E-Business Challenges

Computer Matching

2009-11-06T18:04:00.001-08:00

Computer Matching
Computer profiling and mistakes in the computer matching of personal data are other controversial threats to privacy.

Individuals have been mistakenly arrested and jailed and people have been denied credit because their physical profiles or personal data have been used by profiling software to match them incorrectly or improperly with wrong individuals.

Another threat is the unauthorized matching of computerized information about extracted from databases of sales transaction processing systems, and sold to information brokers or other companies.

A more recent threat is the unauthorized matching and sale of information about you collected from Internet websites and newsgroup you visit.

You are then subjected to a barrage of unsolicited promotional material and sales contacts as well as having your privacy violated.
Computer Matching

The Benefits of a Collaborative Approach

2009-10-16T23:31:00.000-07:00

The Benefits of a Collaborative Approach

Greater involvement means more commitment and understanding of E-Business.
People working together and sharing information tend to trust each other more.
Involvement and shared knowledge produces better quality work.
There is back-up within the team and among the project leaders.
Working on issues together helps to build skills of the people in E-business.
E-Business work is more likely to end successfully on time and within budget.
A ready forum is available in which to gather lessons learned on E-Business.
Better communication allows for earlier warning of problems.

Collaboration does involve some additional startup work to get team members up to speed.

Project members have to be trained in some of the project management methods.
More project leader time is spent in managing the coordination.

However, these are offset by the benefits.
The Benefits of a Collaborative Approach

Identification and Authentication of the Parties

2009-09-16T23:33:00.000-07:00

Identification and Authentication of the Parties
One of the major problems that contracting on the Net faces is the difficulty of establishing the identity of the party who is on the other side of the transaction.

The exchange of valuables which is at the heart of contract law losses meaning if the parties exchanging them do not exactly know that there is somebody at the other side who is what she claims to be.

This is not necessarily because of any need to know the other person’s particulars or in view of future business prospects, but to be sure that if anything goes wrong the party claiming redress knows how to get to or communicate with that other party.

In contract law terms, the innocent party should have sufficient information about the party in default or alleged breach of the contract so as to pursue her claims against that party successfully.

The problem of not being able to establish the identity of a person transacting on the Net readily is made worse by the use of ‘remailers’ nor ‘anonymizers.’

These are software programs which can cloak the identity of a contracting party by either removing or replacing the actual address from which a party is sending messages so that it becomes impossible to trace that party.

From a practical angle, where such software is used the party that pays for goods in the Net but does not received the goods will not be able to establish of the seller is real or a phantom or whether she is residing at the specified origin of the electronic communication of acceptance or notice of delivery.

Another way on which a party may be prevented from establishing the identity of the other side is “spoofing,” that is use by the latter party of identity or account of another person to masquerade as that other person.

This is done not only by faking the identity of another party, but also by altering or falsifying e-mails so that the identity of a non-transacting party is assumed.

There are several spy programs that monitor the keystrokes of people to imitate their identity and misrepresent them.

It is therefore vital for contracting parties to know, and have confidence that the other parity is genuine and fits the description that she has supplied about herself during the transaction.

The common use of passwords as a means of identity authentication has been found to be deficient, open as it is to deliberate or inadvertent disclosure, backing or some other means of intervention or eavesdropping.

Among the more reliable emerging forms of authentication of parties employing electronics means of transactions is the use of digital signature technology.

Biometric techniques (such as fingerprinting, handwriting or voice recognition, retinal, or hand geometry scanning) are still in a process of development or immensely expensive to adopt at the moment.
Identification and Authentication of the Parties

E-Business is Magic

2009-08-28T21:20:00.000-07:00

E-Business is Magic
By magic we mean that e-business has pervasive and long lasting positive effects. Here are some margin elements of e-business:

E-business tends to be self enforcing. If you screw up, either customers or suppliers will start screaming. You will have to act. How many methods and processes do you know with this characteristic? Not many.

Done right, e-business forces a company to look within its soul and really determine what its business goals are. E-business success depends on the support of many different employees. Thus, a critical success factor is collaboration among many employees.

E-business continues to change the organization and business processes after it goes live. Why? Because the employees, customers and suppliers begin to have a role in business direction.

