A Brief History
In 1958, the term information technology in its modern sense first appeared in an article published in the Harvard Business Review; authors Harold J. Leavitt and Thomas L. Whisler commented that “the new technology does not yet have a single established name. We shall call it information technology (IT).” Professional IT services play an important role in the day-to-day operations of any business or medium. They help ensure the smooth functioning of all technology platforms, programs, and channels. The role that such services play in online assessments is especially crucial.
IT professionals are responsible for many aspects in different online assessments, such as skill assessments, online exams, psychometric testing, and many more. Of these aspects are security, responsivity, user experience, and a lot more. The growth of online tests and assessments has made the importance of securing them an important step in their continuation.
Digging Deeper
Penetration testing
As a general sweep test, it’s done by IT professionals to assess how penetrable is your system. The penetration test process is to identify IT security gaps and vulnerabilities in your assessment tool, which is a thorough evaluation of all aspects of your system and network. They conduct an “ethical” hack into your system and try to search for the weak points of your system and understand what weaknesses can pose a threat to your assessment tool in the future through a simulated hacking. The purpose is to ensure the safety of important data from being breached by hackers or the prevention of cheating with online exams and assessments.
Online monitoring
Another way to ensure fairness and prevention of fraud or cheating in online assessments, especially for certifications and exams, is online monitoring. This process includes IT professionals implementing a customized browser that features a lockdown system, once an assessment session start. The PC will only allow the testing page or screen to be opened and accessed until you click submit on the assessment. Additionally, while in the session, users are blocked from accessing the Internet, emails, chat platforms, and other applications.
Data encryption
This is another role that IT professionals play in ensuring the safety of the data and responses that are entered in the assessments. This involves IT personnel developing encryption algorithms that are used to encode the data which cannot be decoded easily. This ensures the privacy of the assessment form that will be sent and exchanged between different servers without being accessed without authorization.
Audit logging
With the emergence of online assessments the past decade, the security related to all logging information and data entered into these forms has become vital. This provides a timeline of all activity, creates a systematic collection of data, and ensures the audit log will record all IT related events in the assessment tool system. The information saved includes who accessed the assessment, the destination, the IP address, timestamp, duration spent on the assessment, and user login data.
IP based authorization
For extra layers of security and ensuring the authenticity of assessment responders, IT professionals have to implement IP or Network-Based Authorization systems. This means restricting access of users of web-based assessments and tools to specific registered IP addresses. This can mean that users can only access the assessment when located at the address that was provided when registering for their exam or assessment, minimizing the chance of other people accessing it.
IT professionals play an important role in preventing a wide range of cheating methods when it comes to online assessments and ensuring the safety and confidentiality of the data and information that is entered on the forms. Without the help of IT administrators and professionals, the system would not be able to evolve into an authorized form of testing and assessment used worldwide.
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Historical Evidence
For more information, please see…
Regas, Tyler. Getting an IT Help Desk Job (For Dummies). John Wiley & Sons, 2015.
The featured image in this article, a photograph by StartupStockPhotos, is licensed under the Pixabay License.