Commercial Data Processing Credit

Management Information CDP makes it easier for managers to control and process the information that is needed in the operation of their businesses. Examples: It will tell management how much stock they have, Details on cash flow (money in – money out), How employees are performing, When new stock is due to arrive, etc.

Single Entry Multiple Use Once details are entered into the computer system they are available to lots of different users. For example a hotel may enter details of bookings onto a computer system. Financial details will be available to the accounts department; details of vacancies will be available to reception and over the Internet to guests; the number of meals to be taken will be available to the chefs in the kitchen; etc.

Multi –User Database A multi-user database is a database that allows many users access at the same time and if a user has the authorisation, he or she will be able to update the data for the other users.

Smart Cards Smartcards have a microchip and on-board memory instead of a magnetic stripe to hold information. The microchips can hold a lot more data and are much more difficult to forge. The information held on the card can also be updated. Because of the increased security Chip and Pin is now much more common.

Optical Character Recognition OCR devices read characters directly from documents. Some OCR devices will even recognise carefully hand-written characters.

Optical Character Recognition They do this by scanning in the characters changing them to binary and comparing them to character sets stored in the computer.

Verification and Validation Verification is trying to check that the data entered is correct. Verification is usually done manually. Either a person will type in the data and check that it is displayed correctly on the screen or two people will enter the same data and the computer will indicated any differences which can then be corrected.

Validation Validation is making sure that the data being entered is sensible or acceptable e.g. if the teacher entered his date of birth on a form as 31/10/85 this would be a valid date so it would be accepted. Types of validation are presence checks, range checks, data type checks. Check digits can also be used.

Verification Verification = making sure the data has been entered correctly. This is usually done by having an operator check the input screen (It can be done by having 2 operators input data and letting the system check that each entry is identical.)

Sequential access When a system uses sequential access to data it goes to each record in a file one after another in sequence. Sequential access is commonly used when recovering data from taped backup systems.

Random/direct access A system using random/direct access goes directly to the data it requires. Any system which uses interactive processing, which means that data is processed immediately, requires direct/random access to the data held on backing storage and is used throughout the system. Examples would be a ticket booking service, ordering goods over the Internet and the checkout at the supermarket.

Computer Crime and Fraud If criminals could break the security systems surrounding the data held on computers they could commit a whole range of crimes including: - copying the IDs and passwords that allow access to the computer systems copying sensitive data about the running of the business - installing viruses - stealing money from bank accounts. The result would be that the running of businesses would be totally disrupted.

Data Protection Act