Integrated Professional Skills in Digital Age

This report discusses the importance of collaboration tools, cloud storage, cloud computing, privacy and security in the digital age. It includes a literature review of Asana and Slack, cloud storage, and cloud computing. The report also analyzes and discusses privacy and security concerns related to collaboration tools and cryptocurrency cash. The report aims to identify the aspects of ICT in businesses with its challenges and beneficence.

Integrated Professional
Skills in Digital Age

ABSTRACT
Information and communication tools (ICT) are emerging as the important tool in digitalisation
world. Its significant has been of great importance after the Covid period which bought the
immense use of collaboration tools for communication and working in a business organisation.
Collaboration tools like Zoom, Zimbra, Smack, Asana etc. showed an increased use along with
importance within the organisation. These collaboration tools show beneficence along with some
hazardous effects too which are related with security and privacy of employees as well as the
business organisation. The collaboration tools which the report has included consist of Smack
and Asana, along with that the report includes cloud storage and cloud computing. Their is a
discussion of benefits and suitability of these tools with reference of improved digitalisationin
the report.

Table of Content
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
MAIN BODY...................................................................................................................................1
LITERATURE REVIEW................................................................................................................1
Collaboration tools.......................................................................................................................1
Cloud Storage...............................................................................................................................2
Cloud Computing.........................................................................................................................3
Privacy and Security....................................................................................................................3
ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSION...................................................................................................4
Collaboration tools.......................................................................................................................4
Privacy and Security during pandemic........................................................................................5
Cryptocurrency Crash..................................................................................................................6
CONCLUSION ...............................................................................................................................7
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................8

INTRODUCTION
ICT, or Information and Communication technology refer to the set of technological tools
which are used for transmittance, storage, creation, sharing and exchange of information. These
ICT tools are showing essentiality in every field weather it is the entertainment, health, education
or business. ICT has become an essential tool for digital businesses and whose existence has
become a markable aspect during COVID pandemic. Importance of ICT can be explained with
widespread use of smart phones, cell phones, internet, emails, cloud storage, web conferencing,
making video call, browsing the internet, using tablet and mobile phones etc. ICT assist the
businesses activities including designing, manufacturing, distribution, sales and feedback.
During the pandemic, social gathering was restricted and so as the on-field work of business
organisation was hindered. Work from home using ICT, with use of mobile phones, web
conferencing, online video calls and digitalisation helped enterprises to carry forward their work
while maintaining the protocols of pandemic safety. ICT is mainly concerned with digital storage
of data, its retrieval and transmission (Arshad, 2020). The report is includes the literature review
of collaboration tools like Asana and Slack in business and their beneficence during Covid, cloud
storage, privacy and security that is associated with collaboration tools. Further it includes an
analysis and discussion of security and privacy concerns related with collaboration tools and
cryptocurrency cash. The report aims to identify the aspects of ICT in businesses with its
challenges and beneficence. Cryptocurrencies are the digital virtual currency which have effect
over the economics of the country. These virtual currency and their significance are further
included in the report.
MAIN BODY
LITERATURE REVIEW
Collaboration tools
As per the view of Randy F and et. al., (2020) collaboration at workplaces has gained
importance at current time, especially during the pandemic period. Collaboration tools are
software programmes, apps or platforms which give a hand to businesses and their associated
people to work together more effectively and efficiently. Collaboration tools showed importance
in Covid pandemic period, as the businesses were performing their duties and communicating
using these collaborative tools. Few examples of collaboration tools are, zoom, Trello, Google
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Docs, Slack, Microsoft teams, Webex Meetings, Skype etc. Zoom and Slack enables the virtual
meetings for group communication. Two examples of collaboration tools which helped
businesses in during the Covid pandemic are, Asana and Slack.
Asana comes with its transparent dashboard including visual project plans and impressive
features, in which projects and tasks can be easily monitored by all the team members. Asana let
the workers switch from a Kanban board to a list, calender view or Gantt chart timeline. This
help the team members to visualize their work at any work place. Its premium plans help in
routine task management along with the customizable rules. With Asana , team members can see
the changes within the task and also who made the changes. This avoids conflicts and
misunderstandings. Asana can also be combined with other common tools like Slack. During
pandemic Asana collaboration tool helped the businesses to track their work task and it allowed
other employees to manage their work from home (Jackson, van der Hoek and Prikladnicki,
2022).
