Deloitte visits OIS…….

 

Career guidance plays a very important role in the lives of all individuals, as it helps in setting future goals and choosing careers. We the students of Grade IX had a very interesting and interactive workshop on ‘Career in a day’. Through this workshop we understood the various career opportunities the different competitive exams and the importance of having goals, passion and hard work to achieve the desired goal.

Volunteers from Deloitte came to talk to us about Cyber safety and the importance of being aware of the things we do on the computer. Rahul, Sanjay, Indranil .

and Sridhar were the representatives who came to our class and they started off their presentation with the definition of a firewall. It is a protective wall that prevents unwanted programs from entering. Without it, they explained, our system would be prone to viruses, Trojan attacks, and illegitimate websites, as Google does not secure all sites. We learned that the presence of a padded lock at the right hand side of the website would prove whether it was a legal one or not. With the help of interactive posters, they talked to us about the disadvantages of downloading, which can trigger the corruption of the software, leading to lost data. A concept called phishing is widely employed to track down people’s personal information. For example, if we click on an attractive looking link about our bank and type in our username and password, our money could be transferred to another person’s account and we would be deceived.

Finally, we got to our favourite topic of the day; social networking. Rahul took out some prizes and said that whoever could come up with the best and most secure password would win the hat. The winner, Ashish, came up with the most unique password using numbers and punctuation marks to create a word. The volunteers explained that a decent password is one that doesn’t relate to the user, uses numbers and symbols and is case-sensitive. It is also vital to pose our own security question instead of using the ones that the website gives. Sanjay talked about software Sanjay talked about software called “key logger,” something that was big in his time. Apparently, this software records whatever you type on your keyboard and could make the information accessible to all. This is why, he explained, banks now have a touch screen keypad which changes every time you type in your password. We had a trivia quiz about the various social networking sites. One of the questions asked was where Orkut was developed and we soon learned that it was in Brazil and that the second country to develop a craze was India. More and more of us started participating in the game and many of us won prizes, like tee shirts, water bottles, clocks and headphones.

Lastly, we talked about the precautions we should take when something is wrong. For example, if we keep getting junk mail from unknown sources, it is important that we don’t delete it as it is the only proof we have. Instead, we should complain to the authorities and go to the CID office for Cyber safety. . Rahul suggested a book by Ankit Vadia called Email Security and said that it would give us more insight into the concept of hacking and how it can be stopped.

Overall, the session went really well and our class learned a lot of information we never knew before. We promised to follow the Deloitte motto, “Think before you click.” It’s certain that now, with our newfound awareness, we can prod safely around the net.

Soumya Polavarapu (Grade IX)

Divya Guttala (Grade XII)