Week 4 - Computer Forensics

     In today's digital world, technology makes it extremely easy for identity theft to occur. The Federal Trade Commission estimates that about 9 million Americans are victims of identity theft annually here in the U.S. This is because a thief only needs a few important pieces of one's personal information, and from there, they can easily steal his/her identity. Since identity theft is so rampant these days, we are making sure to protect the privacy of our customers with various company regulations and measures.
     Some of the approaches that we are looking to take include educating sales associates about keeping customer information confidential and requiring them to sign a document claiming that private customer information obtained through a transaction must remain confidential at all times. This means that no associate should access personal customer information for anything outside the range of his/her job. We will also be selling our products directly online to consumers and to ensure privacy on the web, we will be utilizing a very secure server with a fire-wall to prevent fraudulent activity. We will be using PayPal to facilitate electronic transactions and make sure that there will be frequent screenings to report any suspicious activity. In addition to our customers, all employee files containing their personal information must also remain confidential. To do this, we will be changing the password to the appropriate file containing this data very frequently.
     All files containing personal data will be updated or deleted every 6 months depending on the status of the customer or employee. This will help to ensure that unnecessary information is not out there for hackers to have access to. Also, we will be defragmenting our hard drives once every 2 weeks to keep our files as organized as possible, which is a crucial step in maintaining privacy standards. The implementation of our policy will include disposing of old and unnecessary hard drives in the proper manner. For us, this means purchasing a shredder and shredding our drives once we are done with them. Our company believes in maintaining a high level of consumer confidence and trust in our brand, therefore, we will make sure to do everything we can to carry out that vision.

Week 3 - Privacy & Excel

     As it comes closer and closer to the launch date of the line, it is crucial that access and privacy is limited to only those who know the insider details in order to ensure that misleading information won't be leaked, the correct information won't be disclosed at the wrong time, or that private information end up in the wrong hands. These are all social media privacy concerns that our communications (mostly PR and Marketing) gurus need to be aware of. We will make sure to keep many of our accounting and financial statements undisclosed as well as the mutual written agreements between our partners in this new clothing line.
     There will be many ways in which we will ensure the privacy of our new line and the participating brands. One way in which we will do this is to only allow our Facebook and Twitter passwords to be accessible by our trusted Communications Directors. Not even top management will be able to access and edit the content on these pages. We will also make a habit of changing the passwords to our social media pages every 2 weeks. Last but not least, we will also be monitoring all activities (comments, posts, tweets) on all social media websites to make sure that all content is accurate and that if consumers have any questions or concerns, they will be addressed in the proper way.
    Another program that our new line will be utilizing in order to track our business profits is Microsoft Excel. All our accounting statements in our financial department will be using spreadsheets in order to determine business profits at certain intervals. This way, we can see if our product is increasing/decreasing in popularity, how we're doing compared to other similar clothing lines, etc. All our employee wage rates and hours will also be recorded on these spreadsheets so that when pay day comes, all our information will be organized in one place. We will also be creating graphs to display our monthly break-even point and how we actually did in comparison to that for the whole fiscal year. Last but not least, we will make sure that all public information will be depicted in an accurate way because we believe in being honest to our valued customers.
     

Week 2 - Social Media

     Ever end up at the gym and forget your iPod? Well, no more worries because we are teaming up Apple, the creator of the iPod, with Champion apparel to come up with a brand new active wear line with installed iPods. The new line will include shorts, training bras and tank tops, and sweatpants. These various pieces of apparel will come in a variety of bright colors to give your daily work out an extra kick of fun! People will be able to choose what music they would like on their iPod by simply downloading it to a sleek memory card and inserting it into a designated pouch on their clothing.
      Social media is going to be huge in the process of introducing and promoting this new line. It is gonna be crucial to set up a facebook fan "like" page for this line as well as creating lots of "tweets" on twitter so that people are aware of this new product. The unveiling of this line will be revealed on facebook by the creation of their own fan page, but once it is introduced, twitter will keep fans updated on more and more insider details. Most of the suspense, however, will be kept until the big day when the line is actually introduced in stores.
     The first retail giant to carry this line will be Target. So together, we will have Apple, Champion, and Target working together to carry out the promotion of this new line. Therefore, big news of the release of this line will also be featured on the Apple, Champion, and Target facebook fan page. The marketing and PR team will also make sure that there is a presence on Twitter for the introduction of this new line when the time comes. Since social media has become such a popular and effective medium to promote and advertise new products, there will be no formal advertisements featured anywhere until the line is actually released. This will demonstrate the strong impact that social media will have on this new line.