Slack has shown its importance in pandemic era. Slack can be combined with other tools
like Asana or Dropbox, which makes it unique from others. Connecting through Slack is more
secure and productive for communicating. Slack during pandemic helped organisations to
communicate with their external partners, clients and vendors. Slack functions for companies and
other individual teams (Korbel and Stegle, 2020). In general, collaboration tools are becoming
permanent feature for modern workplaces, these help employees for working together from
anywhere using internet enabled devices. These collaboration tools improve productivity so as
reduce the personal contacts. They imparts high efficiency of employees along with high price
structures which cause economical burden for enterprises (Smite and et. al., 2021).
Cloud Storage
As per the view of Kilimovic Litz and et. al., (2018), cloud storage, e-commerce and
cloud computing are considered as new normal which was similar before the pandemic too.
Cloud storage refers to the cloud computing model which stores the data over internet through
cloud computing provider. Cloud storage operate and mange the storage of data as a service.
Cloud storage stores the same data on server more than one, so as the client can access it. The
possibility of data losing is low in such scenario. Different type of cloud storage are, private
cloud storage, hybrid cloud storage, public cloud storage and community cloud storage etc.
Cloud storage can be accessed anywhere, it gives access to user for storing and retrieving the
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files from anywhere in the world. Cloud storage can save important files and documents into a
remote database. Advantages of Cloud Storage in improving digitalisation include cost
effectiveness, accessibility, recovery, syncing and updating and security. Whereas, its
disadvantages include access of an internet connection, additional costs, hard drive requirement,
support and privacy. Suitability of cloud storage for digitalisation improvement includes, its use
in application development and testing with zero cost of capital and low operation cost. Its
application indlude IaaS and PaaS, Test and development, Big data analytics, Data backup etc.
(Prajapati and Shah, 2020). Cloud storage stores the data and information which is essential for
the individuals and can be accessed by them at any place with the help of internet. These
methods are important as well as full of hazards too. As the cloud storage can help individuals
with protection of information and data as the access is up to him and the chances of data loss are
minimal but the hazards it includes are, leakage of data privacy also the leakage of information.
Cloud Computing
Cloud Computing is referred to the computing services delivery including storages,
networking, databases, analytics and intelligence over internet. The cloud computing offer
flexible resources, faster innovations and scale economies. Cloud computing allows network
bases access to tools for communication which includes calenders and emails. Wats app is one of
the cloud computing tools where all the data are stored within a service providing hardware.
Types of cloud computing are similar to that of cloud storage. Additionally there are three main
types of cloud computing services, which are IaaS, PaaS and SaaS. Cloud computing improves
the digitalisation by multiple ways. It have advantages which include, cost effectiveness as it
reduces the capital expenses which are generated with hardware purchasing and setting up of
software (Hofmann, 2021). Other advantages include, its speed as majority of cloud computing
services are provided on demand, global scale elasticity and productivity are benefits of cloud
computing. Furthermore, cloud computing services are highly performed, these are reliable as
well as secured. Application of cloud computing in improvement of digitalisation involve,
backup and recovery availability, online data storage, antivirus application, big data analysis etc.
Cloud computing is suitable for an IT workload to run in to a cloud environment. On the other
hand disadvantage of cloud computing in digitalisation enhancement consist of downtime as it is
dependent on internet, reboots and network outage. These can hinder businesses operation and
can cause damage to it.
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Privacy and Security
As per the views of Filkins BL and et. al., (2016) a majority of people are using internet
on their daily basis for education, employment and entertainment. Internet is also a vibrant
marketplace for buyers and sellers for enhancing their businesses and making a good profit with
it. Internet is the root of digitalisation process however, it has also become a problem for
individuals, corporation due to its privacy and security concerns. Cyber attack, robbery and
objection over the security and privacy are the drawbacks of internet. As personal information
are shifting towards the online, cybercriminals are also enhancing their techniques for wreating
their targets without proper security level. It is important for business to build trust between the
company and user, data security and privacy are the two elements which can do that. Business
information leakage can impact significantly over the profit and productivity of that business.
Lack of data security and privacy is a threat for human dignity, self-determination and safety.
Along with that it is a barrier for business enhancement and digitalisation (Gritzalis, S. and et.
al., 2019). The common challenges which are related to privacy and security and are faced by
businesses include, physical security, insider threats, security threats, privacy and regulations.
