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inordinationx · 5 years ago

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192.168.0.1

Lookup outcomes of the search for IP address 192.168.0.1. Properly, your Pc is showing a routable IP address as properly as default gateway so it would appear your router is not undertaking a lot of something. To access the RT-N12D1 settings, reconnect to the wireless network and use the updated IP address and port quantity. If you would like to make use of a certain router behind your ISP's router, you have two possibilities: change your default IP address or hold the existing configuration. Nonetheless, if you want to use a router behind your ISP's box, it is not essential to have the router mode enabled on the current configuration.

Your router is a gateway to your network, and you must do what ever you can to shield it from intruders. While it may be hassle-free to stick with the default password, carrying out so compromises your safety and tends to make it much easier for cybercriminals to infiltrate your network and steal your individual info. Equipped with the details from this article, you ought to be in a position to secure your router with out any major issues.

Modify the password in Network Security Settings and click Next. Step 1: Connect your Cisco Router to Pc utilizing RJ45 cable. Out of these, the Net Engineering Task Force (IETF) has directed the Web Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) to reserve 17.9 million addresses for private networks, which are usually used for local area networks (LANs) in residential, office, and enterprise environments.

Go to your computer or laptop and connect to the router utilizing an Ethernet cable. Often a wireless connection is enough, but don't count on it. Step two: Go to Network or LAN Setup and change the IP address to 192.168.two.1 and save. If you are making use of NetGear Router, then go to Advanced > Setup > LAN Setup an IP address > adjust IP and Apply. If the above did not work, you can try what is identified as a 30-30-30 reset. Get comfortable, since you will need to hold the reset button for 90 seconds. Press and hold the reset button for 30 seconds. Even though continuing to hold the reset button, unplug the router, wait one more 30 seconds, then plug it back in. Continue to hold the reset button for an additional 30 seconds.

If you connect to your modem or router through a cable, you should verify it once again and verify there's no problem with it. If you believe there is any issue with the wire, you can replace it with a new one. Subsequent, you need to open the browser and kind in the IP address. Follow network troubleshooting methods to decide why a router set up at 192.168.1.1 is not responding. The issue may possibly lie with the router itself, with the client device, or with the connection between the router and client such as cabling or wireless interference issues.

Public IP or the IPCv6 Regular addresses must be globally special. This posed a issue for the IPv4 standard given that it can accommodate only 4 billion addresses. Therefore, the IANA introduced the IPv6 normal, which supports many a lot more combinations. Alternatively of using a binary method, it makes use of a hexadecimal system. An IPv6 address is as a result composed of eight separate groups of hexadecimal numbers, every comprised of four digits. For example: abcd:9876:4fr0:d5eb:35da:21e9:b7b4:65o5. Certainly, this method can accommodate almost infinite growth in IP addresses, up to 340 undecillion (a number with 36 zeros).

Offered that the login particulars are correct, you will enter the router's settings web page and make the desired changes from there. To access the Router Admin panel, you have to connect it to your Pc with an RJ45 cable. After connected, open the browser and type into the address bar. An IPv6 address consists of a series of eight numbers, each and every quantity getting 4 digits lengthy. In contrast to the IPv4 address that is expressed in decimal numbers, an IPv6 address is expressed in hexadecimal numbers.

The 192.168..1 IP address falls inside this final variety of reserved private IP addresses. To adjust your router's password, go to the settings menu and look for an alternative titled password.” It is important that you select a password that is sufficiently safe. The router has to be configured. Before beginning to get the essential, you may have to connect it to the routers or modem by employing an Ethernet wire. You will require a router login IP address, which can be 192.168.1.1 , , 192.168.1. 254, etc. Now, if you never know about Router Default IP, then check out its shipping box or get in touch with manufacturer.

We can discover our router IP address effortlessly by employing the command prompt (CMD) of our computer. If we type ipconfig in CMD, it shows our router IP address and so a lot more. We also learn right here how to uncover out router IP in IOS and Android. Thank you for sharing it. The purpose of the 192.168.0.1.1 IP address, or 192.168.0.1 to be exact, is to determine a device on a private network. Private networks are commonly identified in the workplace, enterprise, and even residential environments. They make it possible for devices to communicate with a single one more with out being reachable from the world wide web.

Uncover the pinhole reset button. Typically occasions this on the back or underside of the router. With the router plugged in, press and hold the reset button for 30 seconds. Right after releasing the button, wait for the router to power on, and attempt to login to the router again. IANA has reserved some IP addresses for private networks. We described earlier that a private IP address is distinctive within the network it really is connected to but the very same IP address can be assigned to a technique on a diverse private network.

In this instance the router's IP address is 192.168.1.1. Now, if you want to change Router Password, then go to sophisticated settings, and from there, select admin password > Modify it > Save Settings, and it's carried out. You need to now see a login window with two input fields: 1 for the admin username and one particular for the admin password. Sometimes due to improper connection or broken cable, you can't access the Router home page. In that case, adjust the cable. If you forgot your router username and password, then you have to reset it.

Step 7. A new web page will open and this page will inform you two crucial things. The IPv4 Default gateway (router's IP address) and your device's IP address to that router which is the IPv4 Address. You must be greeted by a login prompt asking you for a username and password. In most circumstances, each the username and password are admin.” Nonetheless, it really is possible to come across a router that uses a various password, and we explain what to do in that scenario in the subsequent chapter of this report.

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supersecure-blog · 6 years ago

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Week 6 Lectures

Never would I have thought that I would receive a lecture via a skype call... however this course continues to surprise me. Notes for this week’s lectures as per usual :) This week notes will be in their purest form: brain dribble.

