Noah DeWaal Tuesday16 Jun at 15:38 Manage discussion entry "Four Horsemen" describes the ways in which our world is slowly folding on itself. It categorizes the four horsemen as a wrongful banking system, escalating violence, an abundance of poverty, and deletion of the world's resources. All these topics are the signs that we have truly doomed ourselves as a nation and as a planet. The underlying kingpin here is money. Everyone, including the government, lives, and works to earn and spend money. There are a variety of different paths to obtain that currency and the banks are at the heart, banks that create this money out of thin air. The film starts by speaking of empires and power. Nations want to be in positions to be on top as a means of security and credibility. Top nations control our world and those who are not, strive to become one. From historic times to now, people and groups want to become the most powerful, and when they do, they obtain all the resources they can do benefit their empires and the leaders become wealthy and untouchable. There is usually one common factor within one's rise to power, and that is money. It earns resources and credibility which makes others become submissive to you. We are supposed to be living within a free market system where everyone has a fair piece of the pie, but that is rarely true today. The way the banks function and government spending only amasses debt that will in turn be paid by the American people. Some of these people live in poverty, meaning they cannot even live anymore. People are expected to pay more for items as the price level rises while many incomes are not following suit. This system leaves those who are poor behind making it nearly impossible for them to catch up. As stated before, government spending can leave a budget deficit that needs to be repaid. Most of these expenditures, however, are on war and violence. International affairs, terrorism, and national crime are all credible threats, and a lot of money goes into limiting it. The resources used to support these organization makes them more powerful and it has transitioned peacekeeping into utter force and violence. Here at home and abroad, war rages daily. From small to large scale conflict is being solved in horrific ways and many innocent people are dying along the way. At the root of all of it, is money and power. A lot of this is also politically inclined. We live in a society in which people are paid just to influence politicians to pass acts that will in turn create more money for people who already have a lot of it. Wealth drives our nation, without it, one is just swept under the carpet.  People have worked way too hard to obtain wealth while those in control can create it like none other. This exponential growth has depleted Earth's resources and we are running out fast. With no resources, what is there to gain anymore. The Four Horsemen are the warning signs that our systems are heavily flawed and need to be chan.

1. Noah DeWaal
Tuesday16 Jun at 15:38
Manage discussion entry
"Four Horsemen" describes the ways in which our world is
slowly folding on itself. It categorizes the four horsemen as a
wrongful banking system, escalating violence, an abundance of
poverty, and deletion of the world's resources. All these topics
are the signs that we have truly doomed ourselves as a nation
and as a planet. The underlying kingpin here is money.
Everyone, including the government, lives, and works to earn
and spend money. There are a variety of different paths to
obtain that currency and the banks are at the heart, banks that
create this money out of thin air. The film starts by speaking of
empires and power. Nations want to be in positions to be on top
as a means of security and credibility. Top nations control our
world and those who are not, strive to become one. From
historic times to now, people and groups want to become the
most powerful, and when they do, they obtain all the resources
they can do benefit their empires and the leaders become
wealthy and untouchable. There is usually one common factor
within one's rise to power, and that is money. It earns resources
and credibility which makes others become submissive to you.
We are supposed to be living within a free market system where
everyone has a fair piece of the pie, but that is rarely true today.
The way the banks function and government spending only
amasses debt that will in turn be paid by the American people.
Some of these people live in poverty, meaning they cannot even
live anymore. People are expected to pay more for items as the
price level rises while many incomes are not following suit.
This system leaves those who are poor behind making it nearly
impossible for them to catch up. As stated before, government
spending can leave a budget deficit that needs to be repaid.
Most of these expenditures, however, are on war and violence.
International affairs, terrorism, and national crime are all

2. credible threats, and a lot of money goes into limiting it. The
resources used to support these organization makes them more
powerful and it has transitioned peacekeeping into utter force
and violence. Here at home and abroad, war rages daily. From
small to large scale conflict is being solved in horrific ways and
many innocent people are dying along the way. At the root of
all of it, is money and power. A lot of this is also politically
inclined. We live in a society in which people are paid just to
influence politicians to pass acts that will in turn create more
money for people who already have a lot of it. Wealth drives
our nation, without it, one is just swept under the carpet.
People have worked way too hard to obtain wealth while those
in control can create it like none other. This exponential growth
has depleted Earth's resources and we are running out fast. With
no resources, what is there to gain anymore. The Four Horsemen
are the warning signs that our systems are heavily flawed and
need to be changed soon or else we can be doomed.
3. Our textbook may not talk about the money of the examples
in the film but it is the topics and principles that are at the root.
Obviously, money runs the economy. How it is created and used
has blown money things our of proportion leading to misuse and
depletion of resources. When we have learned about GDP we
know it matters both on consumer and government spending and
investment. Most government spending being towards the
military has escalated violence in our world and only requires
more and more resources. The debt that has accumulated falls
on us to pay it which decreases disposable income. We strive
for full employment and full potential output but our money is
losing its purchasing power. This all stems back to our flawed
banking system as they benefit while we reap the downfalls.
The banks' control of the money seems to almost render fiscal
policy useless. The government seems to want to help but needs
the banks' cooperation to do so. We are a top nation but
internationally, many see us as unstable as we slowly bury
ourselves in debt and burden all in the pursuit of power.
4. This relates to the US economy for the fact that this is the