E-business provides the basis for measurement internally and externally.

E-business is positive and fun. E-business is not downsizing or reengineering, which tend to be depressing because they result in layoff. The good people leave and the gnomes and trolls stay. Instead, e-business implementation can get people excited. Roles change, but you probably won’t lose good people.

Perhaps the greatest magic of all is that when you implement e-business, you have the opportunity to improve the lives of employees and service level to customers and to strength relationship with suppliers.

In short there are few things like e-business that have come along in the past 40 years in computer and communications. E-business is really the next step step in evolution of the application beyond online systems.
E-Business is Magic

Key Ingredients for Collaborative E-Business Management

2009-08-07T22:50:00.000-07:00

Key Ingredients for Collaborative E-Business Management
Each person on the team is responsible for indentifying detailed tasks, updating tasks, addressing issuers associated with their tasks, and participating in joint project work.

An E-business effort is so large that even several leaders cannot do all of this work following traditional methods. They would be absorbed in administration.

A substantial percentage of the E-business has to be assigned to more than one person.

In some cases, 30 to 40 percent of the tasks are joint among two or three people.

Joint assignments are important in E-business because of the size of the tasks, the benefit of different perspectives and the benefit of a backup.

The E-business leaders share information except the really apolitical elements with the teams. This sharing gets the team more involved in E-business.

The E-business leaders share information amongst themselves. This includes schedules, issues, and lessons learned. They share the same information with line managers in departments which are the home do team members.

E-business leaders work together and with line managers in assigning people and other resources tasks on a routine basis (typically week) – obviously critical in E-business.
Key Ingredients for Collaborative E-Business Management

Law vs Electronic Commerce

2009-07-06T21:30:00.000-07:00

Law vs Electronic Commerce
A great deal of uncertainty surrounds the impact of the continuing growth of electronic commerce (e-commerce) on existing law.

While commercial law has evolved over the centuries in response to the development of trade in goods and services, within or across nations, the emergence of an electronic medium (‘cyberspace’) as an additional avenue for trade has pushed to the fore many questions: whether and how an adaption of existing law would possible, appropriate or sufficient to catch up with the problems thrown up by the new medium.

For one thing, the nature and effects of transactions that would ordinarily have been taken for granted had they occurred on non-electronic media confound established notions of commercial law.

Secondly, the unpredictability of the ultimate consequence of such transactions to the respective trading partners, who would be more likely to come from different jurisdictions, prompts scrutiny of preexisting, widely accepted formulations in domestic trade law, custom and treat among nations.

A major feature of the emergent situation that the impact of e-commerce on the law has not been across the board, simply because e-commerce has not been developing evenly.

Most transactions ton date relate to the purchase of computer hardware or software or the supply of information of various types; plain news, financial data, entertainment, education, travel, advertisement, health and DIY tips.

These item have one characteristic, namely the buyers’ lack of interest in, or disregard of, any need to have to conduct checking r inspection prior to purchase, or at any rate, before delivery.

In light of the general uncertainty surrounding the status of the online buyer and seller, the relevant law and of how it might be applied on behalf of a buyer claiming redress, the purchase of “safe” items acquires as precautionary significance.

In other words, the very nature of the involved in the transactions seems to rule out any fundamental failure that cold surface at a later stage and necessitate the intervention of the law to resolve the consequence of that failure.

Obviously, once money has passed form buyer to the seller, the path to recovery of that money, let alone further damages as would be expected under normal contract law, could be too complicated for the buyer to understand or pursue.

What makes the flight of an on-line buyer who seeks redress intractable is that solutions to online legal disputes are only just evolving in bits and pieces. New rules have begun to emerge in the form of statuary reforms in single jurisdiction or through case decisions on disputes arising from on-line transaction.
Law vs Electronic Commerce

Business Oriented of E-Business

2009-06-20T06:50:00.000-07:00

Business Oriented of E-Business
E-business does involve implementing new systems and technology, which is a minor but important part of the puzzle.

E-business impacts the technology, processes, organization, and management of the organization. These statements have strong implications for carrying out a successful e-business effort.

