Why do you think we built a PC this week? If I am to assume all of you are currently or someday will become IT Auditors, what was the point of building a PC from scratch? I gave you the analogy of a Mechanic doing a State Inspection, but can you think of another example? Ultimately, I’m interested to know what you got out of building the PC and if you think it will help you at all in your future careers.
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Jason Poli says
Building a PC in class helped us learned the basic functions of how a computer works, and how much work goes into building all the types of devices used today (laptops, all in one desktops, tower desktops, smart phones, etc.) Gaining even a basic understanding of the work IT and technical employees within an organization may be involved with, gives us aspiring IT Auditors the ability to help communicate with them. In the IT Audit role, these are the people we will work with to understand the systems under audit, and this activity of building a PC was a necessary step in learning the language these people speak subconsciously throughout their roles in an organization. We as IT Auditors can’t be trusted in recommendations we make, if we appear to not have a basic understanding of how technology works.
Patrick J. Wasson says
Thank you for contributing to the discussion!
Lingyi Xu says
As a student who has no IT background, it is essential to know how to build a PC. In my opinion, building a PC lead me to understand the basic elements in a PC. When IT auditors talk to other people who have no IT background, they may not know the professional words. When IT auditors talk about professional words, they use general words to explain what the words are.
Patrick J. Wasson says
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Xinyi Mao says
Built a PC can make us know what basic component a PC need and how PC works as a whole. It helps us to remember the material that the lecture covered and give us the experience to build a PC which can increase the awareness that to build a device and let it successfully work, we need to be careful and be cautious. Same thing with auditing. Also, when we have a basic understanding of PC, we can know how to communicate with those technology guys. So I think to build a PC from scratch was helpful.
Patrick J. Wasson says
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Zhibin Wang says
I think IT auditors should master part of computer professional knowledge. IT audit requires auditors to possess certain computer knowledge, but it does not require every auditor to become a computer professional. The computer knowledge requirements for IT auditors should be clearly stipulated to avoid excessive unrealistic requirements for them. If IT auditing requires each auditor to master complex computer skills and accept a large number of database expertise, it will cause the waste of audit resources and damage the confidence of auditors, which is not conducive to the whole audit work.
Patrick J. Wasson says
Thank you for contributing to the discussion!
Junjie Han says
As a worker in the IT field, IT is really important to learn how to build a computer. When you implement risk control, you need to know how to maintain the hardware of the computer. For example, when a computer has a hardware problem, you can use this kind of knowledge to know which part of the computer is wrong. When you work with other people in the IT field, Your communication is bound to be about computer hardware.This kind of knowledge will bring a lot of convenience to our audit work. Building a PC is a problem you will definitely encounter at work. Building computers is also fundamental to IT, so IT auditors must learn to build computers.
Patrick J. Wasson says
Thank you for contributing to the discussion!
Natalie Dorely says
Building a computer in class with the building materials from scratch was such an amazing experience. It made me appreciate the fundamentals of what goes into a computer. I’m looking forward to how I can build these skills as an IT Auditor, being that this exercise helped me grasp a greater understanding of the basics of a computer, it can help enable me to look in right areas for improvement whenever a computer malfunction is occurring.
Patrick J. Wasson says
Thank you for contributing to the discussion!
Louis Gusbar says
I think another good analogy is a referee in sports. If you have played the sport you are officiating you understand the moving parts much better. And your officiating you will be much more efficient and accurate. Having that understanding of the basic physical properties gives you a better perspective to make judgment calls. Knowing the physical properties can also give you insight into why certain rules/controls are established and what they are trying to prevent.
Patrick J. Wasson says
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Qiannan Zhen says
IT auditors need to detect and maintain the security vulnerabilities in the information system, which requires IT auditors have professional knowledge of information technology. Building a computer is one of the most basic and direct ways to understand the hardware needed to run a system and the connections between them. When something goes wrong with the security of an information system or a computer system, the IT auditor must pinpoint the cause of the problem by understanding every connection in the system. If an IT auditor cannot distinguish between the primary storage and second storage when making a judgment on the network security of a computer, his judgment is not convincing.
Patrick J. Wasson says
Thank you for contributing to the discussion!
Dian Yu says
The reason to build a pc form the basic is to help us get a better understanding that the way computers and internet works. The point of building a PC from scratch is to learn the basic functions of PC and the basic element are general and common with other electronic devices. The take out with building PC is to get a full understanding of how PC work that as no tech background student.
Peiran Liu says
The point of building a PC from scratch is to help us understand how PC works so that if there is a problem somewhere, we will know how to troubleshoot. With this knowledge, we can figure out the problem when the problem is related to hardware it self but not the software.