Morning Lecture

WEP:

Needed a 64 bit key, but how do we get users to generate a 64 bit key. Was a lot to ask users to generate. Designers decided to generate the last 24 bits by themselves, using an IV.

Seed was different for each packet, 40 bit key that was shared and everyone used, and then the 24 bit value that was generated.

To decrypt, you get the 24 bit thing sent in the clear - (IV) and combine with the secret to get the 64 bit

Danger when someone transmits the same data under the same key - data is replicated in the same frame

Collision for IV - square root of 2^24 = 2^12 ~= 4000

Relatively small amount of packets needed to be sent before collision

Mixing data and control (key characteristic of attacks):

WEP attack - carrying out the normal function, can be abused by users to gain more control

I.e. Richard smuggling expensive express envelopes by hiding them in a satchel, posting them to himself

If there is a potential ambiguity in the channel and you are able to control how that is resolved - you gain control of the channel

Buffer Overflow:

Computer rapidly switches between jobs - “context switching” rather than concurrencyModern cpu’s use the notion of interruption Stack keeps track of what is being used

Latest process - top of the stack. When it’s finished, the information about the process gets thrown out, stack pointer gets moved down

After process have been re-awakened, need information about what the process is currently doing. This is stored in the disk, because RAM is expensive

Stack is also used to store local data about the program - much faster

Running program data is in the stack, as well as other frozen processes

Stack is stored backwards -> grows down

If can persuade the buffer you are writing to is bigger than it is - then you can be writing to other memory of the person that is asleep

Pointer to the next instruction about to be executed -> control

Contains other information

Write to the return address, overwrite the current thing

Proof of work:

Bitcoin - can’t counterfeit easily (work ratio)

No matter how good something is, every 18 months your attacker gains 1 bit of work due to Moore’s law i.e. lose one bit of security

Number of transistors per square inch on integrated circuits had doubled every year since the integrated circuit was invented.

Disk encryption:

Thread model - attacker has physical access to the disk, assume full control of the hard drive

Generate random key, encrypted version of the key stored in the disk

Evening Lecture:

Web Seminar

HTTP:

Application layer protocol used to send messages between browsers and web servers. HTTP requests go from the browser to the server.

Databases / SQL - browser sending an HTTP get request from the server with the username and password as data

Server queries database with “SELECT password FROM users WHERE match”

HTTP Cookies/Sessions

An HTTP cookie is a small piece of data sent in a response from a web server and stored on the user’s computer by the browser

A session cookies is a unique ID generated by the server and sent to the user when they first connect or login

Browser sends it with all HTTP requests

XSS - cross-site scripting is an attack in which an attacker injects data, such as a malicious program

Reflected XSS - occurs when user input is immediately returned by a web application.

Stored - you enter data which is stored within the application and then returned later

xss.game.appstop.com

SQL injection is a code injection technique in which malicious SQL statements are inserted into an entry field for execution.

Goal behind an SQL query is to gain access

‘ or 1 == 1 --

Blind SQL injections are identical to normal SQL Injection except that when an attacker attempts to exploit an application rather than getting a useful error message

Cross Site Request Forgery:

Attack on an authenticated user i,.e. Already logged in

When you log in to a website it sends you a cookie to your browser to keep you logged in.

Bank attack:

If attacker knows the format of the bank request, they can hide a transfer request inside an img using html

Cross Site Request Forgery Defences:

Primary mitigation is with tokens

Generate a suitably random token, store value server-side

Sent token to user, expect this token back as part of any user requests

In a GET request, this token will be appended to the URL

If a website has XSS vulnerabilities, CSRF mitigations are pointless

Crypto Seminar

Payment Process: Current versus Bitcoin:

Current payment systems require third-party intermediaries that often charge high processing fees

Machine-to-machine payment using the Bitcoin protocol allows for direct payment between individuals, as well as support micropayments -> reduce transaction costs

Crypto:

Built using cryptographic principles i.e. blockchain and hashing

Difficult to fake transactions - too many bits so it isn’t worth

Blockchain:

Method of storing data

A chain of chronologically linked blocks where each block is linked to the previous block

Blocks are unique - no two blocks will have the same hash

Data:

Consists of hundreds of transactions

Put around 2000 transactions in one block

Hashes:

Block’s hash summarises the data into a combination of letters and numbers

SHA-256 hashing algorithm

If a transaction in the block is changed, the hash is changed

This is important because each block has the hash of the previous block -> need to check against all previous blocks

Tamper evident

When a transaction is mine, it isn’t immediately added but placed in a transaction pool

The miner gathers enough to form a block - called a candidate block

Hash the block header along with a nonce

When we hash we hope the block hash value is below a certain target value

The nonce is a random number brute forced by miners to try and create the correct hash

When nonce is found, it is broadcast and the block is added to the existing chain

Proof of Stake:

Growth of mining pools could eventually lead back to a centralised system

PoW mining uses excessive amounts of electricity

PoS algorithm attributes mining power to proportion of total bitcoins held, rather than computing power

Rewards are transaction fees rather than new cryptocurrency

Types of crypto currencies:

Bitcoin

Uses the SHA-256 algorithm - very processor intensive and complex requires lots of dedicated hardware

Litecoin

More accessible for normal uses to mine on their CPUs as the algorithm used is less CPU intensive, but more memory intensive

Facebook Libra

Centralised architecture - libra will be managed by the Libra Association, having more control over the blockchain