* Politics is an important part of e-business implementation. You cannot ignore it or sweep it under the rug. It is there because e-business has such far-ranging impacts. E-business alters the power structure of departments and the entire organization.

* The culture of the society, organization and environment is an important factor in e-business because you are dealing with customers, suppliers and employees.

* Information technology (IT) has a major role that goes beyond systems work. Information technology is the only group that spans the organization and addresses the technology. Information technology must have a central role in e-business implementation.
Business Oriented of E-Business

E-Commerce Trends

2009-05-11T17:31:00.000-07:00

E-Commerce Trends
B2C E-commerce moves from simple Web store fronts to interactive marketing capabilities that provide a personalized shopping experience for customers and then toward a totally integrated Web store that support a variety of customer shopping experience.

B2C E-commerce also moving toward a self-service model where customers configure and customize the products and services they wish to buy aided by configuration software and online customer support as needed.

B2B E-commerce participants moved quickly from self-service on the Web to configuration and customization capabilities and extranets connecting trading partners.

As B2C, E-commerce moves toward full-service and wide-selection retail Web portal, B2B is also trending toward the use of E-commerce portals that provide catalog, exchange and auction markets for business customers within or cross industries.

Both of these trends are enabled by E-business capabilities like customer relationship management and supply chain management, which are the hall marks of the customer-focused and internet-worked supply chains of the successful E-business enterprise.
E-Commerce Trends

Direct Attack by Terrorist

2009-05-07T07:38:00.000-07:00

Direct Attack by Terrorist
A direct attack would take the form of hacking into a computer system and rewriting or stealing information.

Some examples have that hackers operate for political purposes, as shown by the Portuguese hacker group called PHAIT (Portuguese Hackers Against Indonesian Tyranny).

They have rewritten Indonesian government and commercial Web site in order to protest about East Timor situation.

Anti-fur hackers have also attacked fur company Web sites in order to get their message to the general public.

Another method of hacking is more concerned with attacking computer files and destroying modifying or extracting data.

These types of hacking attacks may be less apparent to organizations, as they may not realize they have been a victim.

Cyber terrorists would use hacking as an extensive part of their ‘attack strategy’ against electronic commerce.

By hacking Web sites, cyber terrorists will gain a global audience for their political message and they will also be able to discredit the security of the companies using the on-line service.

It should also be remembered that hackers are available for hire on the open market and therefore their services can be easily acquired.

By actually hacking the data contained within the system, sales can be disrupted, or data altered.

This would help to harm the organization’s effectiveness or allow frauds to take place.

Cyber-terrorist attacks on commercial sites could easily damage users’ belief in secure transactions.

Overnight, the newly developed electronic commerce marketplace could disappear.
Direct Attack by Terrorist

Privacy on the Internet

2009-04-21T21:53:00.000-07:00

Privacy on the Internet
The internet is the notorious for giving its users a feeling of anonymity, when in actuality, they are highly visibly and open to violation of their privacy.

Most of the internet and its World Wide Web, E-mail, chat, and newsgroup are still a wide open, unsecured electronic frontier with no tough rules on what information is personal and private.

Information about internet users is captured legitimately and automatically each time you visit a website or newsgroup and recorded as a “cookie file” on your hard disk.

Then the website owners, or online auditing services, may sell the information from cookie files and other records of your internet use to third parties.

To make matter worse, much of the net and web are easy targets for the interception or theft by hackers of private information furnished to websites by internet users.

Of course, users can protect their privacy in several ways.

For example, sensitive E-mail can be protected by encryption, if both E-mail parties use compatible encryption software built into their E-mail programs.

Newsgroup posting can be made privately by sending them through anonymous remailers that protect user identity when added comments to a discussion.

Internet service provider can be asked not to sell name and personal information of the user to mailing list providers and other marketers.

Finally, user can decline to reveal personal data and interests on online service and website user profiles to limit user exposure to electronic snooping.
Privacy on the Internet

Managing E-Business Challenges

2009-03-11T18:36:00.000-07:00

Managing E-Business Challenges
A major challenge facing organizations is how to manage E-Business and other projects involving multiple organizations, both internally and externally.

This is often made more complex of the team members are distributed geographically and belong to a variety of different companies.

