businesss questions

Case study based Individual coursework to meet learning outcomes LO2 and LO3 The following case study will give students the opportunity to examine the range of potential threats, risks and attacks identified from the scenarios and indicate how implementation of secure systems can mitigate against the security issues identified. Network Security Planning & Implementation national firm of insurance brokers recently set up business in Exeter. After quite a successful year, they have decided to expand their operations within Exeter and to a new branch office in Edinburgh and its new area in the other tower block. These network diagrams are of a "temporary" network set up which has been used to simply get the firm going across the two buildings. Using these diagrams, you are to produce a properly formatted and fully referenced network security consultation report to address the issues listed below. N.B. All the sites are equipped with FTTP high speed connections for Internet/WAN connectivity (though only in one original building in the Liverpool site). The other tower block has no separate broadband or exterior connection, but there is a temporary cable suspended between the two buildings which connects them. The new building in Edinburgh has a FTTP port on the wall in the Doorman's booth, and an associated 802.11n wireless router is connected there - but there is no other network installed in the premises. As a firm that has to handle very sensitive insurance documents and legal papers, they need to secure their network systems to a more than adequate level, but which will be transparent enough not to hinder or slow down their day to day running of the firm's business which already

4 deals with over 1000 clients. Any security system in place will also need to be able to handle future expansion of the business.

Part 2 Specification You have a maximum word limit words for this task - not including diagrams and references: 1.Given that the company would like to establish a link between the Exeter and Edinburgh sites (WAN), and given that the sites already have FTTP connectivity, examine and create a section in your report which considers what technologies exist that could be used to secure these connections so that data is safe from theft or tampering in any way when flowing from site to site. Make sure you include recommendations for what they really should do (with full justification as to why they should follow your advice)

2 Examine the floor plans you have been provided with for the Exeter HQ buildings and their associated temporary network diagrams. Then create a chapter in your report which discusses/includes the following: The security weaknesses/hazards inherent in the physical make-up of the sites and suggest what could be done to secure them from a structural point of view - please in mind that the uppermost floor has the open roof above it - the new area in the other building is the same, but has a mobile phone mast on the top of it (4G rated) - just above the accountant office. The 1st - 8th floors of these buildings are occupied by 7 other businesses.

Using the network diagrams, also highlight the problems/security weaknesses with their existing network arrangements - you will need to do some research to find out what is good in secure network design for this task. Reworked diagrams of the floor plans and networks showing the necessary changes you would recommend for overcoming these weaknesses.

Full justification for your recommendations including any building/network design alterations and any additional network/system hardware or software that would be required to support your ideas.

3.The Edinburgh branch is located as we know, in a grade 1 listed structure. A building plan is provided (single storey with loft space). This building offers some challenges for network setup as the original structure (inside and outside) and its decoration can't be altered in any way due to its protected status. "Temporary and reversible" additions can be made - provided the building is returned to its original state if and when the company decides to move to different premises. With this conformance to the "listing" regulations create a report chapter that discusses: Recommendations and a design for a workable and secure network to support the staff indicated on the existing diagram.

Any suitable "added temporary" fittings that might be required. A reworked diagram to support your findings.

4.The company has designs on becoming an international organisation and wants to expand into Portugal and to the USA to offer its services. However, the company has (as we already know) little or no expertise in adding network security features to networks. So, write up some information based on the topics below to help them in this task:

Routing protocols allow routers to share information about network routes between each other. Discuss the security issues around unsecured routing protocols and find out about and explain how this could be done for the widely used OSPF routing protocol.

Virtual Private Networks are vital for the securing of network connections. Define what they are and give examples of at least 2 different forms of VPN [3:27 AM, 11/7/2021] Flo: AT&T Mobility, LLC, will pay $60 million to settle litigation with the Federal Trade Commission over allegations that the wireless provider misled millions of its smartphone customers by charging them for "unlimited" data plans while reducing their data speeds.

In a complaint filed in 2014, the FTC alleged that AT&T failed to adequately disclose to its unlimited data plan customers that, if they reach a certain amount of data use in a given billing cycle, AT&T would reduceor "throttle"their data speeds to the point that many common mobile phone applications, such as web browsing and video streaming, became difficult or nearly impossible to use.

"AT&T promised unlimited datawithout qualificationand failed to deliver on that promise," said Andrew Smith, Director of the FTC's Bureau of Consumer Protection. "While it seems obvious, it bears repeating that Internet providers must tell people about any restrictions on the speed or amount of data promised."

The FTC alleged that, despite AT&T's unequivocal promises of unlimited data, it began throttling data speeds in 2011 for its unlimited data plan customers after they used as little as 2 gigabytes of data in a billing period. AT&T's alleged practices affected more than 3.5 million customers as of October 2014, according to the FTC complaint.