There is no ‘mining” - to set up a node on Libra, need $10000

Privacy:

Blockchain doesn’t have a strong concept of identity (public, private) key pairing

Doesn’t exempt transaction from tracing

Two main ways:

Relations between address - inferring identity

Interactions between nodes and users

Monero:

Unlinkability -> stealth addresses with view keys

Transaction mixing -> ring signatures

Concealing transaction amounts -> RingCt signatures

Historical flaws:

51% attack:

Double-spend

Purpose might also be to discredit a crypto instead of money

Credibility decided on the majority

Off-springs created one’s solution for a hash is not added into their own spin-off

Motive might be to discredit the cryptocurrency

Past Attacks:

Usually happened on small networks

Verge 51% attack, on April 2018

Groups of hackers found two main flaws in the system:

Bug which lowered the hashing difficulty for a hashing algo (Scrypt)

Verge allowed 5 different hashing algorithms, and only the difficulty for Scrypt is lowered

Hacked 3 times over 2 weeks

Cryptocurrency exchanges:

Mt.Gox - bitcoin exchange that was launched in 2010. Handled over 70% of all Bitcoin transactions in 2013

Previous owner retained admin level user account when MtGox was sold in 2011

Attacker logged in to the account

Assigned himself a large number of BTC which he sold on the exchange

Price dropped immediately

Obtained private keys of MtGox clients

Created selling orders on these accounts and bought the BTC he stole

SQL Injection vulnerability was found

MtGox user database began circulating online and included:

Plain text email addresses

Usernames

MD5 Hashed passwords, with some unsalted

Future of Cryptocurrency:

Adoption

Overcoming resistance from:

People

Established finance institutes (eg banks)

Governments (they don’t like that you don’t pay tax by concurrency)

Ease of use

Volatility

Threats

Blockchain its laek

Quantum computers

To the sft that utilises cryptocurrency

Cryptocurrency wallet/exchange/

Strong private keys

Symmetric Ciphers

Two sorts of ciphers, symmetric and asymmetric -> regards the keys

If you know the key

For a symmetric: you can decrypt and encrypt

For an asymmetric: you have separate private and public keys to decrypt and encrypt (RSA)

Earthquakes:

How would I cope, how would my business cope? -> ‘gobag’

Home Study - read up about the “block modes” - only need to learn/understand ECB, CBC, CTR

Authentication:

Identifying for who? Computer/human?

Facebook. Police, baggage screening

Authentication and identification - what is the difference?

What decisions?

Computerised authentication system -> needs to make a decision about whether it is you or not

Factors:

Something that you have

Something that you know - i.e a password. Easy way of doing authentication

How do you know that you share the same secret?

Something that you are - Unfakeable

Two factor authentication:

Something that you have AND something that you know i.e. and password

All of these things seem different, but ultimately they are all just things that you know, and are all secrets

Something that you are can be replicated

Serious problem -> authenticating bombs, missiles etc

Biometrics - not real authentication, collecting another shared secret from a person, and can be bypassed

#week 6 #lectures

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ryanssecurityengineering · 6 years ago

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Week 7 Notes and Reflection

REFLECTION

Unfortunately I ran out of battery and lost the lectures notes for the second lecture. I had to reconstruct them using the class notes, Richard’s “slides” and what I remember. I’ll especially have to research more about Public Key Infrastructure later, it seems interesting!

Interesting lecture, I like how we found a mistake on the exam! I also liked the way Richard described Man in the middle attacks in Diffie-Hellman. There were lots of “homework” activities so I should do those!

I thought it was pretty insane you can write to memory using %n in printf! I wonder what the designers of printf were thinking?! They were like “o ye lets scan in some stuff using our printing function!!”

The extended lectures were cool - I found it weird that pressing that Command + S key on a Mac gives you root. There are so many interesting practical things with security... bug bounties, CTFs that you don’t really see in other areas of computing such as AI.

NOTES

Mid Term Exam

Question 5 Solution - Can’t brute force it by hand. The answer is F - type I /Type II error tradeoff.

Question 10 - The answer is D - easy to factorise a 64 bit number. Even 512 bit modulus is crackable. However even RSA is wrong for some reason.... All wrong!!

Proof of liveness - Like a replay attack, challenge response. Proof that there is someone there.

Richard expects you to go to all the lectures. Should have known Sun Tzu!

Diffie-Hellman - How do you set that shared secret up?

5^3^7 is the same as 5^7^3. Power raising is associative.

R -> 78125 -> S S-> 125 -> R

We don’t know R or S private key. Only the number they raised (5). Very difficult to solve the discrete log problem, to go backward to the private key.

When both sides receive their key, they both raise the value by their private key. Both becomes the same.

Forward Secrecy - protects the future messages.

Syria Castle - Defence in depth. The castle fell when the sieiging people forged a letter telling the castle people to surrender. Didn’t fall due to the defence of the castle.

CYBER LITERACY - VULNERABILITIES

A vulnerability is a weakness, and an exploit something that takes advantage of that.

Bug - software mistake. Sometimes bugs become vulnerability.

Types

Memory corruption - somehow the bad guy can change something in memory to allow the program to be under the control of the bad guy.

Buffer overflow

Stack and heap - FIFO temporary info about the functions are on the stack. Heap for allocated memory - dynamic memory allocation.

How functions are called in C - when control switches to another function, the function is frozen. Temporary info such as registers stored on stack. COMP1521 stuff.

Integer overflow - If you keep adding, it will go negative. This can cause it to maybe pass some tests.

