Careers in information technology have so much potential for growth as well as the possibility to earn a high income. I used to have a career working downtown, and I hated the commute. I would sit at my desk and dream of a job where I could sit at home and work in my pajamas. I would wish for a job that did not require me to literally get my feet wet on my way from the train to the office. I was moving up in the workplace, but I was not happy. When I investigated jobs that work from home that paid a living wage, I always would see information technology at the top of the list. This was before the pandemic, and not everyone was looking to work at home. The lists of jobs would usually start with IT specialist or web developer (Wells, 2020). Therefore, I am interested in this field. I want to work at home, and I want to make a lot of money. This post will go over jobs related to computer operations, hardware, programming languages regarding application and software jobs, database management, and network management and security.

The creation of computers opened endless possibilities. They originated form telephone switches and become giant tabulating machines. Computers now have gotten much smaller and faster. The switches have become chips and are as small as a pin head (Vahid & Lysecky, 2017). For the most part, a hardware developer would require a bachelor’s degree and they make $110,379 on average per year. This job path can lead to software developer, consultant, and even senior project manager. (Zappia , 2019) A hardware engineer might even create new hardware and lead in the charge in modern computer technology.

Software application developer is one career with a lot of potential. This job utilizes programming languages such as Java, JavaScript and Python.  It only requires a bachelor’s degree, and the average salary is $105,590 (Malvik, 2020). I am extremely interested in this career path and when I do a simple search of jobs on Indeed.com, I see remote possibilities with a salary of $116,000 - $142,000 per year. This is quite a fresh take compared to when I attempted to find a job after receiving my degree in psychology. There were no jobs available, and they did not pay even half as much. There are many other options as well including network system administrator, computer programmer, and computer systems analyst that range from $83,000 - $96,000 on average per year.  These jobs all use programming languages and offer opportunities for growth.

When discussing database jobs, it only makes sense to mention MySQL as it is appears to be the most popular. When searching jobs for database engineers, they all seem to mention MySQL which uses SQL. It looks like these jobs are still lucrative, but these careers range greatly with salaries. Some jobs available in databases are SQL data analyst salary with a median salary of $73,278 per year, data modeler making $119,200 per year on average, and data scientist averaging $116,295 per year (Economic Research Institute, 2020). These jobs include creating, maintaining, and analyzing database information.

Some of the best work at home jobs involving information technology are in network architecture and security. A system has transmission hardware and protocols, software, and infrastructure. Network architects ensure that communications run smoothly. This job has yearly average income of $113,223. One thing to note is that this career may require a master’s degree. It shows that 42% have a bachelor’s degree, while 29.6% have a master’s degree (Zippia, 2020). Information Security Analysts jobs are going to be a growing field in the next 10 years, and they make $99,730 on average per year (US Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2020). This growing field has a lot of appeal.

There are so many options to choose from when deciding which information technology career is the right one for me. When the qualifications include working at home and a bachelor’s degree, there are still a great amount of possibilities. All of these jobs have high salaries and open job markets. This post went over jobs related to computer operations, hardware, programming languages regarding application and software jobs, database management, and network management and security.

In the film Hackers (Softley, 1995) the characters used A denial of service (DoS) attack to distract the IT specialist during the final virtual battle scene. The characters had hackers all over the world unite to send ping requests and overload the system. The servers were overloaded. The Hackers used these pings as a distraction to upload viruses. They used a distributed DoS botnet to access the website at the same time from multiple computers (Vahid & Lysecky, 2017). This was one type of attack that can be executed using ping commands. 

This post will discuss DOS attacks, phishing, and social engineering. A DOS attack is accomplished by sending a bunch of access requests at the same time to one website. This causes the website to be overloaded, and then valid requests are denied. This type of attack can be used to harm or annoy a company or government, and most countries have law prohibiting this type of attack. This is one reason that it is so important to enable information and system securities (Vahid & Lysecky, 2017).  Computer systems are vulnerable to this type of threat because it does not require getting into the system, only to send pings to overload it. When hackers use more than one computer, it increases the damage. This also makes it harder to find the true source of the hackers responsible.  One potential solution, although not  guaranteed to eliminate the entire threat is  to enroll in DOS safeguard services that find strange traffic flows and send them away from the network. Another potential solution is to create a Disaster Recovery plan to mitigate damage and provide a quick recovery (Security Tip (ST04-015), 2019).

