all the sensitive fields and their corresponding masked values. These are temporary tables that are created as a part of the masking process, which will be dropped once all data has been masked successfully. Using a highly efficient data bulk mechanism, Oracle Data Masking rapidly recreates the masked replacement table based on original tables and the mapping tables and restores all the related database elements, such as indexes, constraints, grants and triggers identical to the original table.Compare this with the typical data masking process, which usually involves performing table row upda tes. Because rows in a table are usually scattered all over the disk, the update process is extremely inefficient because the storage systems attempts to locate rows on data file stored on extremely large disk s. The bulk mechanism used by Oracle Data Masking lays down the new rows for the masked table in rapid succession on the disk. This enhanced efficiency makes the masked table available for users in a fraction of the time spent by an update-driven masking process.For large tables, Oracle Data Masking automatically invokes SQL parallelism to further speed up the masking process. Other performance enhancements include using the NOLOGGING option when recreating the table with the masked data. Typical database operations such as row inserts or updates generate redo logs, which are used by the database to capture changes made to files. These redo logs are completely unnecessary in a data masking operation since the non-production database is not running in a production environment, requiring continuous availability and recoverability.Using the NOLOGGING option, the Oracle Data Masking bypasses the logging mechanism to further accelerate the masking process efficiently and rapidly. 9 Oracle White Paper—Data Masking Best Practices In internal tests run on a single-core Pentium 4 (Northwood) [D1] system with 5. 7G of memory, the following performance results with reported. Criteria Baseline Metric Column scalability 215 columns 100 tables of 60G 20 minutes Row scalability 100 million rows 6 columns 1 hour 20 minutes Figure 4: Oracle Data Masking Performance scalability testsAs these results clearly indicate, Oracle Data Masking can handle significant volumes of sensitive data effortlessly both in terms of the number of sensitive columns as well as tables with large numbers of rows. Oracle Data Masking is also integrated with Oracle Provisioning and Patch Automation in Oracle Enterprise Manager to clone-and-mask via a single workflow. The secure high perfor mance nature of Oracle Data Masking combined with the end-to-end workflow ensures that enterprise can provision test systems from production rapidly instead of days or weeks that it would with separate manual processes.Optimized for Oracle databases Oracle Data Masking leverages key capabilities in Oracle databases to enhance the overall manageability of the masking solution. Some of these include: ? Flashback: Administrators can optionally configure Oracle databases to enable flashback to a premasked state if they encounter problems with the masked data. ? PL/SQL: Unlike other solutions, Oracle Data Masking generates DBA-friendly PL/SQL that allows DBAs to tailor the masking process to their needs. This PL/SQL script can also be easily integrated into any cloning process. 0 Oracle White Paper—Data Masking Best Practices Support for heterogeneous databases Oracle Data Masking supports masking of sensitive data in heterogeneous databases such as IBM DB2 and Microsoft SQLServer through the use of Oracle Database Gateways. Figure 5: Data masking support for heterogeneous databases Integrated Testing with Application Quality Management solutions The final step of the masking process is to test that the application is performing successfully after the masking process has completed.Oracle Enterprise Manager’s Application Quality Management (AQM) solutions provide high quality testing for all tiers of the application stack. Thorough testing can help you identify application quality and performance issues prior to deployment. Testing is one of the most challenging and time consuming parts of successfully deploying an application, but it is also one of the most critical to the project’s success. Oracle Enterprise Manager’s AQM solutions provide a unique combination of test capabilities which enable you to: ?Test infrastructure changes: Real Application Testing is designed and optimized for testing database tier infrastructure changes using r eal application workloads captured in production to validate database performance in your test environment. 