Write a 3 to 4 page paper (not including title or reference page) using “recommended websites” to determine if there is a federal or local agency that is better configured to engage in homeland security preparedness and planning. Explain why the agency you chose is better prepared than others.    Using the APA template

 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Biological and Chemical Terrorism: Strategic Plan for Preparedness and Response:

 www.cdc.gov/mmwr/ preview/mmwrhtml/rr4904a1.htm 

 Federal Emergency Management Agency:

 www.fema .gov/hazard-mitigation-assistance 

 U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Medical Surge Capacity and Capability Handbook: 

www.phe.gov/Preparedness/planning/mscc/handbook/ Pages/default.aspx 

 U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Reference Manual to Mitigate Potential Terrorist Attacks Against Buildings: 

www.dhs.gov/xlibrary/assets/st/st-bips- 06.pdf 

 U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission: www.nrc.gov/ security.html 

 White House, Homeland Security Presidential Directive 21: www.fas.org/irp/offdocs/nspd/hspd-21.htm 

Please read the each discussion post and provide one response for each discussion in 75 to 100 words

Discussion Post 1:

BPaaS comprises of an integration of all processes as conducted by businesses hence enabling commercial enterprises achieve economy and efficiency in conducting business operations. With the shift to cloud computing, organizations are adopting automation of their operations to reduce on the overall cost of hardware, software amongst other resources. The implication of BPaaS on organizational operation include reduced cost of business transaction, minimal risks as well as enabling organizations achieve scalability in utilization of cloud computing infrastructure (Schwarzbach, 2016). For this reason, organizations could continue adopting BPaaS to increase their overall productivity in their operations.

BPaaS could be centrally managed by organizations unlike with other standalone applications. As an integration of all critical business processes such as payroll processing, e-commerce amongst other process, it would be possible for organizations to manage all processes at a single entry point. As a composition of multiple application, it would be relatively easier for enterprises to monitor the performance of BPaaS unlike when individual applications are used in managing business processes. As such, the risk reduction aspect is incorporated to BPaaS by reducing the multiple vulnerability points to organizational operations. BPaaS enables enterprises to have access to a skilled workforce and expertise who have knowledge in application development.  It is hence possible for organizations to seek immediate support from expertise who have knowledge on BPaaS operations. In comparison, to other traditional applications it hence becomes possible for enterprises to reduce the risks of operating BPaaS in the event of failure. It is possible to incorporate new design processes and implement further security measures to the operation of BPaaS by the help of these experts and professionals in the cloud computing platform (Duipmans& Pires, 2012)

BPaaS offers a platform for facilitating social collaborations, web analytics, business process management, security governance, compliances and risk management (Babu, 2013). The effective running of business operations requires business to adopt a comprehensive and a streamlined approach that facilitate efficient service delivery. It hence becomes possible that with the integration of BPaaS, organizations would have it easy having efficient business processing. Risk of business failure due to unstructured business process is hence not possible with the incorporation of BPaaS for business operations.  There is multifunctional capabilities usually associated with the BPaaS. The multifunctional capability hence offers opportunities for organization to adopt flexibility in their operations an attribute that is not present in many applications.  Also, before the full integration of BPaaS by most enterprises, there is usually a trial period upon which organizations should test their business processes in line with the BPaaS. The trial period as offered by most BPaaS service provider is set to make organizations familiarize themselves with the functioning of BPaaS (Babu 2013). As such it hence becomes relatively easy for organizations to use BPaaS with full knowledge on its capability hence minimizing risks of failure due to lack of knowledge and interoperability of BPaaS.

Discussion Post 2:

Business Process as a Service (BPaaS) is a type of outsourcing model that outsources cloud-based services to businesses and commercial organizations. Companies or business organizations can increase the agility of their business processes by using BPaaS services. BPaaS provides these companies with some valuable emerging technologies to implement and deploy their business processes. It will definitely reduce the cost related to labor by increasing automation. BPaaS outsources cloud services that can be accessed from the Internet because it is an Internet-based technology. One of the accepted definitions of cloud computing is a model for enabling convenient and on-demand network access to a shared group of configurable computing resources that can be Quickly provision and launch with minimal effort from management or service provider interaction. The core elements of BPaaS are security and privacy and can be achieved by designing some robust business processes in the Cloud. Businesses, organizations or any customer can meet their rapidly growing and changing business needs with the help of BPaaS. BPaaS is defined as a collection of activities that takes one or more types of inputs and creates an output that is of value to the customer. “Automation” will improve operational efficiency and reduce errors, but management middleware of business processes has no tools to quantitatively track these business metrics. (Woitsch & Utz (2015, October))

There are many benefits to the increasing popularity of BPaaS. It is a type of cloud services with almost all cloud services that give business organizations the peace of mind of reducing risks and improving the speed of commercialization. Cloud services store information on servers and hardware that an organization does not control. These external servers have strict security measures that prevent any form of a data breach. They typically require the most powerful firewalls, access credentials, and security protocols to ensure business managers are comfortable storing critical information on their servers. The data is stored in a central repository managed 24/7 by internet security experts. Vendors also perform a threat assessment analysis for each cloud application launched by the company. They constantly work to ensure that the security measures implemented are stronger and more effective. According to KPMG Managing Director Randall Wiele, aside from this, there are many other benefits to focus on avoiding the capital, not only on underlying capabilities but also on constantly updating services. (Barton & Seel (2014).

