Topic
Our white paper will cover wireless internet security for home networks. Unsecured wireless is a problem because it leaves your network open to a wide array of malicious uses.
Three larger concerns are viruses, information theft, and bandwidth theft. All of these are possibilities when opening your network up to wireless without properly securing it. Even those who think they are secure may not be, as there are ways around fire walls, passwords, and WEP keys. We intend to define the different courses of action to take that can allow a knowledgeable home user some peace of mind regarding the safety of their information and equipment. Whether it is protecting your bandwidth so you're using all of your internet, or if it's keeping your private documents private, wireless security must be addressed.
Division of Labor
We have divided up responsibility for creating and posting each week's activity report. The person responsible for a given week will write the bulk of the activity report and then publish it to Google Docs for review by the other group members. When complete, he/she will post the report to the course web site. As for the rest of the rest of the project, the work will be mostly collaborative, and will be worked on using Google Docs, with one person being responsible for posting the final draft as a blog on the class website when it is due. Obviously, we will have more details after creating our Gantt chart next week.
Potential Sources
Much of our information will come from internet research, how-to articles and news articles relating to wireless security. They cover a variety of topics from the different threats posed to wireless networks, to the possible solutions, as well as the strengths and weaknesses of each. In preparation for the research phase and our research blogs, each group member has identified potential sources on the internet. We will review these sources in more detail in the upcoming stages of the project.
Along with the internet sources we have also identified a few print sources that outline common ways hackers may try and gain access to networks as well as the most efficient ways to stop them. We also plan on searching the Purdue catalog or Google's Scholar search in order to find more informative articles that do more than just tell you how to set up security for a wireless network. We also plan on brainstorming to see if we can come up with more print sources as well.
Audiences
The primary readers for this white paper will be home computer users with moderate networking experience. We feel that if the user is interested in setting up their own network security, they should be familiar enough with the electronics to successfully connect a modem and a router and know the basics of setting up a home network. This will allow us to target networking technicians, the secondary readers, more easily. These are the kinds of people who specialize in network installations, like the Geek Squad from Best Buy. The tertiary readers, however, are more difficult to identify. These may include the producers of security products, as they will want to make sure that our information correctly depicts their products or services. If we include any misinformation, it could harm their reputation. Finally, the gatekeepers for this project are probably our instructors and classmates. They will be reviewing our drafts before they are finalized for release.
Document Design
As with all technical documents, design will be an important part of our white paper. Our paper will have a limited color scheme (most likely only one contrast color) to allow the reader to focus on the information. We will use standard design elements (contrast, repetition, alignment, etc.) to organize and emphasize the information in our paper.
When possible, we plan to supplement the text of our document with visual charts and graphics. We can also use sidebars and breakout quotes to highlight particularly important information and to summarize main points.
Since our primary audience would most likely be making use of this white paper in their homes, a standard 8.5” x 11” document seems most practical. We can manipulate the margins and column widths to make effective use of the page.
re: Project Proposal Wireless Security
Much of this proposal sounds workable. You have identified your audiences well, although I would suspect that your primary audience is technicians, and the secondary audience is home computer users. That is to say, it doesn't seem likely that many home computer users read white papers. Most people in this class indicated in their weekly comments that they hadn't heard of white papers before this project, and this is a group that is tech savvy enough to be in an online technical writing class.
My big concern with this project is that your topic discussion sets your work up like a set of instructions. You suggest that there are potential problems if a wireless network isn't properly secure, which implies that there is a "correct" solution for this issue if one goes through the proper steps. Keep in mind that the purpose of a white paper is to evaluate competing solutions for a specific problem, not to find the "correct" solution. A white paper informs the reader so that he or she can make an educated choice. Solution options are mutually exclusive, so the decision-making audience is only going to select one.
Imagine if the specific problem you were addressing was that the mother of a middle-class family of five people did not know what mid-sized sedan to buy. The corresponding white paper would present the strengths and weaknesses of the different makes and models (based upon cost, gas milage, room, features, etc.), but ultimately the audience is just going to select one of them, not buy them all. With your topic, it seems as though it would make sense to do all of the options (and indeed your topic discussion frames the issue like this). It doesn't seem that the reader is choosing one option from many, because pursuing one option doesn't preclude a person from pursuing the others.
You don't want this to be a set of instructions—i.e., here's how you protect from viruses, here's how you protect from information theft, and here's how you protect from bandwidth theft. This doesn't evaluate competing solutions; it presents one solution to three separate problems.
Going forward, make sure that you are identifying a specific problem and then presenting the strengths and weaknesses of the competing solutions. If you can do this with your topic, then you are OK. If you can't, you probably have to change focus. An example of a related topic might be a white paper about wireless routers, which would evaluate their plusses and minuses, including cost, security, ease of use, range, etc.