11 Oracle White Paper—Data Masking Best Practices ? Test application changes: Application Testing Suite helps you ensure application quality and performance with complete end-to-end application testing solutions that allow you to automate functional & regression testing, execute load tests and manage the test process.Oracle’s Comprehensive Solutions for Database Security Oracle provides a comprehensive portfolio of security solutions to ensure data privacy, protect against insider threats, and enable regulatory compliance. With Oracle's powerful privileged user and multifactor access control, data classification, transparent data encryption, auditing, monitoring, and data masking, customers can deploy reliable data security solutions that do not require any changes to existing applications, saving time and money. Customer Case StudiesCustomers have had a variety of business needs which drove their decision to adopt the Oracle Data Masking for their sensitive enterprise data. These benefits of using Oracle Data Masking were realized by a major global telecommunications products company that implemented the above methdology. Their database administrators (DBAs) had developed custom scripts to mask sensitive data in the test and development environments of their human resources (HR) application. As the company was growing and offering new services, their IT infrastructure was also growing thus placing an increased burden on their DBAs.By implementing Oracle Data Masking, the organization was able to use the role-based separation of duties to allow the HR analysts to define the security policies for masking sensitive data. The DBAs then automated the implementation of these masking policies when provisioning new test or development environments. Thus, the telecommunications company was able to allow business users to ensure compliance of their non-production environments while eliminating another manual task for the DBAs through automation. The need for data masking can come from internal compliance requirements.In the case of this UKbased government organization, the internal audit and compliance team had identified that the nonproduction copies of human resource management systems used for testing, development and reporting did not meet the established standards for privacy and confidentiality. In joint consultations with their IT service provider, the organization quickly identified the Oracle Data Masking as ideally suited to their business needs based on the fact that it was integrated with their day-to-day systems management operations provided by Oracle Enterprise Manager.Within a few weeks, the service provider deployed the mask definitions for their Oracle eBusiness Suite HR application and thereby rapidly brought the internal non-productions systems into compliance. There are organizations that have internally d eveloped data masking solutions that have discovered that custom scripts ultimately have their limits and are not able to scale up as enterprise data sets increase in volume. This Middle East-based real estate company found that their data masking scripts were running for several hours and were slowing down as data volumes increased.Due to the stringent requirement to create production copies available for testing within rapid time-frames, the company evaluated the Oracle Data Masking among other commercial solutions. Upon deploying the Oracle 12 Oracle White Paper—Data Masking Best Practices Data Masking, they discovered that they were able to accelerate the masking time from 6 hours using their old scripts to 6 minutes using the Oracle Data Masking, an improvement of 60x in performance. ConclusionStaying compliant with policy and government regulations while sharing production data with nonproduction users has become a critical business imperative for all enterprises. Oracl e Data Masking is designed and optimized for today’s high volume enterprise applications running on Oracle databases. Leveraging the power of Oracle Enterprise Manger to manage all enterprise databases and systems, Oracle Data Masking accelerates sensitive data identification and executes the masking process with a simple easy-to-use web interface that puts the power of masking in the hands of business users and administrators.Organizations that have implemented Oracle Data Masking to protect sensitive data in test and development environment have realized significant benefits in the following areas: ? Reducing Risk through Compliance: By protecting sensitive information when sharing production data with developers and testers, organizations have able to ensure that non -production databases have remained compliant with IT security policies while enabling developers to conduct production-class testing. ?Increasing Productivity through Automation: By automating the masking pro cess, organizations have been able to reduce the burden on DBAs who previously had to maintain manuallydeveloped masking scripts. 13 Data Masking Best Practices July 2010 Copyright  © 2010, Oracle and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved . This document is provided for information purposes only and the Author: Jagan R. Athreya contents hereof are subject to change without notice. This document is not warranted to be error -free, nor subject to any other Contributing Authors: arranties or conditions, whether expressed orally or implied in law, including implied warranties and conditions of merchant ability or fitness for a particular purpose. We specifically disclaim any liability with respect to this document and no contractual obligations are Oracle Corporation formed either directly or indirectly by this document. This document may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by a ny W orld Headquarters means, electronic or mechanical, for any purpose, without our prior wri tten permission. 500 Oracle Parkway Redwood Shores, CA 94065Oracle and Java are registered trademarks of Oracle and/or its affiliates. Other names may be trademarks of their respective U. S. A. owners. W orldwide Inquiries: AMD, Opteron, the AMD logo, and the AMD Opteron logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Advanced Micro Devices. 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How Does Fatigue Affect Labour Productivity