After AT&T challenged whether the FTC had jurisdiction to bring the case, the Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals in 2018 ruled that the FTC did have jurisdiction and authority to challenge the company's marketing of mobile data services, allowing the Commission's case to proceed.

As part of the settlement, AT&T is prohibited from making any representation about the speed or amount of its mobile data, including that it is "unlimited," without disclosing any material restrictions on the speed or amount of data. The disclosures need to be prominent, not buried in fine print or hidden behind hyperlinks. For example, if an AT&T website advertises a data plan as unlimited, but AT&T may slow speeds after consumers reach a certain data cap, AT&T must prominently and clearly disclose those restrictions.

The $60 million paid by AT&T as part of the settlement will be deposited into a fund that the company will use to provide partial refunds to both current and former customers who had originally signed up for unlimited plans prior to 2011 but were throttled by AT&T. Affected consumers will not be required to submit a claim for the refunds. Current AT&T customers will automatically receive a credit to their bills while former customers will receive checks for the refund amount they are owed.

The Commission vote approving the stipulated final order was 4-0-1. Commissioner Rebecca Kelly Slaughter was recused. Commissioner Rohit Chopra issued a statement on the matter. The FTC filed the stipulated order in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, San Francisco Division.

NOTE: Stipulated final orders have the force of law when approved and signed by the District Court judge.

The Federal Trade Commission works to promote competition, and protect and educate consumers. You can learn more about consumer topics and file a consumer complaint online or by calling 1-877-FTC-HELP (382-4357). Like the FTC on Facebook(link is external), follow us on Twitter(link is external), read our blogs, and subscribe to press releases for the latest FTC news and resources.

31. As a mid-size company, you have a pension plan which pays out $10 million a year forever. The first payment is exactly one year from now. The term structure is currently flat at 5%. (a) Compute the present value of your pension liabilities. (b) Suppose that the interest rate goes down by 0.1%. How does the value of your liability change? (c) Given your answer to (b), what is the modified duration of your pension liability? (d) Suppose that the pension plan is fully funded (i.e., the value of your assets equal the value of pension liabilities). You want to invest all your assets in bonds to avoid any interest rate risk. What should the duration of your bond portfolio be? (e) Suppose that this portfolio is a single zero-coupon bond. What should its maturity and total par value be? 32. On a job interview, you were handed the following quotes on U.S. Treasuries: Bond Maturity (years) Coupon Rate Yield to Maturity 1 1 5% 4.5% 2 2 5% 5.0% 3 3 0% 5.5% Assume that the par value is $100 and coupons are paid annually, with the first coupon payment coming in exactly one year from now. The yield to maturity is also quoted as an annual rate. You are then asked the following questions: (a) What should be the price of a bond with a maturity of 3 years and coupon rate of 5%, given the above information? (b) What should be the 1-year forward rate between years 2 and 3? (c) What is the modified duration of a bond portfolio with 30% invested in bond 1 and 70% invested in bond 3? (d) How much would the value of the portfolio in (c) change if the yields of all bonds increased by 0.15%? 33. You have the following data on Treasury bonds. Assume that there are no taxes, only annual coupon payments are made and the first coupon payment occurs a year from now. Bond Year of Maturity Coupon Face Value at T Price Today A 1 25 100 100.00 B 2 50 500 422.61 C 3 20 300 232.28 D 10 0 1000 192.31 Fall 2008 Page 17 of 66 (a) Calculate the following four annualized forward rates: f from 0 to 1, f from 1 to 2, f from 2 to 3, and f from 3 to 10. (b) Is it a good investment if it costs $21 million now and yields the following risk-free cash inflows? Year 1 2 3 Cash Flow (in million dollars) 9 10 11 34. Which of the following investments is most affected by changes in the level of interest rates? Suppose interest rates go up or down by 50 basis points ( 0.5%). Rank the investments from most affected (largest change in value) to least affected (smallest change in value). (a) $1 million invested in short-term Treasury bills. (b) $1 million invested in Treasury strips (zero coupons) maturing in December 2016. (c) $1 million invested in a Treasury note maturing in December 2016. The note pays a 5.5% coupon. (d) $1 million invested in a Treasury bond maturing in January 2017. The bond pays a 9.25% coupon. Explain your ranking briefly. 35. Valerie Smith is attempting to construct a bond portfolio with a duration of 9 years. She has $500,000 to invest and is considering allocating it between two zero coupon bonds. The first zero coupon bond matures in exactly 6 years, and the second zero coupon bond matures in exactly 16 years. Both of these bonds are currently selling for a market price of $100. Suppose that the yield curve is flat at 7.5%. Is it possible for Valerie to construct a bond portfolio having a duration of 9 years using these two types of zero coupon bonds? If so, how? (Describe the actual portfolio.) If not, why not? 36. Given the bond prices in the question above, you plan to borrow $15 million one year from now (end of year 1). It will be a two-year loan (from year 1 to year 3) with interest paid at the ends of year 2 and 3. The cash flow is as follows: Year 1 Year 2 Year 3 Borrow $15M Pay interest Pay interest plus principal of 15M Explain how you could arrange this loan today and "lock in" the interest rate on the loan. What transactions today would be required? What would the interest rate be? You can buy or sell any of the bonds listed above (in the previous question). 37. You purchased a 3 year coupon bond one year ago. Its par value is $1,000 and coupon rate is 6%, paid annually. At the time you purchased the bond, its yield to maturity was 6.5%. Suppose you sell the bond after receiving the first interest payment.