3. truth. We live in a life where we earn and spending money but
never think twice about it. The sad truth is we are hidden from
the facts in order to feel that everything is under control. It may
be under control in the bank and government view, but it is
slyly hurting citizens. Our expenditures, savings, and income all
make its way back to the banks and government and the vicious
cycle starts over again. In my own life, I feel there is not much
I can do. These factors of doom are here but I need to survive. I
have wants and needs to satisfy and have to work to do so. It
also ties into the fact that I want to save money in smart ways. I
feel to just have money sitting around is just a waste of wealth.
To invest and save with interest is essential to staying afloat of
rising inflation but I also need disposable and liquid money
every moment of my life.
5. Coronavirus fits into these problems because it shows who is
truly in control of our "free enterprise market". Many people
lost their streams of income due to shutdowns and had little say
in the matter. Some were even crushed by the lack of revenue.
This comes to show how some are just not cut out or prepared
for when issues like this happen. The economy slow has been
great for the environment, however, and also most likely helped
resource allocation. Once we fully reopen though, the races for
profits and resources will be back on and potentially even
greater as people fight to gain their lives back.
6. The film surprised me most by showing how the banks and
large corporations do really own our nation. It is well aware
that politicians are backed by money and will fight for those
who gave it to them. It was interesting to see that a lot of
history continues to repeat itself with no end in sight. Nations
become power and that power, in turn, collapses on that nation.
I disliked the film for the facts that were presented. It is sad to
see how a nation that promotes so much wellbeing has so many
secrets as it crumbles. Do we really matter or is it just a ploy
for money and power. As the last set of videos, this film was
rather dark and unsettling. I understand and accept the facts
they give but it really has not truly translated to real life for me.

4. I just do not see it yet but I am worried it might.
7. Short term implications would be that there is no end to the
march of the powerful. Those in control will continue to do
whatever it takes to stay in that position. The poor will continue
to hurt and resources will only decline. Long term is really just
a hope. A hope the monetary system can be fixed and controlled
by the government so we can no longer be a nation ran on fake
money and debt. If I was in charge, I think a starting spot would
be an overall reform of the national budget. Violence is never a
good thing and military spending only seems to promote it
which needs to be limited. I do not think the wealthy should be
targeted to pay off debt either, but I do think those in poverty
need a better chance. A system of a nonexistent top line is what
I Imagine while bringing up those at the bottom to a liveable
standard. A huge factor for the standard of living is GDP and
GNI (gross national income) per capita, but it is rather unfair. It
is a start but some people are making 100s of times less or more
than that. Such as the average national income in America is
about $60,000 which is liveable for sure, but many do not
achieve that. We need to see our national holistically while also
going for what is true and attainable. Helping the bottom line is
a top priority for me but it starts by subtracting the power from
corporations and the banks.
Amadeo, Kimberly. “Where's the Best Standard of Living?
Depends Who You Ask.” The Balance, The Balance, 15 June
2020, www.thebalance.com/standard-of-living-3305758.
Clowey Mcmurray
2:3418 Jun at 2:34
Manage discussion entry
This video touched on a few different topics. The major one
obviously being how banks just simply make money whenever
they want. I honestly did not realize that banks are able to just
print money when they need too, that is something I never