A typical E-Business effort might involve over ten internal departments, three to four consulting firms, and suppliers. Traditional project management methods were not designed for this situation. Most projects were managed as centralized, traditional projects – certainly not the case for E-business.

Some additional factors that pertain to E-Business are:

The systems have to be able to be interfaced so that on-line E-Business transactions are supported. This has a major impact on the IT resources related to programming.
Technology has to be enhanced and standardized – an effort that affects the support and operations side of IT.
Organization and process changes have to be implemented across departments in a coordinated manner.
Different consultants who may be competitors have to work to support E-Business.
Supplier coordination to streamline the supply chain with E-Business requires extensive coordination.

The complexity need for commitment and involvement, and scope of E-business efforts make them candidates for collaborative work and scheduling.

More specific challenges are:

The culture and interests differ among team members and companies.

Many individuals assigned to the project have normal, nonproject duties that they cannot give up for E-business; dividing their time between E-Business and their other work is a major challenges.

Different companies may employ a variety of IT methods and tools that do not easily support integration, which leads to incompatibilities.

E-Business subprojects have hidden dependencies that are revealed only later in the work at critical times.

The goals of E-Business may seem very general and may not relevant to many of the team members.

At the heart of these issue is the fact that the E-Business leaders do not have total authority over members of the project team.

E-Business project leaders do not generally allocate the money or the people. They are organizers, directors and coordinators-like directors for movies.
Managing E-Business Challenges

Important Privacy Issues

2009-02-11T16:53:00.000-08:00

Important Privacy Issues
In business and government, many important issues are being debated, as Internet technologies accelerate the ubiquity of global telecommunications connection in business and society.

Accessing individuals’ private E-mail conversations and computer records and collecting and sharing information about individuals gained from their visits to Internet websites and newsgroups (violation of privacy).

Always knowing where a person is, especially as mobile and paging services become more closely associated with people rather than places (computer monitoring).

Using customer information gained from many sources to market additional business services (computer matching).

Collecting telephone numbers, E-mail address, credit numbers, and other personal information to build individual customer profiles (unauthorized personal files).

Important Privacy Issues

Computer Attack

2009-01-20T00:44:00.000-08:00

Denial of Service Attacks
A denial of service attack results when access to computer or network resource is intentionally blocked or degraded as a result of malicious action taken by another user.

These attacks do not necessarily damage data directly or permanently (although they could), but they intentionally compromise the availability of the resources.

These types of attacks tend to affect the availability of computer systems for legitimate usage. These forms of attacks can include e-mail bomb attacks, sending thousands of e-mails to a particular computer system until that system crash, the software required to carry out denial of service attacks in widely available on the internet.

Another commonly used denial of service attack is the Ping O’ Death. The Ping O’ Death can crash or reboot a computer by sending a ‘ping’ message of greater than 65,536 bytes the default size is 64 bytes. Router updates have nearly eliminated these problems.

Denial of service attacks could be very effective against an Internet based company, since they rely on on-line connectivity. These sorts of attacks could easily disrupt electronic commerce on-line mechanisms.

Direct Attack
A direct attack would take the form of hacking into computer system and rewriting or stealing information. Some recent examples have that hackers operate for political purposes.

Another method of hacking is more concerned with attacking computers files and destroying, modifying or extracting data. These types of hacking attacks may be less apparent to organizations, as they may not realize they have a victim.

Cyber terrorists would use hacking as an extensive part of their ‘attack strategy’ against electronic commerce. By hacking Web sites, cyber terrorists will gain a global audience for their political message and they will also be able to discredit the security of the companies using the on-line service.

It should be remembered that hackers are available for hire on the open market and therefore their service can be easily acquired.

By actually hacking the data contained within the system, sales can be disrupted, or data altered. This would help to harm the organization’s effectiveness or allow fraud to take place.

Privacy Issues

2009-01-07T22:39:00.000-08:00

Privacy Issues
Information technology makes it technically and economically feasible to collect, store, integrate, interchange and retrieve data and information quickly and easily. This characteristic has an important beneficial effect on the efficiency and effectiveness of computer based information systems.

However, the power of information technology to store and retrieve information can have a negative effect on the right of privacy of every individual.