Question: how this could be a precedent for ISPs going forward?

AT&T Mobility, LLC, will pay $60 million to settle litigation with the Federal Trade Commission over allegations that the wireless provider misled millions of its smartphone customers by charging them for "unlimited" data plans while reducing their data speeds.

In a complaint filed in 2014, the FTC alleged that AT&T failed to adequately disclose to its unlimited data plan customers that, if they reach a certain amount of data use in a given billing cycle, AT&T would reduceor "throttle"their data speeds to the point that many common mobile phone applications, such as web browsing and video streaming, became difficult or nearly impossible to use.

"AT&T promised unlimited datawithout qualificationand failed to deliver on that promise," said Andrew Smith, ... [3:59 AM, 11/7/2021] Flo: 3. An investor can design a risky portfolio based on two stocks, A and B. Stock A has an expected return of 18% and a standard deviation of 20%. Stock B has an expected return of 14% and a standard deviation of 5%. The correlation coefficient between the returns of A and B is 0.50. The risk-free rate is 10%.

Based on these two stocks, what is the proportion of MVE (or tangency portfolio) that should be invested in stock A? (Hint: One the following is the correct answer.)

A) 0%

B) 50%

C) 100%

Show work and explain:

4. Suppose you evaluating an investment manager. Manager A has achieved a historical return of 20% per year with a beta (with respect to a benchmark) of 1.4, and volatility of 40%. Manager B has achieved a historical return of 15% per year, beta of 1.0 and volatility of 20% per year.

The benchmark return has been 16% per year, and the risk-free rate is 6%. Volatility of the benchmark is 20% per year.

a) According to Sharpe Ratio, which manager has produced superior returns?

A) Manager A

B) Manager B

C) No idea

b) According to , which manager has produced superior returns?

A) Manager A

B) Manager B

C) No idea

c) Draw the total risk (standard deviation) - reward (expected return) trade-off. Be sure to mark/draw the risk-free rate, the market portfolio, the mean-variance frontier, manager A and manager B.

5. A private investor manages her own portfolio by carefully analyzing various stocks to include or sell short in her portfolio (portfolio P). She maximizes the expected return of her portfolio while minimizing its standard deviation. She then invests some of her money into the portfolio and puts the rest in T-Bills. She is concerned that her portfolio is not the optimal portfolio among the stocks she has chosen to invest in. Her data on the securities she hold are as follows::

Security

Expected Return

Standard Deviation

Correlation w/ Portfolio P

Beta with the US Market

Delta 18.0% 35.0% 0.90 1.50 Ford 10.0% 20.0% 0.60 1.15 LVMH 6.0% 25.0% 0.00 0.70 Portfolio P 13.0% 18.0% 1.00 0.90 T-Bills 4.0% 0.0% 0.00 0.00

She estimates the US Market to have an expected return of 12.0% and a standard deviation of 12.0%.

Based on this data, indicate below, which direction this investor should adjust the portfolio weights for each of the three securities.

a) Delta Increase No Change Decrease

b) Ford Increase No Change Decrease

c) LVMH Increase No Change Decrease

d) Now, suppose that a financial planner examines this investor's portfolio. This financial planner uses the US Market as the benchmark. Using the investor's estimates of expected return (18.0% for Delta, 10.0% for Ford, and 6.0% for LVMH), and other parameters given earlier. What would the financial planner estimate the alpha's of these securities to be?

e) Re-consider the investor. She now considers investing a part of her wealth into the US Market portfolio. She still currently holds portfolio P. What is the hurdle rate at which she would buy the US Market portfolio?