Format String - Like Bird flu - Everyone has written buffer overflow bad code in the old days! Then people started patching it. Apparently they are coming back. C has crazy way of printing stuff using printf(). In the old days when you wanted to print hello world had to use printf(”%s\n”, “Hello World”). However no ever did that. Everyone just writes printf(”Hello World\n”). However someone might write name <- get user name. Then you want to print the name you write printf(name). E.g. my name is “%s Richard Buckland”. It will try and look lower down in the stack and print that out as the argument. %s will print out the contents of the stack until a null character. You can use %x to print out the next byte and print out hexadecimal versions of the stack. Printf(”%x %x %x %x”). Shows entire contents of stack. Could have passwords, return addresses. %n WRITES TO MEMORY. You can do arbitrary writes to memory.

Swiss Cheese - holes might line up! Holes overlapping and poke finger through. These sort of bugs are like that! Get lucky.

Stack Canary? Research that.

Shell Code - if you attacking a system, how nice it would be to get a private shell to come up and do whatever you want? Write some machine code that calls OS functions that makes shell pop up. This code is shell code. Put shell code into a buffer and run it.

Nop sleds - You can use buffer overflows to jump back to your buffer to run programs. However sometimes don’t know where in memory where the code is placed. Nice to have a bit of wiggle room. Just put lots of NOP operations - it will be like a slide into your code. Looking for NOP sleds - malware scanners. However whole lots of way to write NOP sleds without NOP.

If you find vulnerabilities, into will go into the National Vulnerability Database and CVN (Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures) and CNA (CVE Naming Authority).

Responsible disclosure - If you find a vulnerability, tell the vendor then CERT(eg CERT Australia). or you can sell it to the bad guys!

OWASP Top 10 list should know for top 10 vulnerabilities. Essentially the same every year!

BUG PUZZLES - Check slides

Example 1 - Integer overflow for the length. Get_user_length is UNSIGNED, but length is signed. Lots of implicit conversions between sign and unsigned. Then read will read the overflowed length value since read() takes in an unsigned length value, which might be bigger than 1024.

Example 2- Optimistic indenting

ASSETS

Security is to protect your assets. Sometimes we protect the wrong assets. Cold war - I wonder if the world will be here tomorrow? The most important asset is to protect mankind.

Door bell on the car - If you placed that in the car it went ding dong in his house. $5 car alarm first step into brilliance. What are you going to do when the ding dong happens? Might run down there and get killed!! The real asset is the window of the car, not the money! Leave the window open! Got wallet stolen, but got AIDS. Easy to protect the wrong thing.

At the uni’s security review was all machines. Uni assets are students, reputation, user data, staff. The trick is, what you should do is the assets - what are you trying to protect? Ask people - junior, senior people. Review the list of assets every year/month. Real weakness is something you don’t see - blind spot. Try and find the things you haven’t seen.

Strategies for Identifying the Assets

Regularly surveying the values of people of the involved in what you are protecting. Multiple pairs of eyes is a good asset.

Develop a sensible plan - well designed to tease this information out of them. Humans are generally poor at regurgitating everything they know, however they are generally very good critics.

Periodically revise current list of assets. Don't set and forget. Values and assets of an organisation can drift.

Examples

Team America

Richard's wallet vs Richard with AIDS

Car doorbell

Leave windows open?

Share registry - no more paper trails, everything is recorded electronically. Land title database was privatised. What are the risks?

Coke formula

Parliament - a collection of people that hold particular importance together.

Valuing the Assets - Defining what is important

Categorising types of assets

Tangible Assets: Those that are easily given a value

A gold chain valued at some relatively static amount

The jewellery in a jewellery store.

Intangible Assets: These cannot be easily and objectively be valued

Company secrets

Availability of services

Employee Morale & Security

Customer information

* Monetary + psychological/emotional costs

* Difficult <> Don't do

Examples:

Company secret - what is at stake?

QOS Guarantees

Strategies for assigning values to assets

Survey what many people think

no single person or group should be solely evaluating the assets&semi;

Examples of the information that should be gathered are as follows:

"How much money would you lose where this data center to go down for 24 hours?".

"How much will you lose if your company is disconnected to the internet for 3 hours?".

Examples

In assessing the value of a park

Picasso

Diffie-Hellman - Only provides confidentiality and integrity? Does not provide authentication.

Web of Trust (PgP) - Research this

Public Key Infrastructure (PKI)

SSL/TLS

Read Bruce Schneier's paper https://www.schneier.com/academic/paperfiles/paper-pki.pdf

passports (links photo with name, certified by office)

x509 certificates (links public key with domain (and maybe some other info))

padlock in your browser

look at some certs

CAs, root certificates, RAs, pay money to browser manufacturer??!! (check out your web browser)

conflicts of interest

most google search pages on SSL written by vendors

it was the blockchain of the 2000s

self signed, domain verification, organisational verification, extended verification. (ha!)

what if anything are the risks of self-signed?

safety vs identity

the green bar

session keys - the TLS handshake (4 keys)

why use session keys rather than using RSA for all?

wildcards

3 main certificate authorities: Symantec, Comodo, GoDaddy

homework : find examples of (serious) fraudulant certificates being issued

Certificates don’t protect against gooooogle.com

TLS handshake example

BUG BOUNTIES (From notes, I lost mine)

Crowd-Sourced Bug Bounty Websites

Public: Hackerone, bugcrowd

Private: Synack

Often have criteria of whats in/out of scope, as well as what kind of bugs they won’t accept. For example websites that they don’t want you touch