For example, confidential E-mail messages by employees are monitored by many companies. Personal information is being collected about individuals every time they visit a site on the World Wide Web.

Confidential information on individuals contained in centralized computer database by credit bureau, government agencies and private business firm has been stolen or misused, resulting in the invasion of privacy, fraud and other injustice.

The unauthorized use of such information has seriously damaged the privacy of individuals.

Errors in such databases could seriously hurt the credit standing or reputation of an individual.
Privacy Issues

Terrorist in the Internet

2008-12-19T20:27:00.000-08:00

Terrorist in the Internet
In the developed world, the influence of information systems can now be seen in most operational areas of business. A significant result of these advances is that organizations have become increasingly dependent upon the availability of systems and reliant upon the data they hold.

In recent years the internet has grown from a solely military/academic network to one that can be used by business or individual. In the years since the first WWW applications were developed, there has been an explosion in the global use of the internet. With this growth has come an increasing usage of the medium by criminal and terrorist groups.

The term terrorist or terrorism is a highly emotive term. Generally it is use t0 denote “revolutionists who seek to use terror systemically to further their views or to govern a particular area”. ‘Cyber-terrorism’ is a different form of terrorism since physical systematic terror does not usually occur (although it can if it causes disruption to a critical system), but a widespread destruction of information resources can. The problem of defining the term ‘terrorist’ relates to the fact that a terrorist group could easily be perceived as a resistance group carrying out lawful or morally legitimate actions.

Terrorist or resistance groups have difficulty in relaying their political messages to the general public without encountering censorship, they can now overcome this by using the Internet. Different terrorist groups or political parties use the Internet for a variety of different reasons:

Irish Republican Information Service is a service offering news articles relating to the troubles in Northern Ireland. Sinn Fein offer their own site containing of information about Sinn Fein, the armed struggle, policy documents………
Zapatista Movement. They have several sites, detailing their struggle against the Mexican authorities.
Third world terrorist/resistance groups have a cyber space presence.

Terrorist in the Internet

To Ensure Trust

2008-12-09T10:06:00.000-08:00

To Ensure Trust
The global economy is a digital economy, which depends on business fundamentals. At any given time, one of these fundamental is to establish trust. We have to make sure we are taking measures that infuse trust in our business partners, our employees, our consumers – and in the market.

Security and privacy are the enablers of trust in today’s economy. Effective security cannot be accomplished though technology alone: it is a process. Collaboration and business continuity issues have therefore especially relevant: mission critical business functions, technology and business risks as well as risk mitigation and recovery strategies have to be identified.

Digitization by electronically capturing and storing records and data in secure, remote locations, creating stable systems and putting business continuity plans in place. Business, as well as local, regional and national governments around the world need to increasingly turn to information technology – to digitization – to create more efficient and more secure processes to response to the new security challenges we are facing.

In addition, legal certainty is essential to establish trust. We must look to standardize out law and punishments for information technology crimes. Existing legislation needs to be reviewed to ensure that e-crimes can be prosecuted effectively. The current laws vary from country to country and the punishments often do not fit the crime.

It is essential that legal framework to combat cyber crime focus at international solutions that are balanced, flexible and meet broad international compatibility. Furthermore, if not carefully considered, new laws can also have unintended damaging effects and government solution should take into account the expertise and adequate involvement of industry. Action needs to be taken to both prevent criminal activity by enhancing security, but also to ensure that law enforcement authorities have the appropriate means to act if the prevention fails. However, the primary objective of computer and network security is to reduce risk, not to catch criminals.
To Ensure Trust

Cyber terrorism

2008-12-05T08:00:00.000-08:00

Cyber terrorism
Online terrorism, computer crimes and cyber attacks are no longer abstract possibilities. They are real major threats requiring real, major safeguards. The awareness of security has since September 11 events increased in many ways - increased concerned over physical sites, increased concerns of securing networked infrastructure and changes in corporate attitude from being confident about their organization’s security and delaying spending on security, to seeing IT security as an essential capital investment.

Surveys indicate an increase in external, as well as internal, attacks on information systems. The question is not if an organization’s system and business critical assets will be compromised, but when. We have already seemed numerous examples of viruses and worms.

