HSC Information and Digital Technology (VET) cheat sheet

The Australian digital technologies industry spans hardware supply and repair, software development, networking and telecommunications, cloud services, and IT support; each subsector has its own award conditions and typical job roles.

Industry sectors relevant to IT work include education, health, finance, government, retail, and mining; sector-specific compliance (for example privacy or health records rules) shapes how support tasks are performed.

Typical entry-level roles include help desk officer, desktop support technician, computer technician, and junior network administrator; progression usually moves toward specialist or team-leader positions.

Industry bodies and standards relevant to the field include Standards Australia (for example AS/NZS 3760 for electrical testing and tagging), the ACMA for telecommunications and radio communications, and the OAIC for privacy.

A workplace policy is an internal rule set by the employer; a legislative requirement is imposed by law. Where they conflict, the legal requirement prevails and the policy must be escalated for review.

Sustainability in the industry includes product stewardship schemes, energy-efficiency ratings (for example Energy Star), and take-back programs offered by manufacturers for end-of-life equipment.

Emerging industry directions include cloud-first service delivery, managed services, virtualisation, edge computing, and increased automation of monitoring and patching tasks.

Industry currency is maintained through vendor certifications, professional associations, conferences, and reading vendor release notes and security advisories relevant to the supported environment.

WHS duties follow a hierarchy: eliminate the hazard first, then substitute, then use engineering controls, then administrative controls, and use PPE only as the last line of defence.

Under harmonised WHS law, a PCBU must ensure health and safety so far as is reasonably practicable; workers must take reasonable care for their own and others' safety and report hazards.

Manual handling risk in IT work rises with load weight, awkward posture, and repetition; team lifting or trolleys are required where a load cannot be safely handled alone.

Electrical safety: isolate and lock out power before opening equipment, never work on energised equipment unless qualified and authorised, and test and tag portable equipment per AS/NZS 3760 intervals.

Ergonomic setup rules: top of screen at or slightly below eye level, screen about an arm's length away, elbows near 90 degrees, feet supported, and the chair adjusted before the desk height.

Hazardous substances in IT include toner dust, lead solder, and lithium-ion batteries; safety data sheets (SDS) must be available and batteries must not be punctured, heated, or disposed of in general waste.

Emergency procedures require knowing the assembly point, evacuation routes, warden roles, and the location of first-aid kits and fire extinguishers; incidents and near misses must be recorded in the incident register.

Environmental controls: use power management and shutdown policies, virtualise servers to cut hardware count, recycle via accredited e-waste recyclers, and follow the waste hierarchy (avoid, reduce, reuse, recycle, dispose).

The communication process requires a sender, encoding, a channel, decoding by the receiver, and feedback; noise is any interference that distorts the message.

Active listening techniques include paraphrasing, summarising, asking clarifying questions, and reflecting the customer's stated problem back before acting.

Service-level expectations are usually defined by an SLA stating response time (first reply) and resolution time (fix); priority is set by impact multiplied by urgency.

Escalation rules: escalate when the issue exceeds your authority, when the SLA is at risk, or when the customer becomes abusive; always hand over with a written summary of actions taken.

Plain-English and jargon rules: avoid acronyms the customer has not used, describe the action rather than the technology, and confirm understanding by asking the customer to restate the next step.

Conflict resolution steps: listen without interrupting, acknowledge the concern, establish the facts, agree on the outcome sought, and confirm the agreed action in writing.

Teamwork conventions in IT service teams include logging all work in the ticketing system, updating ticket status, documenting fixes in the knowledge base, and not closing a ticket without customer confirmation.

Cultural and accessibility communication: use interpreters or translation services where needed, offer TTY or chat alternatives, and avoid colour-only cues when presenting information.

Key internal components: CPU (cores, clock speed, cache), RAM (volatile working memory), storage (HDD magnetic, SSD flash), motherboard (chipset, sockets, expansion slots), PSU (wattage and efficiency rating), and cooling.

Storage interfaces and speeds: SATA III up to about 6 Gb/s, NVMe over PCIe substantially faster than SATA SSD, and HDDs best for bulk sequential data rather than random access.

USB standards: USB 2.0 up to 480 Mb/s, USB 3.0/3.1 Gen 1 up to 5 Gb/s, USB 3.1 Gen 2 up to 10 Gb/s; USB-C is a connector type and does not by itself indicate speed.

RAID levels: RAID 0 stripes for speed with no redundancy, RAID 1 mirrors for redundancy, RAID 5 stripes with parity and tolerates one disk failure, RAID 10 combines mirroring and striping.

Operating system functions: process and memory management, file system management, device drivers, user authentication, and the user interface; examples include Windows, macOS, and Linux distributions.

Windows administration tools include Task Manager, Device Manager, Disk Management, Event Viewer, and the command line; ipconfig, ping, and sfc /scannow are common diagnostic commands.