Tips

Learn web apps

Usea a wide scope → bigger net = more bugs

Look for software updates, or assets that have recently changed

Look for publicly disclosed reports → Can see prior bugs that have been found/exposed. If a bug has occurred once, theres a chance it will occur again

Pentesting (From notes, I lost mine)

Fuzzing

Automate process - a program that continually adds input

Some fuzzers are aware of input structure, and some even are away of program structure

Fuzzers aren't precise, but can test a large amount of inputs

Fuzzing software - afl (the way to go apparently)

Mutation strategies - bit flips, byte flips, arithmetic, havoc (combination

Use fuzzing to test your own software

Homework: Do the fuzzing tutorial

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martechadvisor-blog · 7 years ago

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Stop Flying by the Seat of Your Pants: 4 Ways to Take Control of Marketing Work

Have you ever sneaked a peek at an airplane’s cockpit? A typical 747 is said to have around 365 buttons, gauges, lights and switches. It’s overwhelming. Each of them offers one slice of visibility and control to the pilot, in terms of fuel, hydraulics, electrical, navigation and more. (Or so I’m told, as my only aviation experience comes from a long and storied career as a passenger.)

But it wasn’t always this way.

In the early days of flight, pilots relied on visual contact with the ground and manual “stick and rudder” control of the aircraft. How terrifying does that sound? When visibility was restricted due to clouds or fog, pilots would have to react to the physical feel of the plane, chill of the wind, seat vibrations, and other instinctive cues. This is where the term “flying by the seat of your pants” came from.

Obviously, aviation has increased in complexity over the years. And so has almost everything else in our lives—including the very nature of marketing work—in this, the age of digital transformation. It used to be possible to rely solely on what we could physically observe in the office, like how busy people appear to be, the internal response to our latest creative campaign, the results of our one-on-one meetings, or our gut feel about how things are going.

But this kind of “flying by the seat of our pants” isn’t necessary or advisable anymore. There are sophisticated instruments available that can give us a firmer read on our work atmosphere, the effectiveness of our work, and the productivity of our people.

If you’re still struggling with visibility at work, despite having advanced analytics and project management tools at your fingertips, here are four ways to use today’s tech to take control of your marketing work.

1. Hop on the Automation Train

Most marketers are familiar with the marketing and business intelligence tools they need to perform their work. But what about the underlying processes that drive the work forward—the schedules, budgets, resources, assignments, and other intangible aspects of the job. Are those still being handled manually?

You’ve got to take time to work on your processes, rather than constantly swimming along inside them. If you never stop to evaluate your workflows, I can promise they aren’t effective or efficient as they need to be. Marketers today have just 44% of their time to devote to their primary job duties. If you’ll look for opportunities to reduce manual work and automate all repetitive tasks, you can get some of that time back.

If your team is still performing any of the following tasks manually, you’ve got some automating to do:

Evaluating workloads and assigning tasks to individual employees or contractors

Tracking deadlines or project progress in a spreadsheet

Emailing out proofs and compiling the feedback by hand

Holding status meetings to report on where projects stand

Assembling budget data by email or spreadsheet

Work management software can perform all five of these functions in an integrated and transparent way, freeing up team members to focus on higher-level creativity and problem-solving. A system like this, also known as an operational system of record, collects all details, due dates, budgets, time tracking, communication, and collaboration for a project in a centralized space. And automatic notifications keep all involved parties and stakeholders in the loop.

2. Get Out of Your Inbox

Email is great for a lot of things: being notified of shoe sales, retrieving lost passwords, setting up an automatic OOO notification, reading your daily news digest (I’m looking at you, theSkimm), and perusing the company newsletter.

One of the things email isn’t great at? Visibility. The average U.S. worker has almost 200 unread or unopened emails in their inbox at any given moment, according to Workfront’s 2017-2018 State of Work Report, and yet 94% of us are using email as a work-management tool. This is no bueno. Why? Well, consider the top five things modern workers find frustrating about email, according to our survey:

The use of lengthy emails to relay info that would be better-conveyed face to face or on the phone

Trying to follow a conversation through fragmented email threads

Getting copied on emails that aren’t relevant

The dreaded “reply all” function

Being unable to find information that you know someone emailed you

Imagine trying to get work done in that environment? Wait, we don’t have to imagine it. It’s how we all live. But with tools like Slack and other instant messengers, not to mention the contextual communication that happens in a work management solution, we really shouldn’t be spending so much time in our email inboxes.

Email is especially ill-suited for things like assigning work (you can’t be sure they’ll see it at the right time), routing proofs and approvals (oy, the contradictory and redundant feedback!), or collaborating with a team (did I reply to just you or to everyone?). Use a purpose-built communication or collaboration platform instead.

3. Take Advantage of Software Integrations

Do you have several cloud-based solutions that perform similar or overlapping functions? Are you constantly transferring information from one system to another? Do you have to enter the same data into multiple different tools?

Sounds like you have a software silo problem. When the tools you rely on don’t play well with others, it’s a big barrier to both visibility and productivity. In this situation, not only is the effectiveness of each individual tool compromised, you’re also vulnerable to letting important information slip through the cracks.

I have a friend who works in the content-creation arm of a large non-profit organization. She spends her day toggling between four different tracking and communication systems that haven’t been configured to work well together.

She has to input the details of each project into on-premises custom software, and also enter it into Trello, and also email the details to each participant, and also set it up in the project-management software that the organization purchased to solve all the other problems.

