Question

Tomas is responsible for setting up and maintaining employee workstations at his company.
Next week, Amanda will begin working in the marketing department for the company. In addition to the standard company setup, Amanda needs the equipment necessary to view and hear various sound and animation files so that she can evaluate their quality. Also, she will routinely review PDF files that are posted to the company extranet.
As Tomas sets up Amanda's workstation, he installs the following components and plug-ins:
• A sound card and speakers so she can hear sound files
• Adobe Flash Player to allow her to view animation
• Adobe Reader to allow her to view PDF files
Answer the following questions:
• What, if any, additional components or plug-ins can Tomas install to help Amanda perform her job functions?
• What security risks should Tomas discuss with Amanda regarding the content she may be viewing?

Answer 1

I would install the following with her work profile into consideration

Adobe Animate CC: Rationale behind this is that since she would be assessing the quality of various animation files, there may be instances wherein she might be required to make small tweaks in the file. Or maybe even customize as per the company need. Such tasks can be easily executed in the said program. And since Adobe Animate CC is part of the Creative Cloud, she can easily access all her files.

AQuA-Audio Quality Analyzer: With a view to test audio quality of various files with greater precision, AQuA is a pretty decent tool that can be installed. It measures PESQ (perceptual evaluation of speech quality) and MOS values.

Security Risks

Adobe Flash: In my opinion, Adobe Flash itself is a security threat for one primary reason. There are so many bug attacks that happen in Flash that provide ample opportunities to hackers to get access to the system’s memory. Hackers do this to make the browser jump to a specific memory address and get access to the system. As far as advice is concerned, I would tell Amanda to ensure that regular patch installations and other system updates are allowed in the system. Since the content that she will be reviewing will be sourced from several clients, she may be at the receiving end of several virus laden files. Hence running regular system updates are extremely critical.