Systems, data and personal information will come under attack. Every day, companies like EDS are discovering seven to ten vulnerabilities in systems around the world. Tomorrow it will be web defacements, semantic attacks, domain name server (DNS) attacks, distributed denial service (DDoS) attacks, routing systems and infrastructure attacks. These are hidden weak spots attackers and cyber criminals use to get our information assents. What was secure yesterday simply does not hold up today. In addition to direct financial loss, the loss of reputation and trust cause real long term damage.

Companies have been facing real network related challenges in the regular course of business. Now, we add terrorist attacks to that list and government and private business have begin to think about vulnerability of the computer systems and networks that support critical infrastructures.

Society’ vital services and critical infrastructure: communications, finance, transportation, and utilities such as electricity, oil, gas and water rely on computer and computer networked. If these networked are damaged the nation will be disrupt. Governments as well as business that own and operate banks, utility infrastructure, transportation systems, telecommunications networks and other critical systems, must be prepared for the possibility of a destructive attack in cyberspace. The cyber threat is out there, either directly or as collateral damage in other kinds of attacks.
Cyber terrorism

E-Government

2008-12-02T08:00:00.000-08:00

E-Government
In the commercial sphere, business to business (B2B), business to consumer (B2C) and business to employee (BTE) electronic business has come widely accepted.

Government are also embracing the internet to provide services to business (G2B) and citizens (C2C), as well as government to government (G2G), citizen to citizen (C2C), government to supplier (G2S) and government to employee (G2E).

In year 2000 European Union Summit in Lisbon set ambitious goal of making Europe the world most competitive and dynamic knowledge based economy. It resulted in the eEurope Action plan to exploit the full potential of the Internet to promote a competitive economy. The objective is to make it easier to deal with local, regional and national governments by making services available electronically.

The benefits of e Government are reduced costs through more efficient processes, the integration of disparate agencies systems, and improved service to citizens via the internet and other electronic channels. Investment by government will also decrease the cost of doing business through simplification of procedures self-service systems and one stop shop for enterprises. The biggest beneficiaries here will be the small to medium enterprises, which are the backbone of the European economy.
E-Government

Software Outsourcing

2008-11-09T05:03:00.000-08:00

Software Outsourcing
A first class software system is critical in delivering strategic intelligence and indispensable in managing the company’s greatest asset – information, but the actual management of the software systems can be a distraction and a burden for a company whose core competence is not related to IT.

Today, progressive organizations in both the private and public sectors are turning to software outsourcing, the so-called utility computing model, which allows a company to have its software professionally managed – either at their own offices, the IT vendor’s premises or at a third party’s premises – and to connect to their data through browser.

The benefits are enormous. Software outsourcing eliminates all the headaches of the sheer administrative burden of maintaining essential software, the deployment of new project IT, the ongoing upgrades, the sourcing of scarce IT staff, and the employee or consultant costs. Combined with technical staff of the host’s staff, this results in negligible downtime. Users always have the latest version of the software. And the uptake of this model is increasing.

The outsourcing of the IT infrastructure is not new, but the traditional model is changing, as software delivered as a service using Internet technology is the next logical step. There is no longer the need to distribute the computers and to co-locate them with the users. By providing software applications like a utility can better manage the distribution of their resource. Mobility of the workforce can be achieves easily and transparently by providing access to the corporate systems any place, any time via a spectrum of mobile devices.
Software Outsourcing

Information System and Integrated Data

2008-10-29T17:44:00.000-07:00

Information System and Integrated Data
Once an organization has simplified its system and fully integrated its data, it is in a good position to extend business processes and systems outside its own operations to its customers, partners and suppliers, to encompass its whole economy as an entire automated supply chain. Large companies can then create ecosystems made of hundreds of partners who can supplement the products and services of the large company, while retaining as good level sharing.

This result in the integration of long chains of business processes with information automatically flowing from company to company smoothly, quickly and accurately. For instance, if a customer places an order on a web site, it transfers automatically into the order entry system, into the accounting systems for invoicing and into the warehouse management system for fulfillment. It is also included in information sent to suppliers on orders in the pipeline, so that they can plan their inventory and pass demand forecast up the chain to their own suppliers.