1) How does fatigue affect Labour Productivity? Fatigue affects labour productivity by impairing the ability of a worker to carry out his/her required duties as expected and in a safe manner. With increase in fatigue comes a reduction in muscular strength, attention to details and loss of concentration. A worker or employee who is gradually losing strength, losing concentration and not giving attention to details is usually more prone to mistakes and would not be able to work at his/her optimum level.Fatigue has also been known to affect employee health. A common example is Chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS), which is a debilitating chronic illness affecting various people worldwide (Lin et. Al. , 2011). Those affected endure chronic, incapacitating physical and mental fatigue that is not relieved by rest. This illness is exacerbated by physical or mental exertion and is accompanied by impaired memory and concentration, unrefreshing sleep, muscle and joint pain, and other defining sympto ms (www. ncbi. nlm. nih. gov).It doesn’t require rocket science to assert that an employee/worker whose health is adversely affected would never perform any given task to satisfaction. 2) Major factors that contribute to increase in fatigue in workers. * Working conditions * Noise: Wokocha and Sopruchi (2010) in their study explained that noise effects are both health and behavioural in nature. He further said that unwanted sound can damage Physiological and psychological health. And any worker whose health is affected cannot perform any given task properly.Noise pollution can cause annoyance and aggression, hypertension, high stress levels, tinnitus, hearing loss, sleep disturbances, fatigue, make conversation difficult as well as leads to productivity losses due to poor concentration. * Heat stress: heat stress occurs when the body takes in and/or produces more heat than it gives off, thus raising the core body temperature beyond normal. It could happen due to the combinati on of high air temperature, high humidity, high radiation heat input, high energy expenditure (due to physical workload) and high metabolism (Groover, 2007).Heat usually hampers the ability of an employee to work efficiently. * Cold * Humidity * General state of health of employees * Nature of work * Posture during work * Muscular exertion * Tediousness * Stress * Repetitiveness with a short cycle. * Jobs that require high concentrations * Eye strain ( Kanawaty, 1992) 3) How the use of machines negatively affect workers The use of machines especially in manufacturing industries is usually accompanied with noise, vibration, monotony, and high concentration on the part of the workers who use them.The accumulated effects of vibrations usually affect the hands and the arms; monotony creates boredom and a job that requires a high level of concentration usually requires a lot of energy. All these contribute to a gradual reduction in muscular strength and an increase in fatigue; as fatigue increases, attention and concentration decreases, making the worker more prone to injuries and a subsequent loss in productivity. 4) The reasons for giving workers more relaxation allowances for using some machines while others require less.More relaxation allowance| Less relaxation allowance| 1) Partial or complete absence of noise reduction components on machines| Presence of noise reduction components on machines. | 2) A high level of machine vibration| A considerable level of machine vibration| 3) Attention not given to reduction of vibration and noise. | Ergonomically built machines with attention given to noise and vibration reductions. | | | References. Jin-Mann S Lin, Stephen C Resch, Dana J Brimmer, Andrew Johnson, Stephen Kennedy, Nancy Burstein and Carol J Simon(2011).The economic impact of chronic fatigue syndrome in Georgia: direct and indirect costs. Journal of Cost Effectiveness and Resource Allocation. Volume 9. Retrieved from http://www. resource-allocation. com/co ntent/9/1/1 on 15/11/2012 Wokocha G. A. and Sopruchi Ihenko (2010). Industrial Noise Level and its Impact on Oil Company Workers in Rivers State, Nigeria. Middle Eastern Finance and Economics ISSN: 1450-2889 Issue 8. Retrieved from http://www. eurojournals. com/MEFE. htm on 15/11/2012. Groover, M. P. (2007). Work Systems and The Methods; Measurement and Management of Work. pp 661