Now, the business environment or the one-day process changes each new business investment carries a risk, however, BpaaS helps to reduce this risk as a team of professionals with extensive experience in new technologies and processes will be implemented to carry out these activities. Therefore, such an experience could reduce the risks that can come with new systems or growths. As of today, more and more organizations are realizing the benefits of BPaaS or other cloud services to reduce their exposure to risk and are committing to this innovative business approach.

Business Process as a service is intended to automate any business process of a company through cloud services. These cloud services make use of the infrastructure, an application that contains the logic and other details related to the cloud, and these services work collectively. “These cloud services that include software as a service (SaaS), platform as a service (PaaS) and infrastructure as a service (IaaS) are therefore dependent on related services. Another description of BPaaS is that it is a way to automate BPM with the help of very particular software for the business. (Accorsi (2011, July).)

Select one (1) of the following topics in which you will base your responses in the form of a term paper:

Write a ten to fifteen (10-15) page paper in which you:

1. Compose an executive summary highlighting the paper’s contents and reasoning for your chosen topic.
2. Conduct a SWOT analysis by analyzing the strengths, weaknesses, application opportunities, and threats from competitors of the chosen topic.
3. Evaluate the current ethical and legal concerns surrounding your topic.
4. Select one (1) ethical or legal concern surrounding your topic, take a position on the issue, and provide rationale.
5. Analyze the improvements over the last two (2) years to your communication technology topic, and suggest an improvement based on its current usage.
6. Predict the future role of the communication technology you’ve selected for both personal and commercial use.
7. Create a diagram that illustrates the communication structure of your chosen technology in Visio or its open source alternative software. Note: The graphically depicted solution is not included in the required page length.
8. Use at least eight (8) quality resources in this assignment. Note: Wikipedia and similar Websites do not qualify as quality resources.

Your assignment must follow these formatting requirements:

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

The specific course learning outcomes associated with this assignment are:

• Evaluate the ethical concerns that communication networks raise in a global context.
• Use technology and information resources to research issues in communication networks.
• Write clearly and concisely about communication networks using proper writing mechanics and technical style conventions.

Click here to view the grading rubric.

1 MCS 2514 Programming Assignment 3 Image Processing – Pointers, Class & Dynamic Data Please only submit MCS2514Pgm3.cpp This project is called “Image Processing” which will shrink an input image, convert a color image to gray image, add random noise to an image, add the RGB values of an image , or (as bonus) to denoise the image. But before we rush into this programming challenge, it is important to be intentional about some basic design considerations and a few techniques for managing and manipulating digital images. In solving this problem we will be using classes, pointers, and structured data in order to organize an efficient solution. The images you will manipulate are two dimensional images with a width and a height in units of pixels. Think of an image as a 2D array, indexed by rows (horizontal “scan lines”), which go across the image, and columns (vertical stripes through the image). Any pixel in an image is located by its (row, col) coordinates, or in C++ array terms, myImage[row][col]. Stored at each position in this two dimensional structure are the details of an individual pixel, represented as a point in a 24-bit RGB color space (8 bits for red, 8 bits for green, and 8 bits for blue). This is a common way to store image data, and is straightforward to understand. In this case, each and every pixel in the image consists of three values that are each 8 bits in length. This 8 bit size is no accident (we can store 8 bits in one unsigned char variable). These three values represent the red, green, and blue components of a single pixel. Since the value has 8 bits, it can hold any value between 0 and 255. A pixel with red, green, and blue all zero will appear black; a pixel with R, G, and B all equal to 255 will appear white. Or put another way, a low value is “dark” and a high value is “bright”. Just like an array, the origin (pixel at 0, 0) is normally viewed by convention as the upper left pixel, with rows horizontal and columns vertical. So first, make…

Submit a Word document that addresses each of the following:

• Chapter 14        
  • Define and describe the mobile web.
  • Describe the different generations of cell phones.
  • Describe how smartphones differ from ordinary cell phones.
  • Select a mobile or traditional website that interests you.  Describe the site in terms of the ecosystem that makes up the site’s  user experience.
  • Describe how web pages differ from apps and how apps differ from widgets.
  • Discuss why developers say that HTML5 will drive mobile solutions.
  • Describe some development best practices for designing solutions for the mobile cloud.
• Chapter 15        
  • Define corporate governance.
  • Discuss the events that led up to the need for increased corporate governance.
  • Define business strategy. List five possible business strategies.
  • Discuss the purpose of the Capability Maturity Model.
  • Define auditing.
  • Define internal control and provide an example of a control.
  • Discuss the role Sarbanes/Oxley has played with respect to corporate governance.
  • Define IT governance.
  • List factors one should consider with respect to governing the cloud.

Your responses should be submitted as a Word document and the paper  should adhere to APA format and style. Your answers should be written in  your own words. Include proper citations to any sources you used in  your answers