5. learned in high school. I definitely do not agree with it, it
should not be allowed. Another topic in the video was about
people being in debt that was difficult for them to get out of. It
mentioned how people who are poor also have different morals,
and that they were paying off debt that they could not really
afford to pay off. This video also talks about terrorist, and how
we send money, and resources to other countries. I think my
favorite part of this whole video was the very end when the
narrator said we need to look with our eyes wide open.
This video very much so relates to our economy. We are very
much in debt, and we continue to dig ourselves deeper into debt.
We have people signing up for credit cards, and digging
themselves so deep into debt that they cannot get themselves
out. Banks create these credit cards, and let people have them
knowing that they are not going to be able to pay back what
they have borrowed, let alone pay the interest on these cards.
Banks are setting people up for failure. It is sad to see how
corrupt they are, and the fact that so many people do not even
know what is going on is just scary. I think away that this
affects all of us in this class is debt when it comes to school. Of
course some of us are suffering with debt more than others, but
I guarantee that almost all of us have some type of school debt
at the moment.
The U.S. has already been in debt for a long time. It seems like
we are just digging ourselves deeper, and deeper. The
coronavirus has made things even worse. With all of the
shutdowns, a lot of companies are hurting very bad financially.
Not only are they struggling to keep their business, some have
been forced to go out of business. I think the saddest part is for
the people who were running their small businesses, putting
their life savings into it, just to have this pandemic happen, and
them lose everything. It is devastating for the country as a
whole. The thing with the banks just printing money when they
need to makes me wonder if that is where the money for our
stimulus checks came from. This pandemic has caused us to lose
a lot of money, and it has hurt our economy.

6. I did enjoy this video. It was very informative, and I learned a
lot of information that I did not know. I had no idea that banks
had the authority to just print money whenever they need too.
Like what is the point of money being worth anything is banks
are able to just print it like it's nothing? That was the most
surprising thing to me. I liked how the video said we need to
look with our eyes wide open. I feel like so many of us,
including myself fail to educate ourselves on what is going on
in the world. By doing this we are really hurting ourselves. I
also didn't realize how much money we send to other countries
to help them. I know in the video they mentioned that they
thought this was a bad thing, but I disagree. I think we should
all be more willing to help each other. I think it would be very
beneficial and would solve a lot of issues.
Banks printing money whenever they need to allows them to
temporarily fix a problem, but it is just creating a bigger
problem in the long run. Banks really should not be allowed to
do this. It is taking away the value of the money, and making it
completely worthless. In the end it is causing more harm to our
economy than it is good. I think we need to find a different
solution to fix these problems, and that we need to work
together in order to do so. I think we need to create a
government that doesn't set its citizens up for failure.
C11-1
CASE STUDY 11
CLOUD COMPUTING (IN)SECURITY
Cloud computing is reshaping enterprise network architectures

7. and
infrastructures. It refers to applications delivered as services
over the
Internet as well as the hardware and systems software in data
centers that
provide those services. The services themselves have long been
referred to
as Software as a Service (SaaS) which had its roots in Software-
Oriented
Architecture (SOA) concepts that began shaping enterprise
network
roadmaps in the early 2000s. IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service)
and PaaS
(Platform as a Service) are other types of cloud computing
services that are
available to business customers.
Cloud computing fosters the notion of computing as a utility
that can be
consumed by businesses on demand in a manner that is similar
to other
services (e.g. electricity, municipal water) from traditional
utilities. It has the
potential to reshape much of the IT industry by giving
businesses the option

8. of running business software applications fully on-premises,
fully in “the
cloud” or some combination of these two extremes. These are
choices that
businesses have not had until recently and many companies are
still coming
to grips with this new computing landscape.
Security is important to any computing infrastructure.
Companies go to
great lengths to secure on-premises computing systems, so it is
not
surprising that security looms as a major consideration when
augmenting or
replacing on-premises systems with cloud services. Allaying
security
C11-2
concerns is frequently a prerequisite for further discussions
about migrating
part or all of an organization’s computing architecture to the
cloud.
Availability is another major concern: “How will we operate if
we can’t access

9. the Internet? What if our customers can’t access the cloud to
place orders?”
are common questions [AMBR10].
Generally speaking, such questions only arise when businesses
contemplating moving core transaction processing, such as ERP
systems,
and other mission critical applications to the cloud. Companies
have
traditionally demonstrated less concern about migrating high
maintenance
applications such as e-mail and payroll to cloud service
providers even
though such applications hold sensitive information.
Security Issues and Concerns
Auditability is a concern for many organizations, especially
those who must
comply with Sarbanes-Oxley and/or Health and Human Services
Health
Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA)
regulations [IBM11].
The auditability of their data must be ensured whether it is
stored on-

10. premises or moved to the cloud.
Before moving critical infrastructure to the cloud, businesses
should do
diligence on security threats both from outside and inside the
cloud
[BADG11]. Many of the security issues associated with
protecting clouds
from outside threats are similar to those that have traditionally
faced
centralized data centers. In the cloud, however, responsibility
for assuring
adequate security is frequently shared among users, vendors,
and any third-
party firms that users rely on for security-sensitive software or
configurations. Cloud users are responsible for application-level
security.
Cloud vendors are responsible for physical security and some
software
security such as enforcing external firewall policies. Security
for intermediate
layers of the software stack is shared between users and
vendors.

