Write 4 page essay on the topic [Management Accounting] Discuss the strengths and weaknesses of activity-based costing vs volume based costing system.

The system is also accurate because it identifies products and then assigns to them direct and indirect costs. This means that ABC identifies the cost of producing various products. This then enables companies to determine the products that are highly profitable and those that produce low returns (Kaplan, & Anderson, 2005). Organizations then decide to produce the profitable products in large quantities and the less profitable ones in low or no quantities.

ABC system helps managers in forecasting demand for their products and predicting sales using the company’s capacity. The capacity of an organization refers to the ability of employees and machines to produce goods of a certain quantity. Organizations compare the products that employees and machines produce in a day and those that consumers purchase on the same period. If the company sells all the products that it produces, it discovers that its demand is higher than its capacity (Drury, 2012). If consumption is less than production, companies, are able to tell that the level of demand is below its capacity. Organizations then determine the amount of output to produce using the comparisons.

ABC system is vital in identifying wasteful products and ensuring resources are used productively. According to Kaplan and Anderson (2005), activity-based costing system allows managers to eliminate costs spent on non-value adding activities. This provides greater visibility into business processes and operational cost drivers. Improving information visibility also enables cost managers to deploy quality-related initiatives by identifying and eliminating poor quality activities together and their cost drivers (Gilbert, 2007). This is beneficial to the company as it increases efficiency and profitability because firms concentrate on profitable activities and products.

Setting an activity-based system is costly and time-consuming. Extra costs are caused by the need to hire the services of a consultant with

PART 1:Discussion

Include at least 250 words in your posting and at least 250 words in your reply.  Indicate at least one source or reference in your original post. Please see syllabus for details on submission requirements.Module 1 Discussion Question

Search “scholar.google.com” for a company, school, or person that has been the target of a network or system intrusion? What information was targeted? Was the attack successful? If so, what changes were made to ensure that this vulnerability was controlled? If not, what mechanisms were in-place to protect against the intrusion.

PART 2: Reply to class mate1:

The cyber-attacks are happening now a days trying to steal the information of the users or information of the company which is very confidential, and they will expose that confidential data to the world. So that we have to be very careful about our information and where we are trying to access our information whether it is public internet place or our own system.  IN 2014 the company named yahoo was the victim of the cyber-attack and round 3 million user account details have been stolen from the yahoo database. Different hackers tried to use those accounts by generating the passwords using the robust generated and recreated the passwords by stealing the security questions and answers of the users. Because of that yahoo has been knocked with an estimation of almost more than 300$ million. 

Not only yahoo there are lot of companies facing those problems and one of those the Target, which is a big retail store and the cyber attack happen in the end of 2013 and the hackers tried to steal the information of the customers by getting in to the network through third party vendors to the point of sale and steal the credit and debit card information of the  customer and the payment amount estimated nearly 70$ million. Later the company announced that the loss of that attack is estimated nearly 160$ million. After that the third party vendor and also company more focused on the security and worked to improve the security levels. 

Not only those companies all the companies have to follow some rules to protect their customer information. Because of the customer don’t have any trust on the security of the company the they won’t show any interest on that company. That’s why the company have to provide verification codes to the customer once they try to access their accounts. It may be autogenerated code or any barcode to scan. 

PART 3: Reply to classmate 2:

System or network intrusion which is commonly described as hacking attacks have become very rampant in the modern technology today. These attacks are made to target various companies, celebrities or even organizations. They may be caused by inside people working in these companies or by people from the world outside the company.

An example of a company that has been a target of system intrusion or hacking is the apple company. It is a well-known company in the world for its high quality and sophisticated devices such as iPhone or mac books. The attack on the company occurred in 2014 and at the time when they were about to launch the new iPhone six into the market.

After investigation, the company discovered that the target of the hacking attack was certain celebrities such as Jennifer Lawrence whom the hackers obtained personal information such as nude photos from their phone gallery.

The system intrusion on apple company was successful. This was however made possible by targeting usernames, security questions and even passwords. Researchers claimed that the hackers may have used a python script that had been currently released and that helped them to force the intended victim’s iCloud account hence creating vulnerability by allowing the victims accounts or in this case the celebrities accounts password to be guessed as many times as possible without being blocked.               As a result of this intrusion, the apple security system came up with better ideas of ensuring that their system was secure, meaning that it could no longer be hacked, and therefore ensuring the safety of their customers information. In order to prevent hacking attacks, Apple advised users to enable a two-step verification of their devices and also use strong passwords. This helps in protecting data stored online by its customers. The process involves addition of an extra step after the account holder has typed in their username and password.

They are also needed to enter a four-digit code sent into their phones and if they don’t, they are denied access to iCloud and are blocked from making iTunes or App store. Two factor authentication schemes are also made by deploying secondary authentication tokens which help in strengthening the security of login passwords of the users’ accounts (Dmitrienko, Liebchen, Rossow & Sadeghi,2014, March). By doing this, apple company assures their customers that their devices will be secure and their information will be safe