Along with that there are some additional challenges which include employee theft and service
attacks. Insider threats like employees can leak the personal information of business
organisation. This may include important client informations, inside information and company
protocols (Dai, Goodell Huynh and Liu, 2021). Novel techniques of cyber crime are threat on
the security of an organisation which can impact its productivity and may cause harm to digital
assets of that organisation. Privacy is an important business strategy which can boost the
business as well as improve its market position. The data security measures and privacy security
measures that an organisation uses, shows its concern for its digital assets protection. Data
privacy and security also hold an account for continuously tracking and adapting of new
regulatory requirements. During Covid pandemic when the digitalisation was at peak privacy and
security concerns also increased. Along with increase use of collaboration tools the privacy it
maintains and security it can provide to business and the employees was overall checked. A
majority of collaboration tools were shown to have privacy hazards and so their usage showed
decline. Privacy and security are the concern which need proper management with progressed
digitalisation.
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ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSION
Collaboration tools
Collaboration tools are critical for analysis of success of businesses. Collaboration tools
have primary aim to help people in working together. These tools provide a place for people to
work together from distancing and it provide features which enables a collective contribution
along with development of work- product. Collaboration tools enable people in progress and
reaching the goal at same or different timings. In Covid period, business organisations were
facing difficulty in managing the off-field work and balance in between the employees and so the
use of collaboration tools emerged (ritzalis and et. al., 2019). Collaboration tools like, Smack,
Asana, Zoom etc. are of importance when the critical analysis is required.
Privacy and Security during pandemic
During pandemic, tremendous use of collaboration tools and other ICT initiated by a
majority of business organisations. Pandemic bought a challenge for business organisations for
operating business after massive shutdowns of offices and other facilities. The technology on
which the businesses enterprises were dependent included cloud system, data centres, digital
devices and departmental servers for communicating and connecting the remote employees with
each other and with organisation's data. These technologies have become a bigger and
moneymaking target for cyber criminals. Privacy and security efforts are required to be upgraded
for prevention of crisis state (Byrnes and et. al., 2021). The privacy and security threats which
have businesses faced in during the pandemic are cyberattacks, organisational security damage
etc. Online businesses and communication tools were having risk of cyberattacks, breaching of
organisation's risk and breaches of organisation's digital assets. This digitalisation leaked the
personal information of employees, which made them prone for cyberattacks. Pandemic showed
a large number of increased cyber attack crimes including online pay deduction referred as
digital robbery. For business organisation, cyberattacks included leakage of organisation's digital
assets which are documents, audio content, graphics, future plan report and SMART goals
report. These assets are essential for an organisation in order to achieve the desired outcomes and
SMART objectives. Leakage of these objectives and goals reduces the productivity of business
and competitively harms the organisation (Wang and Alexander, 2021). Digitalisation on the
similar hand helped organisations to improve their efficiencies and with automation. Security
and privacy of organisation and its employees were hindered majorly with digitalisation during
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Covid-19. Commercial businesses, cyber attackers collected personal data of employees from
system and used this to plan their past and future pattens in accordance to that.
Business organisation can use various tools and technologies along with precautionary
measures to deal with the privacy and security threats and also for preventing or protecting
themselves from these. These methods involve a robust cybersecurity response which involves
cybersecurity professionals in confronting the risks. These professional acknowledges the
possible scams and give instructions to business's remote workforces about the scams. They also
train them in order to deal with the situation (Himdi, Ishaque and Ahmed, 2021). The business
organisation can use several training platforms for that purpose, which may include e- learning
or web- based. IT security professional can also keep an eye over the remote work employees.
Cloud based virtual secured desktop services allow IT professionals to remote access of
employee's system which include files and networking. Additionally the business organisations
can provide private access which is without a VPN to its remote employees. Business
organisations need to keep control over the digital system which its remote employees as well as
other employees use, this will help the organisation in securing its data and privacy (Ferreira and
Pereira, 2019). These changes are required before, during and after the pandemic also as cyber
crime never ends.
Cryptocurrency Crash
Cryptocurrency is a digital currency. In cryptocurrency transactions are verified and the
records of which are maintained by a decentralised system with the use of cryptography. The
cryptocurrency crash is regards as the drop in price over the 10% within the single day.
Cryptocurrency crash is impacted with sudden changes that occur in market and aggressive high
interest rates (Khanna, 2020). The crypto market has lost trust of investors because of
cryptocurrency crash which has further started the selling of their digital assets and blood bath
within the crypto market. The currency crash is defined as a major decline within the currency
value of the country. Currency crash effect economy of the country in a negative way. The fall or
decline of currency value cause the changes in exchange rate of the country and further effecting
the economy of the country. Currency crisis is often regarded as the currency crash as the
declination in the value of currency have effect of economy as in the case of cryptocurrency
crash, where the crash does not affect the financial system but affects trade across the boarders.