Many large organizations are setting up their own private electronic marketplace with their suppliers, whilst others are getting together with competitors to set up a similar joint arrangement. E-marketplaces are central hubs or exchanges that bring together buyers and seller across the internet and already demonstrating success.

Customized products can be collaboratively designed within a supplier group, using an internet enabled computer aided designed (CAD) application. Freight companies can join the e-marketplace to bid for transportation of the finished product or to auction off excess freight space to other companies in the exchange. At the same time, customers can access the market place to track delivery of an order.
Information System and Integrated Data

Large Organization with Single Database

2008-10-17T21:22:00.001-07:00

Large Organization with Single Database
One of the reasons that organization were so slow to respond in the past was that they simply did not have a clear view of what was happening within their company. Yes, a large amount of data was available, but it was fragmented around the organization in many different places, different isolated systems and incompatible formats. Additional, the data was inconsistent due to different definitions, cut-off dates and measurement criteria.

Large businesses (and countries) have been traditionally less efficient than smaller organizations due to the cost of coordination and the increase in bureaucracy to deal with large amounts of information. Delegation of authority to compensate for this factor has led to lack of control, lower efficiency and fragmentation of business.

The solution is a single, logical, central database that gives everybody in the organization access to the same data at the same time. Many organizations are now bringing together all their separate systems to achieve this singular view.

A single source of data gives the organization the ability to combine information across all business operations. Whereas managers used to receive a separate printed monthly report from each system, they can now obtain daily, or even hourly, electronic reports that give a single view of what matters, as it happens, across their entire organization.

Chief executive can access a single dynamic report on screen to monitor their critical success factors and key performance indicators, such as sales, leads, liquidity, staffing or inventory levels. These interactive reports allow the user, not just to monitor everything that is important to the company, but also to investigate variances and get immediate answers within a few mouse clicks.

The availability of global information systems enables companies to maintain a functional structure on a large scale, which is more efficient, rather than creating multiple business units with complicated communication cycles.
Large Organization with Single Database

The Internet and Business

2008-09-11T21:00:00.000-07:00

The Internet and Business
In the early 20th century, the electricity grid became the underlying enabling backbone of the industrial economy. Today m the Internet, with over half a billion users worldwide, is becoming the enabling infrastructure of the information economy.

The internet has forever transformed the way we transact business, and how we work with our communities of citizens, customers, partners, suppliers and employees. It is rapidly becoming the enabling infrastructure of modern business – what we learn e-business and companies realize they must incorporate it into their existing sources of value creation to improve competitive advantage. By e-business, Oracle understands this to be an Internet technology-based business information architecture that transparently integrates all business information and flows, and allows access to this information anywhere at any time.

The use of common Internet standard and technologies promote efficient and predictable communication and dramatically lowers the cost of managing information. It no longer takes years to implement new systems or upgrade and modernize existing ones. Many organizations are transforming their systems to embrace the Internet in just a few weeks or months, Solutions do not need to be complex, but they must be part of a wider effort to enhance information sharing, streamline operations and modernize business practices.

As we move from the early phase of the Internet infrastructure creation, the innovation will shift from products to services. Any company will be able to use Internet to provide better, cheaper and more customized products and services to the consumers. And governments will be able to provide more efficient services to citizens, while reducing their internal cost. The consumer will probably profit most from this improvement in market efficiencies, as more and more companies and public agencies put customer at the beginning of the value chain. It is probable that a lot of the cost savings will be passed to the customer through lower prices for the same or better service.
The Internet and Business

Computer Viruses

2008-09-06T09:43:00.000-07:00

Computer Viruses
One of the most destructive examples of computer crime involves the creation of computer viruses or worms. Virus is the more popular term but, technically, a virus is a program code that cannot work without being inserted into another program. A worm is a distinct program that can run unaided. In either case, these programs copy annoying or destructive routines into the networked computer systems of anyone who accesses computers infected with the virus or who uses copies of disks taken from infected computer. Thus, a computer virus or worm can spread destruction among many users. Though they sometimes display only humorous messages, they more often destroy the contents of memory, hard disks, and other storage devices. Copy routines in the virus or worms spread the virus and destroy the data and software of many computer users.

