COSC 409
January Semester 2025
Group Assignment Questions
Group 1
1.You are a new brand manager for a product line of Coach purses. You are considering purchasing
customer data from a company that sells a large variety of women’s products online. In addition to
providing a list of names, mailing addresses, and email addresses, the data includes an estimate of
customers’ annual income based on the zip code in which they live, census data, and highest level of
education achieved. You could use the data to identify likely purchasers of your high-end purses, and
you could then send those people emails announcing the new product line and touting its many
features. List the advantages and disadvantages of such a marketing strategy. Would you recommend
this means of promotion in this instance? Why or why not?
Group 2
1. Your company is rolling out a training program to ensure that everyone is familiar with the company’s
IT usage policy. As a member of the Human Resources Department, you have been asked to develop a
key piece of the training relating to why this policy is needed.What kind of concerns can you expect your
audience to raise? How can you deal with this anticipated resistance to the policy?
Group 3
1. Outline a scenario in which you might be acting ethically but might still want to remain anonymous
while using the Internet. Identify two approaches someone might take to learn your identity even if you
attempt to remain anonymous.
Group 4
1. You are the computer technical resource for a county’s public library system. The library is making
plans to install Internet filtering software so it will conform to the Children’s Internet Protection Act and
be eligible for federal funding. What sort of objections can you expect regarding implementation of
Internet filters? How might you deal with such objections?
Group 5
1. Imagine that you receive a strongly worded hate email at your school or job that threatens physical
violence toward you. What would you do? Does your school or workplace have a policy that covers such
issues?
Group 6
1. You have been asked to lead your company’s new competitive intelligence organization. What would
you do to ensure that members of the new organization obey applicable laws and the company’s own
ethical policies?
Group 7
1. You are interviewing for the role of human resources manager for a large software developer. Over
the last year, the firm has lost a number of high-level executives who left the firm to go to work for
competitors. During the course of your interview, you are asked what measures you would put in place
to reduce the potential loss of trade secrets from executives leaving the firm. How would you respond?
Group 8
1. You have been asked by the manager of software development to lead a small group of software
developers in an attempt to reengineer the latest release of the software by your leading competitor.
The goal of the group is to identify features that could be implemented into the next few releases of
your firm’s software. You are told that the group would relocate from the United States to the island of
Antigua, in the Caribbean Sea, to “reduce the risk of the group being distracted by the daily pressures
associated with developing fixes and enhancements with the current software release.” What sort of
legal and/or ethical questions might be raised by this reengineering effort? Would you consider taking
this position?
Group 9
1. Your company is considering using N-version programming with three software development firms
and three hardware devices for the navigation system of a guided missile. Briefly describe what this
means, and outline several advantages and disadvantages of this approach.
Group 10
1. A successful distributed denial-of-service attack requires the downloading of software that turns
unprotected computers into zombies under the control of the malicious hacker. Should the owners of
the zombie computers be fined or otherwise punished as a means of encouraging people to better
safeguard their computers? Why or why not?
Group 11
1. Provide a real example or describe a hypothetical situation where a legitimate organization used
spam in an effective and nonintrusive manner to promote a product or service.
Group 12.
1. Your auto insurance company has offered you a 15 percent discount (roughly N6000 per year) if you
agree to let them install a sophisticated vehicle event data recorder (EDR) in your car. You have read
over the terms of the agreement and discover that if you are involved in an accident, you must agree to
let the data from the device be collected and analyzed by a third-party accident investigation firm. You
must also agree to let findings from this analysis be used in a court of law. What questions would you
want answered and what advice might you seek before deciding whether to accept this discount offer?
Group 13
1. Your friend is considering using an online service to identify people with compatible personalities and
attractive physical features who would be interesting to date. Your friend must first submit some basic
personal information, then complete a five-page personality survey, and finally provide several recent
photos. Would you advise your friend to do this? Why or why not?
Group 14
1. You have been asked to review how well your company is prepared for a major data breach of your
firm’s customer database containing some 15 million records with names, addresses, passwords, credit
card numbers, and payment history. The goal is to minimize the potential impact of a hacker getting
access to this data and to avoid expensive class action lawsuits from affected customers. How would you
proceed with this audit? What sort of measures would you look for or recommend?
Group 15
1. A coworker confides to you that he is going to begin sending emails to your employer’s internal
corporate blog site, which serves as a suggestion box. He plans to use an anonymous remailer and sign
the messages “Anonymous.” Your friend is afraid of retribution from superiors but wants to call
attention to instances of racial and sexual discrimination observed during his five years as an employee
with the firm. What would you say to your friend?
Group 16
1. Your manager is leading a project to develop new software that is essential to the success of the
midsized manufacturing firm where you work. The firm has decided to hire outside contractors to
execute the project. One candidate firm boasts that its software development practices are at level 4 of
CMMI. Another firm claims that all its software development practices are ISO 9001 compliant. Your
manager has come to you and asked for your opinion on how much weight should be given to these
certifications when deciding which firm to use. What would you say?
Group 17
1. You are a programmer for a firm that develops a popular tax preparation software package designed
to help individuals prepare their federal tax returns. In the course of testing some small changes that
were made to the software, you detect an error in the software that results in roughly a 5 percent
underestimation of the amount owed—both for those who indicated that they were single and for those
who indicated that they were married but filing separate tax returns. It is now late March, and it is likely
that well over 100,000 users who submitted their returns using your firm’s software will be affected by
this error. What do you do?
Group 18
1. A friend contacts you about joining his company, Anonymous Remailers Anonymous. He would like
you to lead the technical staff and offers you a 20 percent increase in salary and benefits over your
current position. Your initial project would be to increase protection for users of the company’s
anonymous remailer service. After discussing the opportunity with your friend, you suspect that some of
the firm’s customers are criminal types and purveyors of pornography and hate mail. Although your
friend cannot be sure, he admits it is possible that hackers and terrorists may use his firm’s services.
Would you accept the generous job offer? Why or why not?
Group 19
1. You developed a spreadsheet program that helps you perform your role of inventory control
manager at a small retail sports shoe store. The software uses historical sales data to calculate expected
weekly sales for each of about 250 shoes carried by the store. Based on that forecast, you order the
appropriate shoes from the various manufacturers. Your store is one of four shoe stores owned by the
same person. You sent a copy of the spreadsheet to each of the people responsible for inventory control
at the other three retail stores, and they are all now using your software to help them do their jobs. You
have started getting complaints that the software is not entirely accurate, and you notice that your own
estimates are no longer as accurate as they used to be. What would you do?