Why? Because when the project management solution was deployed, it wasn’t fully integrated with existing tools, and nothing else was retired. “The new solution just got layered on top of all the old systems,” she says, asking not to be named in this article. “Unfortunately, each individual department is allowed to keep using the old systems they were used to, and I’m stuck trying to bridge the gap between four different tools that all do pretty much the same thing.”

Don’t let this happen to you. Don’t onboard a new solution unless you can check all three of these boxes:

it’s truly different from something you already have

it integrates well with other tools you rely on

you are committed to retiring the old, redundant solution

4. Streamline Those Workflows

After several mergers and acquisitions, software systems group Emerson was dealing with a mix of workflows and project management methodologies. “Different projects were run in different ways,” said Emerson director of software engineering Bob Moore in a ComputerWeekly article. "There was not only a lack of consistency, but also a lack of visibility to where a particular project was in its lifecycle at any given point."

In order to be effective, marketers need to be highly connected to other departments—particularly sales, product development, and IT teams. Cross-departmental and company-wide visibility really suffers when different business units use completely different workflow structures. There’s not always much middle managers can do to fix the problem, besides perhaps asking leadership if they can pilot a program to onboard a comprehensive work-management solution within their team—and then champion its usage among other teams as well.

After pulling off a similar feat, Moore says, “The planning phase of projects has been shortened dramatically because the project templates and workflows walk teams right through what needs to be done and initiate the sort of momentum that’s necessary to get a project off the ground in a positive way.”

A New 30,000-ft. View

In the early days of flight, rudimentary instruments paired with human observation and intuition were enough, most of the time—as long as skies were clear and sunny. But foggy or cloudy conditions often led to devastating casualties. As aviation instrumentation improved, pilots gained unprecedented visibility even in unpredictable weather. And as a frequent flier, I will be eternally grateful.

Similarly, business instrumentation has improved drastically in recent years for the average marketer or knowledge worker. It used to be enough to just fly by the seat of our pants—relying on what we could see with our physical eyes, the conclusions we reached based on human observation and gut intuition. But this isn’t enough anymore. Now more than ever, our ability to see what’s going on with our work teams—in any business climate—requires the right tools, used in the right ways.

This article was first appeared on MarTech Advisor

#martech #marketing #technology #business #cmo

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bisoroblog · 7 years ago

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Tools Harvard Computer Science Students Use to Collaborate, Stay Organized

Harvard University is one of the most selective schools in the United States, so it isn’t the first place that comes to mind when discussing how to make computer science appealing and open to a broad range of students. But Professor David Malan has been experimenting with different ways to make his introductory computer science class (CS50) the type of place where students from many different backgrounds can thrive. And he’s spreading what he learns to the broader educator community, hoping what he’s learning from the CS50 experiment spreads beyond Harvard’s walls to K-12 educators working to fire up kids about computer science.

Malan’s class attracts students who have never taken computer science before, as well as kids who have been coding a long time. His goal with this diverse group of learners is to create a community that’s equal and collaborative. One way he does this is by asking students to self-identify by comfort level. Those groups become different section levels, and they sometimes get different homework, but harder assignments are not worth more credit. Malan said recently that the “less comfortable” group has dominated his 700-person course.

“At the end of the day all students are treated with the same expectations,” said Malan, speaking at the Building Learning Communities conference in Boston. Students are graded based on each individual’s growth; Malan and his team of teaching assistants don’t use absolute measures when assigning grades. Instead, they look at scope, how hard the student tried, correctness, how right the work was, style, how aesthetic the code is, and design, which is the most subjective. When it’s time to assign grades, Malan and his teaching fellows have lots of in-depth conversations about how each student has improved relative to where he or she started.

And since computer code is particularly easy to steal off the web, Malan has a “regret clause” for his course “to encourage and allow students to come forward if they made a bad decision that historically is very hard to take back. “We encourage them to come forward.” If a student did cheat, but uses the regret clause, he or she can still be penalized, but Malan won’t escalate the incident to the university level. He understands that sometimes stressed-out students, many of whom are perfectionists pushing themselves in a completely new area of study, act on their anxieties against their better judgment.

Malan also uses many teaching assistants to help him provide personalized attention to students in this large course. He sees them as one of the most important parts of the course’s success and popularity. “One of our greatest assets is the human structure within the course,” Malan said. He also encourages students not to take notes during lecture, instead asking one of the teaching assistants to take notes for everyone so students can focus their attention on the discussion.

Office hours are another important support structure for this challenging course. During office hours several teaching assistants will be in one place offering one-on-one help. Malan has been pleased at how these meetups have gradually begun happening in social spaces, becoming a connection point between digital and analog support. He attributes some of his success with students new to computer science to the intentionally social aspects of the class.

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Malan’s team also explicitly tries to make computer science fun by planning events that foster a sense of community. They organize an annual puzzle day where students get together on a Saturday, and a hackathon. By merging the social and the academic, Malan is trying to make computer science feel approachable. “A side effect of holding these events is drumming up new interest,” Malan said. His students bring their friends, who might decide to take the course the following year. And the silly community events are shared on social media and the course website to help create the community feeling that keeps kids engaged in the academic work.

At the end of the semester, all CS50 students present their final projects to the community at a fair. “For us what’s most striking at this specific event is seeing their final projects and seeing them present something that we did not teach them,” Malan said. Students often take the initiative to go out and learn more on their own, rather than merely applying the homework he has assigned.

