Tag: ut dallas

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Dipping My Feet into Cyber Security and IT Audit

One of the advantages of the Information Technology and Management program at The University of Texas at Dallas is that it has the perfect curriculum design for learning the fundamentals of many pillars of IT. Of course, it is important to pick one focus and develop your skills in it. But with every passing day, the tech industry is evolving in a way where cross-functions and integrations are the norm. You need to be able to wear many hats. So, it makes sense to explore topics which might not really be your focus, but still fall in the technology umbrella. This is why, I was happy with my decision of taking IT Security and IT Audit and Risk Management, two subjects that enhanced my basic knowledge of some of the most promising and vital aspects of Information Technology.

Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash

My cyber security class, led by the profound Prof. Nate Howe, was eye-opening as it got me well-versed with so many IT risk and security aspects. I understood the entire structure of IT security functions in an organization with a sneak peek into responsibilities of the Chief Information Security Officer. The class took me to interesting avenues like the CIA objective, Business Continuity Planning and Disaster Recovery, ransomware and the anatomy of an attack, TCP/IP basics, secure – SDLCs and IT Control Frameworks. The class ended on a high note with guest speakers and industry professionals coming in to give demos of Kali Linux and penetration testing. It sure got me excited about exploring Kali Linux more, in the future.

The IT Audit and Risk Management class was a lot of fun, despite being so full of theory. This was because of the cool Prof. Joseph Mauriello, who always kept us engaged with his sense of humor and class-end quizzes. This class was the reason I became a member of the student chapter of ISACA – a club that had the best meet-ups and the most delicious food. In Prof. Mauriello’s class, I learnt the fundamentals of auditing IT governance controls, operating system and network controls, types of DOS attacks, and Risks associated with different IT functions and ERP systems. It is thanks to this class, that I know about the ACL software, the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, and the Fraud triangle.

The IT Audit group

While these subjects were not in line with my analytics focus, taking them was absolutely worth it as they served as essentials training of fundamental IT concepts. I also made some really cool friends (Hi Micah, Marie, Jeyaraj, Chloe, Diksha!) whom I enjoyed spending classwork and project time with. And that brings us to the professor, whom I have thanked several times but my series cannot be complete without him. I call him Master Yoda for without his guidance, I wouldn’t have been able to walk even two steps in this long path. I’m talking about the Program Director of MS Business Analytics at UTD, Dr. Bill Hefley.

Team Travelytics with Dr. Hefley

You might think that it is weird for me to be talking about Dr. Hefley in a post describing my experience in subjects that do not fall under his Business Analytics domain. But that is precisely why Dr. Hefley is an extremely special teacher to me. I had joined UTD as a MS BA student and had moved to ITM after my first semester as it aligned better with my experience and goals. Despite this, Dr. Hefley has continued to be my guardian angel. As faculty advisor for Travelytics, he has made sure everyone in our team has someone to go to. To me personally, he has been someone I can always write to (and I hope it continues to be that way) or walk up to. Every interaction with him has been warm and comforting. With his fun one-liners and cheerful yet informative emails, he is someone who is always there to cheer me up and keep me going. So, at the risk of boring you with my gratitude one more time, Dr. Hefley – THANK YOU.

ALSO SEE Saying “Hello, old friend” to Statistics and Analytics

This is the ninth post of my #10DaysToGraduate series where I share 10 key lessons from my Master’s degree in the form of a countdown to May 8, my graduation date.

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What I Learnt Working at The UT Dallas Bookstore

I was always fascinated with the idea of working on-campus. I did not want to take a risk in the first year of my education at The University of Texas at Dallas as I was back to school after a decade. It made sense to get into the groove with assignments and exams without any distractions. I did however get involved in theatre and cultural activities. Then came my internship which also kept me occupied and taught me a lot. So it was only in my last semester that I actually got an opportunity to work on-campus, thanks to a reference from my friend Sandeep. And it was none other than the UTD bookstore, one of the most beautiful and lively places on campus. And it was here that I learnt some invaluable lessons of management and operations.

To start with, this was my first time working in retail. I have a lot of experience working summer jobs at call-centres in India but I had never done anything related to retail. So, right off the bat, I was amazed by the daily functions of the job. I was also extremely impressed with the way my co-workers excelled at everything they did. Almost all of them were undergraduate students working part-time. But they had mastered every aspect of the job and were kind and humble enough to patiently teach me all of it. Thanks to these lovely kids, I now know a good deal about managing the sales floor, operating the register, packaging merchandise, shipping out online order and also processing returns. It was also interesting to spend time in the warehouse and understand inventory management.

The team of UTD bookstore

My time at the UTD bookstore (run by Follett Higher Education Services), although short, taught me how you can have a ball and learn a lot at the same time. It also has an emotional value as the bookstore is the place on campus where you find all the official UTD merchandise and souvenirs. When you work there all day, surrounded by UTD shirts and sweatpants and key chains and hats, you feel a sense of belonging. It is where you truly feel proud to be a comet!