Phishing is a scam used online that attracts a computer user to reveal confidential data such as a credit card number, social security number, or a password. One frequently used phishing method emails people pretending to be a legitimate organization such as PayPal, Amazon, Bank of America, UPS, the government, or a person's own employer. Sometimes the Scammers change one letter of the email address. For example, they might send the email from deposit@BanofAmerica, leaving out the letter “k” in bank. One example of a phishing scam includes emailing to ask for money to borrow and the promise of sending more money later. This is knowns as a 419 scam or a Nigerian scam. If the phishing scammer gets a person’s password, they gain access to bank accounts, email accounts, and other accounts. “The FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center reported that people lost $57 million to phishing schemes in one year.” (How to Recognize and Avoid Phishing Scams, 2019). It is more the users and companies that are vulnerable to this type of threat than computer systems. One solution is to use email services such as Gmail that automatically filter out suspicious emails and automatically move them to spam. Another solution is to inform users of the threat. One company that I used to work at tested the employees by sending a phishing scam to see how many people would give their password. They sent the email from the IT department, and it looked legitimate. Many people fell for the phishing scam. They were lucky that it was only a test. Once people know about the scam of phishing, they are less likely to fall for it.

Social engineering often goes hand in hand with password cracking and malware. It is convincing people to tell private information that may be exploited for illegal purposes. Some hackers know that people are the weakest link, not the computer system itself. One of the most famous social engineering attacks shows how social engineering works. In 2014, Sony Pictures was hacked.  North Korean hackers aimed a phishing attack. They did not want the movie The Interview (Rogen & Goldberg, 2014)to be shown in theaters. The hackers used phony Apple ID emails sent to the IT administrators at Sony Pictures Entertainment to get passwords and login usernames. This is how they stole data and posted it online (Top 5 Social Engineering Attacks of All Time, 2017).They wanted to affect social change and used hacking techniques to manipulate Sony. Social engineering usually refers to a person trying to gain access to a computer system in person or on the phone by talking. Hackers sometimes show up on site at a location and attempt to gain entry to the building and then the computer. They can do this by pretending to be a new employee, a repair person, or a delivery driver. This can be prevented by making workers aware of the threat of hackers. Informing workers that they should never give out passwords, even to the IT department can help. My current job requires everyone to watch an interactive training video to show people how to avoid this type of scam. The video goes over ways to avoid being scammed such as being suspicious of phone calls asking for passwords, phishing emails, and malware attachments. It advises to look at email senders and not click on attachments if not completely necessary. It gives alternatives showing how to share files. These are all good ways to help avoid social engineering. (Security Tip (ST04-014) Avoiding Social Engineering and Phishing Attacks, 2020).

Many of the network security solutions are the same. Making workers aware of the threat and how to avoid falling for a scam are the main solutions. It is also helpful to have a software that helps people to avoid potential risks or divert strange internet traffic. This post went over DOS attacks, phishing, and social engineering. 

Computers are an integral part of online learning. Teachers and students use desktops, laptops, Chromebooks, tablets, and phones for learning in a way that most current adults did not utilize. During the pandemic it has become the normal routine to have classrooms online. It is essential that teacher and students have updated computers and fast enough internet services to use online classrooms.

During the pandemic it is now a requirement that teachers are computer literate. They must be able to at least open an online room such as zoom or adobe. It is essential they can set up the classrooms. A teacher must be able to grade the online content submitted. It is even better if they are more familiar with the platform and can send out videos and readings to the students. I can not even count how many of the teachers told me on the phone that last year the students were not allowed to come back to the school to get their books. This year, the teachers stated that they are not using physical books at all, due to fear of the pandemic spreading the virus. Teacher and students are relying on the online content making computer literacy a requirement as well.

In the future, I am guessing that the online platforms will become even more sophisticated. Currently there is not a way for teachers to share personal content with each other. Teachers can use the pre-made tests and quizzes but update them to delete questions or add questions. The teachers can not share the updated quiz or test with other teachers through the platform. Some content has a copyright on it, and can not be downloaded. In the future, I am guessing that more content will be able to be shared and downloaded. More teachers will stop asking to print assignments and start looking at digital content only. Districts will most likely make the classes more standardized and teachers will have less authority to change the content themselves. As computers become more modernized, they will probably become smaller and lighter. Teachers and student might use their phones for classes instead of computers at all. If this happens, then my predictions will be that phones get bigger screens.