In addition to the 700 Harvard students who take CS50, Malan has opened the course to 150 Yale students, as well as about 300 Harvard extension students. The course is also available on edX, and high school students can access a version of it, CS50 AP, at 150 schools around the country. The course is one of the most popular offerings at Harvard, and students new to computer science keep joining. Malan believes the collaborative nature of the course, along with the intentional community-building that his team does, are a big part of their success.

CS50-SPECIFIC TOOLS

With so many students, Malan’s team has developed some CS50 specific tools to help them manage workflow and support students.

CS50 IDE: This is basically a computer in the cloud so students can write code and run it on the internet. It allows students to access their code from multiple locations and for groups to work together virtually. The program highlights the code written by different authors in unique colors to help evaluators see who did what.

Check50: Students and instructors use this program to check for correctness. Is a program giving the expected output? The tool checks student code against a set of tests Malan’s team has written and then generates smiley faces and frowny faces next to the code. This helps students identify trouble spots, but still requires them to problem-solve the fixes. Some of Malan’s teaching assistants are currently rewriting this program to make it open source, so any teacher could input their own checks to use with students.

CS50 Help: This tool rewrites the language of error messages to help students parse what went wrong with their code. It also provides feedback and action items for students to start fixing the error. “It’s just designed to be a resource for students to make that process of understanding error messages easier,” Malan said.

Droplet: This tool provides a bridge between more traditional coding languages and block coding, like what you might see in Scratch or a number of other learn-to-code programs.

Malan’s team also uses a lot of other productivity tools that aren’t proprietary and could be useful to other teachers. When discussing these tools with teachers at the BLC conference, it was clear that many K-12 teachers are frustrated by the limits their districts put on the tools they can use.

OTHER TOOLS

GitHub: This open-source code repository is a way for programmers to share code and get feedback. Malan’s students sometimes use it to submit their code instead of doing so through the Learning Management System (LMS).

MOSS (Measure Of Software Similarity): This tool is freely developed and can help determine academic honesty. The tools allow users to anonymously submit student work and see a comparison to other existing code. It gives the teacher a sense of whether similarly written code really is a problem.

Gradescope: This free tool was designed by UC Berkeley students. It allows teachers to upload student homework or tests and grade them online. The grader can add criteria as he goes and if anything changes, the program will automatically change the scores for that problem on everything that has already been graded. The student gets detailed feedback, all graders are consistent, and the instructor can see how many students made each mistake.

Dropbox: Users get 2G for free and can easily sync and share files. And, if a student doesn’t have a Dropbox account, there’s an anonymous upload feature that creates a unique link so each student’s work goes into a folder with his or her name. It can be an easy way to collect files and work around an LMS.

Asana: This commercially available task management system helps keep track of who’s doing what and when it’s due. Team members can add themselves to different projects and set deadlines. “We’ve used it for office-style team management, but I’ve used it for classes as well to assign homework,” Malan said. “It gives you eyes into what could be a fairly large data set.” There’s also a mobile app.

Slack: This is a free chat service, but also makes it easy to share media. Malan finds it more group friendly than Google Hangout.

1Password, LastPass: These are password protection services that are not free, but Malan finds important to safeguard student work.

Doodle: Malan’s team uses Doodle for scheduling.

Help Scout: This tool is a bit like help desk software in that you can create tickets for different email items that require a task. It helps a user see what issues are closed and which ones still need attention.

HubSpot: This is good for managing large courses with lots of contacts. It was designed as a customer relationship management system.

PleaseBringIt: This is an easy way to sign people up for open slots. It also functions a little like a wedding registry for running an event — different people can agree to bring various items.

Adobe Connect: This tool works well for online classes or office hours. It is not a free service, but Google Hangout would be a free alternative. Zoom is also similar, although more video-based.

Google Forms: Malan uses this a lot to collect work from students. It’s easy to integrate with spreadsheets, but limits the types of questions he can ask.

SurveyMonkey: This service has more question types and better analytics. It also has some interesting visualization options.

Slido.com: This is an interactive online question forum. Users can up-vote or down-vote different questions. That’s useful because a presenter can look at the questions while giving a talk and weave answers into the presentation or follow up afterwards.

Piazza: This is a good discussion platform, a functionality many LMS’s lack. Teachers can create a classroom within Piazza. Students can also ask questions anonymously, making it more appropriate for certain discussions than other platforms.

Quip: This software is good for sharing information. The platform makes it easy to organize information and share with others.

SmugMug: This is a good photo portfolio site. It allows the user to filter, but also provide textual context.

BaseCamp: This project management tool has a free tier for teachers. In general, Malan and his team suggest that educators should always ask for a discount from any commercial software provider. Many companies will be happy to accommodate, making paid products more accessible.

K-12 TEACHERS’ FAVORITE TOOLS

When Malan had finished sharing the tools his team finds useful to organize their work, grading and efforts to support students, other educators shared their favorite tools.

ZipGrade: This tool is basically like a scantron machine on a phone. It’s useful for quickly grading multiple-choice exit tickets or formative assessments and tracking student data on those quizzes.

VideoNot.es: This open-source software allows users to take notes next to videos, syncing to time

stamps. It’s also possible to create one’s own video note with a question. And the service works with a Google sign-in (one limitation a number of teachers said they were experiencing with their districts).

Vizia: This tool allows teacher to integrate quizzes and questions into a video. The questions pop up as students watch.

GoSoapbox: Similar to Poll Everywhere, this tool can be used on a mobile device or computer. It enables teachers to get a sense of how well students understand the content with quick polls. It also has a panic button students can press if they really don’t understand. The instructor’s screen will flash red. It can also be used anonymously.