Stratification of Education Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Stratification of Education - Essay Example According to Pierre Bourdieu, low income families lack enough to offer for their sons and daughters to use as other learners from affluent families. The best they can do is to offer good counsel and encouragement regarding the issue of education and lack of finances. The children might not get sufficient education because of lack of adequate resources or send them to higher institutions of learning like universities as would richer families. He also argues that lower middle class does emphasize on the values of education given the school does offer them a chance to achieve all they want through mixing of values from cultural prestige and social classes. An elimination process does occur in the time spent in school for getting of education. Chances of entering higher institutions of learning do vary depending on social classes. The son of a company manager has an 8 time likelihood of getting to university, as that of an agricultural worker, and forty times as that of a factory worker and twice as that son or child of an employee in a very low salaried grade of a staff. A family does transit either directly or indirectly to the children of that family. This means that children from low income families have a lesser likelihood of acquiring education because of the income disparity in the society. Middle class children get exhortation and encouragement from their families regarding school work but get an ethos of moving on and being ambitious in the society. Individuals without education that is sufficient become burdens to the society because financially they feel impacted. They will always want to live on others and spend what they have not worked for. The society feels a pinch because of such individuals given they play a negative role in building the society. In most cases, they strain the meager resources and finances that those who attended school have. This makes them be parasites, not only to

Learned Lessons from Completing the Project on Royal Tires & More Assignment

Learned Lessons from Completing the Project on Royal Tires & More Systems Upgrade - Assignment Example While completing the project it was evident that it involved change and therefore, it meant that the project manager was equally tasked with change management of which according to the writings by Marshak (2005), the project managers or managers’ in-charge of a change programme are also required to manage people as part of their roles. Being that the project manager did not have any background knowledge on human resource management there were few cases whereby some employees of the company showed resistance to the implementation of the project because of fear of job loss due to the system upgrade that seemingly made some of them redundant. Part of the lesson that the project manager learned from the resistance that was attributed to change, was that he should adopt a humanistic approach to projects that involve change. The humanistic approach according to Kotter (2011) is built on the premise that there has to be an interpersonal relationship between managers and employees, an d therefore managers have to consider the opinions or views of every party affected by the change. Secondly, while completing the project another key lesson that was learned is that the project budget is highly prone to changes that are beyond the control of the project manager. These changes are attributed to economic factors that are external and they may cause an influx of the budget beyond the original estimates or they may cause a reduction in the original estimates of the project budget. The first lesson that was learned while completing the project was that projects that involves change, should be integrated change or people management to eradicate cases of resistance from employees.  

Do the right thing Movie Review Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Do the right thing - Movie Review Example This provides a petition to Sal as a kin man (Ebert, 1989). Right from the begin Sal is depicted as a hard working, kind, and dedicated individual (Ebert, 1989). Just the reality that he owns his own commerce in this bumpy and harsh epoch shows that he is a tidy, competent, and enthusiastic man. Later in the film we learn that Sal did in actuality build his pizzeria by himself from the floor up. The verity that Sal gets to split his creation and solid work with his sons crafts it all the extra unique to him (Ebert, 1989). After Sal has ended his pre-opening arrangements, Sal's Pizzeria is open for the daylight hours. Shortly after this, the major character of the movie, Mookie, comes promenaded into the bistro (Ebert, 1989). Mookie facility is as the liberation man for Sal in this film. Mookie accurately delivers pizza, yes, but he as well acts as an intermediary between the two ethnicities (Ebert, 1989). Sal relies on Mookie not merely to get the pizzas transported, but to as well a s to keep his associate black folks pleased with Sal so they will approach and support his bistro. I think that this shows an extremely appealing elevation of Sal (Ebert, 1989). It for the predominantly part trade in him off as a chauvinistic (Ebert, 1989). On one, allot, he can put on a happy visage and make the acquaintance of all the black populace as they crust their hard earned cash out to him for his pizza, whereas on the other dispense, he turns into an extremist, hating the majority of black people and discussing behind their back even as they are not approximately (Ebert, 1989). Now I say most black populace because Sal appears to have this father-son bond departing on amid him and Mookie where Sal is the white dad and