Comp427, Spring 2018, Homework 1

Rational Paranoia

The homework specifications, as well as the corresponding course slide decks, can be found on the Comp427 Piazza. This assignment is due Thursday, January 17 at 6 p.m.

You will do this homework by editing the README.md file. It's in MarkDown format and will be rendered to beautiful HTML when you visit your GitHub repo.

Student Information

Please also edit README.md and replace your instructor's name and NetID with your own:

Student name: Haoran Liang

Student NetID: hl74

Your NetID is typically your initials and a numeric digit. That's what we need here.

If you contacted us in advance and we approved a late submission, please cut-and-paste the text from that email here.

Problem 1

• Scenario: {Stadium}

• Assumptions:

  • The next gameday is a match between us and another NCAA top ranked team. There are almost 70,000 audiences trying to enter the stadium. The away team also have thousands of fans want to get access to the stadium. More than half of the securities are assigning to the entrance. There are some shortage of securities inside of the stadium.

• Assets:

  • The stadium is the priority assets needed to be protect. As a security manager, it is important to make sure that stadium is not damaged. The font gates, handrails, stadium seats and LED screens are all the most important assets for a stadium. Therefore, I need to make sure those public facilities are not destroyed.

  • The team items are also valuable assets. The team items including team jersey, helmest, football cleats and so on. The team items are kept in the equipment management office or in the locker room.

  • Small electronic equipments such as laptop, pad and smartphones. The team used electronic equipments usually contains game data and analysis which are important for the entire team. Those equipments mostly are kept in team manager office.

• Threats:

  • Theft. Theft is also another big security threat. Theft sometimes comes from the audience, sometimes comes from the internal staff. The athlete. equipments and electronic equipments are the most easily stolen items.

  • Man-made damage. For a football team which is frequently ranked among the best in the country. A game day usually could attract almost 70 thousands people to visit the stadium, including the away fans. Therefore man-made damage to the stadium is a serious threat, especially the seats in the away fans area.

• Countermeasures:

  • One coutermeasure is that increasing the number of securities. This method will cause a lot of expenses. We could Assigns securities to provide more rigorous checks when audiences enter the stadium, and send more securities to the away fans area to prevent potential threat. Therefore increasing the number of securities will reduce the probability of theft and man-made damages.

  • Set up monitorings in the stadium, especially the tunnel outside the locker rooms and staff offices. This countermeasure will not cost too much money, but will prevent a lot threat to the internal theft, and reduce the probability of equipment stolen.

Problem 2

• Scenario: {TSA}

• Assumptions:

  • It is a busy day at the airport. However, some x-ray machine and check screening is not working. A large number of tourist are waiting outside of the check point. Some people’s airplanes are about to take off.

• Assets:

  • The most important assets I need to protect is the safety of entire airport. Every tourist need to pass screening check in order to get into the airport. Thus, although some equipment does not work properly, we still require all passengers to wait until screening check is completed.

  • The screening check equipment are also valuable assets I need to protect. I need to make sure all able to operate screening machine avoid damages.

  • All passengers are important assets I need to protect. We want all tourist can catch their flight. Thus, we need to make out effort to make every passenger to pass the screening check as soon as possible.

• Threats:

  • The biggest threat is the dangerous items carried by passengers. Those dangerous items include lighter, guns, bullets and so on. The prohibit items will cause massive damage to the airport and even threaten the safety of passengers. Therefore, use screening scan to find and eliminate the danger of prohibit items is the priority work to do.

  • Tourists may have some excited emotions during long time waiting. Since some screening machine is not valid. Passengers need to wait for longer time than usual. They may have the risk not catching up the flight. Therefore, some tourist may have excited emotion which may cause some irrational behavior.

• Countermeasures:

  • One of the countermeasure is that adding more working staff to help checking passengers packages. The manual inspection to the carry-on baggage will squeeze the entire waiting time for passengers. This countermeasure will cost some resources, but will effectively reduce the time of security check, and also effectively find dangerous items and reduce safety risks.

  • Another countermeasure is finding engineers and technical staff to repair the broken equipment. This will costs some money and human resources. The benefits are obvious. Passengers will wait for less time to pass the security check. The security check will increase accuracy by using repaired screening equipment.

Problem 3

• Scenario: You are in charge of security work in a local supermarket, like Target.

• Assumptions:

  • One day, heavy rain caused power shortage. All closed-circuit televisions are down, the checkout counter is not working either.

• Assets:

  • The goods. All commodities are valuable assets for a supermarket. Some commodities are extremely expensive such as furniture, electronic products, TVs. Those products must be protected by the securities.

• Threats:

  • Theft. Since closed-circuit televisions are down and power is off, there may have theft happens. We need to sure that all customers will not take extra things which are not belong to them.

  • Frozen food becomes another tricky problem when power off happens. We need to make sure that frozen foods don’t deteriorate.

  • Money at the checkout counter. Since power is off, the checkout counter is not working as well. One safety threat is that how to keep money safety.

• Countermeasures:

  • One countermeasure is that to find backup power. This may costs some money considering the price of electric generator or the fees for electricity company. The benefit is that power is back so that camera could work, the checkout counter can also be used. Everything works fine.

  • Assign more security and work staff. This action requires human recourses and costs money. Assigning more securities at the exit will effectively reduce the theft rate and guarantee the safety of commodities.