I have fond memories with each and everyone of the bookstore employees – Amanda, Jessica, Heidi, Rosa, Bella, Tiara, Chirag, Brijan, Nicole, Rhea, Lynn, Antonio, Jaret, Graham, Akena, Gisele, and Catherine – what a beautiful bunch! The UTD bookstore is the very definition of a happy workplace with music, and smiling workers (some of whom are huge fans of The Office), and colorful backdrops. And the person responsible for making sure this place has such a great vibe is the store manager, Rawn Johnson.

Right from the day I met Rawn, I knew he is this wonderful human being who is such a positive influence for everyone around him. He is extremely warm and affectionate towards all his employees. Of course, there are days when you want to make sure you don’t do anything that might piss him off. But mostly, he is just a humorous, fun-loving, story-telling, coffee-drinking boss who wants everyone to have a great life. Whether it is buying cup-cakes for people on happy occasions, or making everyone read “The Energy Bus” when they are on-the-clock, Rawn does a great number of things to ensure that the UTD bookstore is a workplace people want to come back to every morning. He also throws a little “You’re now dead to us!” party when someone is leaving (yep, he did that for me!).

If you are reading this Rawn – it’s been a true pleasure to know and work with you. I have learnt a great deal from you about how to build a strong, efficient team while making sure its members are happy and healthy. I shall strive to become a manager like you.

ALSO SEE Saying “Hello, old friend” to Statistics and Analytics
Diving Deep into Business Analytics with R Programming

This is the eighth post of my #10DaysToGraduate series where I share 10 key lessons from my Master’s degree in the form of a countdown to May 8, my graduation date.

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Travelytics presents BIG DATA IN TRAVEL with Dr. Rick Seaney

When we kicked off our first Travelytics event in 2018, Prof. Kevin Short at UTD was kind enough to grace us with his presence and speak on the use of data in the airline industry. And now, thanks to him, we have a travel domain stalwart visiting UTD and conducting a special lecture for Travelytics. The topic is an exciting one – BIG DATA in the TRAVEL INDUSTRY. We look forward to an exciting session with Dr. Seaney and a bunch of enthusiastic data science students.

Dr. Rick Seaney - Big Data in Travel

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Prof. B.P. Murthi – The Sublime Predictive Analytics Teacher at UTD

Graduate studies can be a tricky business. In the day and age where many effective lessons and courses are available for free on the Internet, it becomes difficult to choose the right subjects to invest your limited time and money in. More often than not, it just comes down to the professor. In the Spring 2019 semester, I had the pleasure of studying in the class of one of the finest teachers I have seen in a long time. Everyone was already gaga over his abilities, but I only knew how amazing Prof. B.P. Murthi was once I started attending his lectures.

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Your first impression of Prof. Murthi is that he is a simple, soft-spoken man who delivers his lectures with great confidence. Having taught at UTD for 25 long years, his profile boasts of several accolades and awards. But to really understand why Prof. Murthi is so wonderful, you have to attend at least a couple of his lectures. He is one of those teachers who make your life difficult and challenging, but you’ll be grateful at the end of it when you realize it is all for the right reasons. He gives you interesting insights about predictive analytics and its applications in the marketing world using the SAS programming language. His conversational style and sense of humor keeps you interested and engaged. He spends a considerable amount of time teaching how to interpret results that you get after running the code. He emphasizes that we are managers and we need to be able to draw insights and interpret the results effectively to help with important marketing decisions. Just knowing and running the code is not enough!

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All other good things aside, what really makes Predictive Analytics with SAS under Prof. Murthi one of the best classes to take at UTD is the homework he gives you! His assignments that focus on real world problems and his project, which is perhaps the most meticulous data science work you will do in your graduate studies. It is also what will make you stay up at night scratching your head, calling your friends for help, looking up solutions online, and still come up shorthanded. From linear and logistic regression procedures to factor, cluster and discriminant analysis, and from heteroskedasticity, endogeneity to time series and panel data – Prof. Murthi strives to ensure that you understand all the important concepts of econometrics in the analytics context.

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Thanks to Prof. Murthi, I also had the opportunity to work with a brilliant group of Business Analytics students – all of whom came from varied backgrounds and were extremely talented in their own respective fields. I am thankful for having Sajal, Varda, Aman, Aditi and Nitasha as my group members. They held my hand throughout this semester and, along with Prof. Murthi, helped me understand how econometrics and predictive analytics work in the real world. Hours and hours were spent on our project that answered three important predictive analytics questions using SAS on a retail data set –

What is the quantifiable effect of advertising on a specific brand of spaghetti sauce?
How can we describe typical customer behavior?
When are customers most likely to churn?

We applied RFM, Survival analysis and logistic regression on a complicated and large data set with millions of rows to answer these questions. We also gave recommendations based on the insights we got from the data. This kind of hands-on approach on a real-world data set is precisely what is needed for graduate students majoring in data science or analytics.

There are many professors who use Powerpoint presentations to teach and most of the times, the slides are enough to help you prepare for the exams. But not with Prof. Murthi! You need to attentively sit through each one of his lectures, take notes, make videos, do whatever you can to capture everything he says if you really want to make the most of his class. It is all worth it as, by the end of it, you feel you have learnt something valuable and are on the right path to learn more.

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When I shook Prof. Murthi’s hand on the last day of class, I genuinely felt a sense of gratitude. I also felt sad that the class was over. In fact, I may audit some of his classes in the future… just for some perspective!