Mookie the black lad who in the conclusion finally mutineers like all siblings do at some instance in their life (Ebert, 1989). In addition, Sal appears to have various kind of liking or love for Mookie's sister, Jade (Ebert, 1989). Whilst she comes in the pi zza parlor Sal persist to be made some remarkable wedges of pizza (Ebert, 1989). He then plunges what he is doing to go take a seat and stopover with her. This may prompt one to inquire them if Sal is a chauvinistic then why does Sal own a bistro in the hub of black vicinity (Ebert, 1989). Well as Sal explains to Pino early on the movie it is solely commerce. Sal recognizes that he is not competent to compete with the massive restaurant manacles, so he must journey to someone else's lawn to formulate a go of it (Ebert, 1989). A scary, conventional idea voiced more and again in the movie is that everyone is safest in their "own" vicinity and that it is most excellent if we stay put with the populace like ourselves (Ebert, 1989). Now this does not appear to grasp true for Sal and his pizzeria at foremost (Ebert, 1989). Just gaze at the particulars, he has been in this vicinity for not less than 15 to 20 years with no tribulations that we are made conscious about (Ebert, 1989). Percept ibly he must be creating a profit or he would have closed days ago. The way I observe it is that the major predicament with Sal this time is that he is not in the commerce for the love of it any longer, he is in it for the money (Ebert, 1989). Subsequent to all of these days while making pizza he has misplaced some of the blaze that always got him living (Ebert, 1989). I would be eager to stake that when Sal first unlocked up his pizza cooperative he was ostensibly friendly to all the populace, including the black populace, which came into his

Gay Marriage Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Gay Marriage - Research Paper Example Gay marriages should not be allowed and there should be no constitutional amendment to allow the gays and lesbians to obtain the legal marriage certificate. Gay marriage is an unnatural way of living. Had gay marriage been a natural way of living, gays would have been able to make babies from their relationship. Two people living together in a gay marriage contract cannot suffice each other’s emotional needs, even if they feel physically satisfied being together. Even if they happen to be satisfied both emotionally and physically, the connection may not last forever. Likewise, a woman needs the love of a man for concerns including and beyond physical satisfaction. A man is incomplete without a woman and vice versa. This can be estimated from the fact that no couple but the one comprising members of the opposite sex is able to produce children biologically. Gays are not able to produce children, so they can never experience what it feels like to be a parent. Although some gays tend to adopt a child, yet it has its own negative implications upon the adopted child as will be discussed later. Even if they do adopt children, they are never able to connect to them in a way they would have connected to their biological children owing to the fact that they know they are adopted and not their own children. â€Å"Popular stereotypes suggest either that lesbian and gay parents do not exist, or that children suffer irreparable harm if brought up in the households of lesbian or gay parents† (Patterson and Redding 29). From every aspect, life of a gay is unnatural. Gay marriage is an unreligious way of living. God has created everything for a purpose. Nothing has been made useless. Likewise, God has provided human beings with a system according to which they should live. Most of the religions, particularly the Abrahamic religions condemn the practice of homosexuality. Islam not only forbids gay marriage but also declares severe punishments for the people involv ing in this act. Religious scriptures provide accounts of God’s fury over the nations that have indulged in the practice of homosexuality in the past. Specifically, both Bible and Quran describe how the People of Lot (P.B.U.H.) were cursed and punished by God Almighty when they did not give up the practice of homosexuality despite repeated warnings made by the Prophet Lot (P.B.U.H.). â€Å"Scholars of shari’a, Islamic law, interpret homosexuality to be not merely a sin, but a crime as well† (Kligerman 54). We fundamentally derive our norms and values from religion. Had there been no religion, we would have had no guidelines to follow and there would be no means to judge whether a certain action was right or wrong. Since religion has prohibited us from indulging in the practice of homosexuality, there is no way we can justify the act. Legalization of gay marriage is essentially an offense of the religious teachings and violation of the religious principles. Gay m arriage is supported in the name of modernity and people who oppose gay marriage because they practice religion are said to be conservative and narrow minded. A vast majority of people who speak in favor of gay marriages have started to talk about religious principles as man made. With that being said, our fundamental beliefs are being challenged along with our belief in God. â€Å"A part of the cost of the voluntary but â€Å"