11. C11-3
A security risk that can be overlooked by companies
considering a
migration to the cloud is that posed by sharing vendor resources
with other
cloud users. Cloud providers must guard against theft or denial-
of-service
attacks by their users and users need to be protected from one
another.
Virtualization can be a powerful mechanism for addressing
these potential
risks because it protects against most attempts by users to attack
one
another or the provider’s infrastructure. However, not all
resources are
virtualized and not all virtualization environments are bug-free.
Incorrect
virtualization may allow user code to access to sensitive
portions of the
provider’s infrastructure or the resources of other users. Once
again, these
security issues are not unique to the cloud and are similar to
those involved
in managing non-cloud data centers, where different

12. applications need to be
protected from one another.
Another security concern that businesses should consider is the
extent
to which subscribers are protected against the provider,
especially in the
area of inadvertent data loss. For example, in the event of
provider
infrastructure improvements, what happens to hardware that is
retired or
replaced? It is easy to imagine a hard disk being disposed of
without being
properly wiped clean of subscriber data. It is also easy to
imagine
permissions bugs or errors that make subscriber data visible to
unauthorized
users. User-level encryption may be an important self-help
mechanism for
subscribers, but businesses should ensure that other protections
are in place
to avoid inadvertent data loss.
Addressing Cloud Computer Security Concerns
Numerous documents have been developed to guide business

13. thinking
about the security issues associated with cloud computing. Even
NIST has
weighed in on these issues [BADG11]. NIST’s
recommendations
systematically consider each of the major types of cloud
services consumed
C11-4
by businesses including Software as a Service (SaaS),
Infrastructure as a
Service (IaaS), and Platform as a Service (PaaS). While security
issues vary
somewhat depending on the type of cloud service, there are
multiple NIST
recommendations that are independent of service type. Several
of these are
summarized in Table C11.1. Not surprisingly, NIST
recommends selecting
cloud providers that support strong encryption, have appropriate
redundancy
mechanisms in place, employ authentication mechanisms, and
offer

14. subscribers sufficient visibility about mechanisms used to
protect subscribers
from other subscribers and the provider.
As more businesses incorporate cloud services into their
enterprise
network infrastructures, cloud computing security will persist as
an
important issue. Examples of cloud computing security failures
have to
potential to have a chilling effect on business interest in cloud
services and
this is inspiring service providers to be serious about
incorporating security
mechanisms that will allay concerns of potential subscribers.
Some service
providers have moved their operations to Tier 4 data centers to
address user
concerns about availability and redundancy. Because so many
businesses
remain reluctant to embrace cloud computing in a big way,
cloud service
providers will have to continue to work hard to convince
potential customers
that computing support for core business processes and mission

15. critical
applications can be moved safely and securely to the cloud
[HEAV11].
Discussion Points
1. Do some Internet research to identify businesses who have
suffered
because of cloud security weaknesses or failures. What can
companies
who are contemplating cloud computing services learn from the
negative experiences of these businesses?
2. Do some Internet research on security mechanisms associated
with
virtualization. How can virtualization be used by cloud service
providers to protect subscriber data?
C11-5
3. Choose one of the following cloud services categories: SaaS,
IaaS,
PaaS. Do some Internet research that focuses the security issues
associated with the selected cloud service category. Summarize
the
major security risks associated with the cloud service category
and
identify mechanisms that can be used to address these risks.

16. Sources
[ARMB10] Armbrust, M., Fox, A., Griffith, R, Joseph, A.D.,
Katz, R.,
Konwinski, A., Lee, G., Patterson, D., Rabkin, A., Stoica, I.,
and Zaharia, M.
“A View of Cloud Computing.” Communications of the ACM,
Vol. 53, No. 4,
April 2010, pp. 50-58.
[BADG11] Badger, L., Grance, T., Patt-Comer, R., and Voas, J.
Draft Cloud
Computing Synopsis and Recommendations: Recommendations
of the
National Institute of Standards and Technology, Special
Publication 800-146,
May 2011.
[HEAV11] Heavey, J. “Cloud Computing: Secure or Security
Risk?”
Technorati.com, November 28, 2011. Retrieved online from:
http://technorati.com/technology/cloud-computing/article/cloud-
computing-
secure-or-a-security1/.
[IBM11] IBM Global Technology Services. Security and
Availability in Cloud
Computing Environments, Technical White Paper, June 2011.
http://technorati.com/technology/cloud-computing/article/cloud-
computing-secure-or-a-security1/
http://technorati.com/technology/cloud-computing/article/cloud-
computing-secure-or-a-security1/

17. C11-6
CASE STUDY 11Security Issues and ConcernsAddressing
Cloud Computer Security ConcernsDiscussion PointsSources