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Tether, which is a multibillion dollar “stablecoin” functions as the largest bank of
cryptocurrency economy, which has paid out $10bn for withdrawals since the starting of crypto
crash in early May month. Crypto bubble burst is defined as the tailspin in its hike as
cryptocurrency was sent into a declination by Federal Reserves decision in order to signal up the
coming interest rate hike of December (Fruehwirt, Hochfilzer, Weydemann and Roberts, 2021).
The tether paid off around 10bn$ to withdrawals since the start of cryptocurrency crash this
shows the cryptocurrency bubble bursting as the declined in the rate of cryptocurrency produced
changes within the investor's investments. The investment method and investor's pattern of
investment bought changes in rate of stablecoin and further resulted into cryptocurrency bubble
bursting.
CONCLUSION
The above report concludes that Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) are being
used as an important tool for multiple purposes within the organisations including health care,
education, entertainment and for effective businesses as well as for advancements. Covid-19
pandemic bought changes within the business perspectives which bought advancement within
the business aspects also, the traditional technological tools were replace or advance with
implementation of new technology and tools. The use of ICT tools referred as collaboration tools
increased during Covid pandemic, especially by business organisations in maintaining and
establishing effective communication within the employees during Covid and now for remote
employees. During Covid period, social distancing norms were need to be followed for which the
use of collaboration tools initiated. These tools helps the businesses but also they are showing a
number of adverse effects in terms of security and privacy. Security and privacy has also been
the contributing factors which needs to be taken care of in order to understand and evaluate the
use of collaborative tools for business functioning. As the use of collaboration tools have
increased, its misuse have also increased. Cybercrimes and breaching has also increased, the data
of employees are leaked which makes them prone towards being the victim of cyber crime.
Cryptocurrencies are virtual currency which are showing effect over the economical status of
country. The decline and hike in cryptocurrencies are responsible for crash in market. The report
explains the currency crash in terms of crypto crash which further shows the effect over
business's growth, productivity and status in market. The report further concludes that the
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collaboration tools are of great beneficence along with harmful effects too which needs proper
management and understanding with maintenance of professionalism.
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REFERENCES
Books and Journals:
Arshad, M., 2020. COVID-19: It’s time to be thankful to our ICT professionals. Information
Technology & Electrical Engineering, 9(2), pp.23-31.
Byrnes, K.G. and et. al., 2021. Communication, collaboration and contagion:“Virtualisation” of anatomy
during COVID‐19. Clinical anatomy, 34(1), pp.82-89.
Dai, P.F., Goodell, J.W., Huynh, T.L.D. and Liu, Z., 2021. Cryptocurrencies and financial stability:
Evidencing crash transmission to equity markets. Available at SSRN.
Ferreira, P. and Pereira, É., 2019. Contagion effect in cryptocurrency market. Journal of Risk and
Financial Management, 12(3), p.115.
Filkins BL and et. al., (2016). Privacy and security in the era of digital health: what should
translational researchers know and do about it?. Am J Transl Res. 2016; 8(3): 1560–1580.
Fruehwirt, W., Hochfilzer, L., Weydemann, L. and Roberts, S., 2021. Cumulation, crash, coherency: A
cryptocurrency bubble wavelet analysis. Finance Research Letters, 40, p.101668.
Gritzalis, S. and et. al., 2019. Trust, Privacy and Security in Digital Business. In 16th International
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Jackson, V., van der Hoek, A. and Prikladnicki, R., 2022, May. Collaboration Tool Choices and
Use in Remote Software Teams: Emerging Results from an Ongoing Study. In 2022 IEEE/ACM
15th International Workshop on Cooperative and Human Aspects of Software Engineering
(CHASE) (pp. 76-80). IEEE.
Khanna, S., 2020. ICT Enabled Learning: A tool in Crisis Management. Aptisi Transactions on
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Klimovic, A., Litz, H. and Kozyrakis, C., 2018. Selecta: Heterogeneous cloud storage
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Korbel, J.O. and Stegle, O., 2020. Effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on life scientists. Genome
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Prajapati, P. and Shah, P., 2020. A review on secure data deduplication: Cloud storage security
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Randy Vogenberg, F., 2020. Return to Business During a Pandemic: Market Collaboration and
Health Benefit Trends. American Health & Drug Benefits, 13(3), pp.120-122.
Smite, D and et. al., 2021, June. From collaboration to solitude and back: remote pair
programming during Covid-19. In International Conference on Agile Software Development (pp.
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Wang, L. and Alexander, C.A., 2021. Cyber security during the COVID-19 pandemic. AIMS Electronics
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