Hint: you should begin by calculating the beta of the market with respect to portfolio P (this is NOT the beta of portfolio P with respect to the market).

6. A portfolio manager finds that stocks with high sales-to-price ratios tend to have low alpha's relative to the US Market - especially when stocks have had a high run-up (increase) in price over that past 5 years. Which one of the following has she most likely replicated? (Hint: not all statements are true.)

(Choose one. No explanation necessary)

A) Small stocks tend to have low alphas.

B) Low beta stocks tend to have low alphas.

C) Low earnings stocks tend to have low alphas.

D) Past 3-12 month loser stocks tend to have low alphas.

E) Growth stocks tend to have low alphas.

7. Name an effect that have historically produced a positive alpha's. What kinds of stocks have historically had higher returns than predicted by the Market Model in this effect (which ones have positive alphas).

31. As a mid-size company, you have a pension plan which pays out $10 million a year forever. The first payment is exactly one year from now. The term structure is currently flat at 5%. (a) Compute the present value of your pension liabilities. (b) Suppose that the interest rate goes down by 0.1%. How does the value of your liability change? (c) Given your answer to (b), what is the modified duration of your pension liability? (d) Suppose that the pension plan is fully funded (i.e., the value of your assets equal the value of pension liabilities). You want to invest all your assets in bonds to avoid any interest rate risk. What should the duration of your bond portfolio be? (e) Suppose that this portfolio is a single zero-coupon bond. What should its maturity and total par value be? 32. On a job interview, you were handed the following quotes on U.S. Treasuries: Bond Maturity (years) Coupon Rate Yield to Maturity 1 1 5% 4.5% 2 2 5% 5.0% 3 3 0% 5.5% Assume that the par value is $100 and coupons are paid annually, with the first coupon payment coming in exactly one year from now. The yield to maturity is also quoted as an annual rate. You are then asked the following questions: (a) What should be the price of a bond with a maturity of 3 years and coupon rate of 5%, given the above information? (b) What should be the 1-year forward rate between years 2 and 3? (c) What is the modified duration of a bond portfolio with 30% invested in bond 1 and 70% invested in bond 3? (d) How much would the value of the portfolio in (c) change if the yields of all bonds increased by 0.15%? 33. You have the following data on Treasury bonds. Assume that there are no taxes, only annual coupon payments are made and the first coupon payment occurs a year from now. Bond Year of Maturity Coupon Face Value at T Price Today A 1 25 100 100.00 B 2 50 500 422.61 C 3 20 300 232.28 D 10 0 1000 192.31 Fall 2008 Page 17 of 66 (a) Calculate the following four annualized forward rates: f from 0 to 1, f from 1 to 2, f from 2 to 3, and f from 3 to 10. (b) Is it a good investment if it costs $21 million now and yields the following risk-free cash inflows? Year 1 2 3 Cash Flow (in million dollars) 9 10 11 34. Which of the following investments is most affected by changes in the level of interest rates? Suppose interest rates go up or down by 50 basis points ( 0.5%). Rank the investments from most affected (largest change in value) to least affected (smallest change in value). (a) $1 million invested in short-term Treasury bills. (b) $1 million invested in Treasury strips (zero coupons) maturing in December 2016. (c) $1 million invested in a Treasury note maturing in December 2016. The note pays a 5.5% coupon. (d) $1 million invested in a Treasury bond maturing in January 2017. The bond pays a 9.25% coupon. Explain your ranking briefly. 35. Valerie Smith is attempting to construct a bond portfolio with a duration of 9 years. She has $500,000 to invest and is considering allocating it between two zero coupon bonds. The first zero coupon bond matures in exactly 6 years, and the second zero coupon bond matures in exactly 16 years. Both of these bonds are currently selling for a market price of $100. Suppose that the yield curve is flat at 7.5%. Is it possible for Valerie to construct a bond portfolio having a duration of 9 years using these two types of zero coupon bonds? If so, how? (Describe the actual portfolio.) If not, why not? 36. Given the bond prices in the question above, you plan to borrow $15 million one year from now (end of year 1). It will be a two-year loan (from year 1 to year 3) with interest paid at the ends of year 2 and 3. The cash flow is as follows: Year 1 Year 2 Year 3 Borrow $15M Pay interest Pay interest plus principal of 15M Explain how you could arrange this loan today and "lock in" the interest rate on the loan. What transactions today would be required? What would the interest rate be? You can buy or sell any of the bonds listed above (in the previous question). 37. You purchased a 3 year coupon bond one year ago. Its par value is $1,000 and coupon rate is 6%, paid annually. At the time you purchased the bond, its yield to maturity was 6.5%. Suppose you sell the bond after receiving the first interest payment.