Software licensing models include proprietary perpetual, subscription, open source (for example GPL), and site or volume licensing; installing beyond the licensed count breaches the licence agreement.

Backup types: full (all data), incremental (changes since last backup of any type), and differential (changes since last full backup); the 3-2-1 rule means three copies, two media types, one offsite.

OSI layers from 1 to 7: physical, data link, network, transport, session, presentation, application; TCP/IP maps roughly to network access, internet, transport, and application layers.

IPv4 addresses are 32-bit and IPv6 are 128-bit; a private IPv4 range is 10.0.0.0/8, 172.16.0.0/12, or 192.168.0.0/16; APIPA 169.254.x.x indicates a failed DHCP lease.

Common ports: HTTP 80, HTTPS 443, FTP 20/21, SSH 22, Telnet 23, SMTP 25, DNS 53, DHCP 67/68, POP3 110, IMAP 143, RDP 3389.

Network devices: switch forwards by MAC address within a LAN, router forwards by IP address between networks, access point bridges wireless clients to the wired LAN, and firewall filters traffic by rule.

Wireless security order of strength: WPA3 preferred, WPA2 acceptable, WEP and open networks are insecure; disabling SSID broadcast is not a security control on its own.

Malware categories: virus attaches to a host file, worm self-propagates across networks, trojan disguises itself as legitimate software, ransomware encrypts data for extortion, spyware covertly collects information.

Authentication factors are something you know, something you have, and something you are; multi-factor authentication requires at least two different factor types, not two of the same type.

Social engineering defences: verify identity through an independent channel, never disclose credentials or remote access on request, and report suspected phishing to the security contact without clicking links.

The data-information-knowledge hierarchy: raw data becomes information once processed and contextualised, and becomes knowledge when applied with judgement and experience.

Data validation checks input at entry (type, range, format, presence); data verification confirms accuracy against a second source such as a re-typed password or an original document.

File formats: lossless compression (PNG, FLAC, ZIP) preserves all original data; lossy compression (JPEG, MP3, MP4) discards data to reduce size and degrades with repeated re-saving.

Image properties: raster images are pixel grids and lose quality when enlarged; vector images use mathematical paths and scale without loss; resolution is measured in pixels or DPI/PPI.

Copyright in Australia arises automatically on creation and generally lasts 70 years after the author's death for published works; copyright is separate from owning a physical copy.

Fair dealing exceptions are narrow and include research or study, criticism or review, and parody; attribution alone does not make an otherwise infringing use lawful.

Creative Commons licences vary by conditions: BY requires attribution, SA requires share-alike, NC restricts commercial use, ND prohibits derivative works.

Data management controls include access permissions based on least privilege, retention and disposal schedules, backup regimes, and audit trails of who accessed or changed a record.

The standard troubleshooting sequence: identify the problem, establish a theory of probable cause, test the theory, establish a plan of action, implement or escalate, verify full functionality, and document findings.

Change one variable at a time and retest after each change; changing several settings at once makes the cause of any fix or failure impossible to identify.

Start from the layer or component most likely and cheapest to test: check power and cabling first, then link lights and physical connections, then configuration, then software.

Divide-and-conquer method: determine whether the fault lies in hardware, operating system, application, or network by testing each boundary with a known-good substitute such as a spare cable or alternate host.

Ask the user what changed immediately before the fault appeared; recent updates, new hardware, moved furniture, or a power outage are high-value clues.

Documentation requirements for a resolved ticket: symptom, cause, action taken, parts used, time spent, and customer confirmation; this feeds the knowledge base for future incidents.

Escalation criteria include warranty or contract boundaries, data loss risk, security incidents, and faults requiring vendor tools or higher privileges.

Verify the fix by reproducing the original task with the user present, and confirm no new symptoms were introduced before closing the ticket.

The core employability skills framework covers communication, teamwork, problem solving, initiative and enterprise, planning and organising, self-management, learning, and technology.

Australian Privacy Principles (APPs) govern handling of personal information; APP 11 requires reasonable steps to secure personal information and to destroy or de-identify it when no longer needed.

The Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) applies to most businesses with annual turnover above $3 million, plus some smaller entities such as health service providers; the Notifiable Data Breaches scheme requires notification of eligible breaches.

Work health and safety law, anti-discrimination law (including the Disability Discrimination Act 1992), and fair work entitlements all apply to IT workplaces alongside industry standards.

Ethical obligations for technicians include confidentiality of customer data, not accessing files unrelated to the job, declaring conflicts of interest, and reporting security weaknesses responsibly.

A code of conduct or professional ethics framework typically covers integrity, objectivity, confidentiality, and competence; breaching it can lead to disciplinary action or loss of certification.

Career pathways in IT commonly begin with a certificate or traineeship, progress to technician or support roles, then to specialist, engineer, or team-leader roles, supported by vendor and industry certifications.

Intellectual property types relevant to IT are copyright (software and content), patents (inventions), trademarks (brands), and trade secrets (algorithms and configuration); each has different protection rules.