DriveSlides: This chrome extension built by Matt Miller and Alice Keeler makes it easy to automatically insert images into Google Slide presentations.

Wizer.me: Teachers can create interactive quizzes in various question formats with this tool.

Goobric: When used in tandem with the Doctopus extension, this Chrome extension allows teachers to pull all the assignments into one Google Sheet and integrate with a rubric.

Doctopus: Another Chrome extension built by a teacher to make classroom workflows easier. Some of its key functions are to create a file structure in Google Docs, allow a teacher to easily “pass out” blank templates and change or revoke different editing rights, and it’s a way to monitor collaboration happening on Docs.

What are your favorite collaboration and sharing tools for the classroom?

Tools Harvard Computer Science Students Use to Collaborate, Stay Organized published first on http://ift.tt/2y2Rir2

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perfectzablog · 7 years ago

Text

Tools Harvard Computer Science Students Use to Collaborate, Stay Organized

youtube

CS50-SPECIFIC TOOLS

With so many students, Malan’s team has developed some CS50 specific tools to help them manage workflow and support students.

Droplet: This tool provides a bridge between more traditional coding languages and block coding, like what you might see in Scratch or a number of other learn-to-code programs.

OTHER TOOLS

Slack: This is a free chat service, but also makes it easy to share media. Malan finds it more group friendly than Google Hangout.

1Password, LastPass: These are password protection services that are not free, but Malan finds important to safeguard student work.

Doodle: Malan’s team uses Doodle for scheduling.

HubSpot: This is good for managing large courses with lots of contacts. It was designed as a customer relationship management system.

PleaseBringIt: This is an easy way to sign people up for open slots. It also functions a little like a wedding registry for running an event — different people can agree to bring various items.

Adobe Connect: This tool works well for online classes or office hours. It is not a free service, but Google Hangout would be a free alternative. Zoom is also similar, although more video-based.

Google Forms: Malan uses this a lot to collect work from students. It’s easy to integrate with spreadsheets, but limits the types of questions he can ask.

SurveyMonkey: This service has more question types and better analytics. It also has some interesting visualization options.

Quip: This software is good for sharing information. The platform makes it easy to organize information and share with others.

SmugMug: This is a good photo portfolio site. It allows the user to filter, but also provide textual context.

K-12 TEACHERS’ FAVORITE TOOLS

When Malan had finished sharing the tools his team finds useful to organize their work, grading and efforts to support students, other educators shared their favorite tools.

VideoNot.es: This open-source software allows users to take notes next to videos, syncing to time

Vizia: This tool allows teacher to integrate quizzes and questions into a video. The questions pop up as students watch.

DriveSlides: This chrome extension built by Matt Miller and Alice Keeler makes it easy to automatically insert images into Google Slide presentations.

Wizer.me: Teachers can create interactive quizzes in various question formats with this tool.

Goobric: When used in tandem with the Doctopus extension, this Chrome extension allows teachers to pull all the assignments into one Google Sheet and integrate with a rubric.

What are your favorite collaboration and sharing tools for the classroom?

Tools Harvard Computer Science Students Use to Collaborate, Stay Organized published first on http://ift.tt/2xi3x5d

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careerexpansion · 7 years ago

Text

Tools Harvard Computer Science Students Use to Collaborate, Stay Organized

youtube

CS50-SPECIFIC TOOLS

With so many students, Malan’s team has developed some CS50 specific tools to help them manage workflow and support students.

Droplet: This tool provides a bridge between more traditional coding languages and block coding, like what you might see in Scratch or a number of other learn-to-code programs.

OTHER TOOLS

Slack: This is a free chat service, but also makes it easy to share media. Malan finds it more group friendly than Google Hangout.

1Password, LastPass: These are password protection services that are not free, but Malan finds important to safeguard student work.

Doodle: Malan’s team uses Doodle for scheduling.

HubSpot: This is good for managing large courses with lots of contacts. It was designed as a customer relationship management system.

PleaseBringIt: This is an easy way to sign people up for open slots. It also functions a little like a wedding registry for running an event — different people can agree to bring various items.

Adobe Connect: This tool works well for online classes or office hours. It is not a free service, but Google Hangout would be a free alternative. Zoom is also similar, although more video-based.

Google Forms: Malan uses this a lot to collect work from students. It’s easy to integrate with spreadsheets, but limits the types of questions he can ask.

SurveyMonkey: This service has more question types and better analytics. It also has some interesting visualization options.

Quip: This software is good for sharing information. The platform makes it easy to organize information and share with others.

SmugMug: This is a good photo portfolio site. It allows the user to filter, but also provide textual context.

K-12 TEACHERS’ FAVORITE TOOLS

When Malan had finished sharing the tools his team finds useful to organize their work, grading and efforts to support students, other educators shared their favorite tools.

VideoNot.es: This open-source software allows users to take notes next to videos, syncing to time

Vizia: This tool allows teacher to integrate quizzes and questions into a video. The questions pop up as students watch.

DriveSlides: This chrome extension built by Matt Miller and Alice Keeler makes it easy to automatically insert images into Google Slide presentations.

Wizer.me: Teachers can create interactive quizzes in various question formats with this tool.

Goobric: When used in tandem with the Doctopus extension, this Chrome extension allows teachers to pull all the assignments into one Google Sheet and integrate with a rubric.

What are your favorite collaboration and sharing tools for the classroom?

Tools Harvard Computer Science Students Use to Collaborate, Stay Organized posted first on http://ift.tt/2tX7Iil