Computer viruses typically enter a computer system through E-mail and file attachments via the Internet and online services, or through illegal or borrowed copies of software. Copies of shareware software downloaded from the internet can be another source of viruses. A virus usually copies itself into the files of a computer’s operating system. Then virus spreads to the main memory and copies itself onto the computer’s hard dick and any inserted disks. The virus spreads to other computers though E-mail, file transfer, other telecommunications activities, or disks from infected computers. Thus, as a good practice, avoid using software from questionable sources without checking for viruses. Also need to use regularly antivirus programs that can help diagnose and remove computer viruses from infected files on hard disk.
Computer Viruses

Piracy of Intellectual Property

2008-08-28T01:15:00.000-07:00

Piracy of Intellectual Property
Software is not the only intellectual property subject to computer based piracy. Other forms of copyrighted material, such as music, videos, images, articles, books and either written works are especially vulnerable to copyright infringement, which most courts have deemed illegal. Digitized versions can easily be captured by computer systems and made available for people to access or download at Internet websites, or can be readily disseminated by e-mail as file attachments.

The development of peer to peer networking technologies like the Napster and Gnutella models have made digital versions of copyrighted material even more vulnerable to unauthorized use. For example Napster and other similar software enable direct MP3 audio file transfer pf specified tracks of music between PC and those of other users on the Internet. Thus such software creates a peer to peer network of millions internet users who electronically trade digital versions of copyrighted or public domain music stored on their PC’s hard drives.
Piracy of Intellectual Property

Information Security And Secure Business Practices

2008-08-08T03:35:00.000-07:00

Information Security And Secure Business
Practices The PCI DSS (Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard) stresses the importance of information security in the modern age of high-speed transactions and technologically advanced criminals. If someone were to appropriate a customer's sensitive information illegally, they could do serious harm to that customer – and in the end, damage to your business as well.

Information security is a key component of many requirements of the PCI DSS. Customers now expect a certain level of security before they will trust you with their information. As more and more security breaches reach the public notice, customers will become more weary, and more savvy as to how they guard their important information. If they can't trust a merchant to guard their data, they will do it themselves, and that will most likely happen in the form of just not giving it out. And that's not good for any business.

Major principles of information security consist of maintaining confidentiality and integrity. Confidentiality implies that if a consumer entrusts sensitive data to you, you must do everything possible to protect it. This means that disclosure is not an option. For many transactions, personal information must be used. As a merchant you must not allow unauthorized disclosure whether accidental or on purpose.

The integrity of a system refers to business practices that do not allow any unauthorized personnel to create, modify, or delete any sensitive data. This loss of integrity can occur through various means, including malicious criminal activity, accidents through improper precautions, or viruses or other malware.

The PCI DSS (Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard) was created to help merchants achieve a sufficient level of information security and secure business practices. Any company that stores, transmits, or processes credit card information is required to become compliant or risk a range of fines and penalties.

There are 12 requirements to the PCI DSS, and each of them contributes to the integrity of your information security system.

You begin by installing a firewall to control the traffic that can get into your system. You must also be sure to change any vendor-supplied passwords that may have come as defaults on your system.

Next is the protection of cardholder data. Information security can depend on strong encryption. This includes encryption on data stored on your system as well as data that is in transit.

Then, to guard against viruses and other invasive programs, you need to make sure you have updated anti-virus software and employ and maintain secure systems and applications.

Access to this critical data must also be strictly controlled. This means only people with a business need-to-know should have access and each person who does have access must have a unique ID assigned to them. Physical access must also be restricted so criminals can't walk out with hard copies or hardware.

Tracking and logging procedures should also be implemented. This way, should your information security happen to be breached, you can discover how it was done, and set in motion the proper procedures to rectify the problem. And all these procedures also need to be regularly tested and updated.

Once these practices are in place, you are almost PCI compliant. You still have to maintain a policy that addresses information security. In other words, to maintain the integrity and confidentiality of personal information, you need to settle on the right practices and make sure that everyone in the company knows and understands their own responsibilities in preserving information security.
Information Security And Secure Business Practices
Written by: Andy Eliason
Source: http://www.Free-Articles-Zone.com