Monday 9 December 2013

Chapter 12

CASE STUDY CHAPTER 12 : ETHICAL AND SOCIAL ISSUES IN INFORMATION SYSTEMS
INTERACTIVE SESSION: TECHNOLOGY  Life on the Grid : iPhone Becomes iTrack

1)      Why do cell phone manufacturers (Apple, Google, and BlackBerry) want to track where their customers go?

They collect this data for advertising and marketing purposes. Now the mobile Web grid tracks you and your friends to sell you product and services. A new technology based on smartphones can identify where you are located within a few yards. And there’s a great deal of money to be made knowing where you are. Mobile technologies based on the smartphone make it possible to located people throughout the day, to report this information to corporate data bases, retain and analyze the information, and then sell it to advertisers and other. Location data gathered from cell phones has extraordinary commercial value because advertising companies can send you advertisement, coupons and flash bargain, based on where you are located.

2)      Do you think cell phone customers should be able to turn tracking off? Should customers be informed when they are being tracked? Why or why not?
Yes I think that there should be a feature to turn such features off. Customers should be informed even though most apps do display that GPS and network access is a requirement for the application.
3)      Do you think cell phone tracking is a violation of a person’s privacy?

Cell phone tracking is indeed an invasion of privacy. A privacy group is EPIC. The Electronic Privacy Information Center was founded in 1993 and focuses public attention to emerging civil liberties and to protect privacy, the first amendment, and constitutional values. I do support its calls for federal regulation because it does need to be regulated as this type of tracking is a breach of privacy.



Chapter 11

CHAPTER 11: BUILDING INFORMATION SYSTEM AND MANAGEMENT PROJECT
INTERACTICE SESSION: TECHNOLOGY (DST SYSTEM SCORE WITH SCUM AND APPLICATION LIFECLYE MANAGEMENT)

1.      WHAT WERE SOME OF THE PROBLEM WITH DST SYSTEM OLD SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT ENVIROMENT.
Some of the problems with DST System's old software development environment were that many of the processes for development and organization were manual and time-consuming. Managers were unable to easily determine how resources were being allocated, which of their employees were working on certain projects, and the status of specific assets. This meant that DST was struggling to update its most important product, the AWD, in time. DST set up a project evaluation team to identify the right development environment for them. Key factors included cost-effectiveness, ease of adoption, and feature- effectiveness. DST wanted the ability to use new software without significant training and software they could quickly adopt without jeopardizing AWD’s development cycle. After considering several ALM products and running test projects with each one, DST settled on CollabNet’s offering. TeamForge, for its ALM platform.

2.      HOW DID SRUM DEVELOPMENT HELP SOLVE SOME OF THOSE PROBLEMS?
Scrum relies on self-organization, cross functional team supported by SrumMaster and a product owner. The ScrumMaster acts as a coach for the team, while the product owner represents the business, customers or user in guiding the team toward building the right product. Scrum development helped solve those problems by accelerating the company's software development cycle from 24 months to 6 months and increased developer productivity by 20 percent.

3.      WHAT OTHER ADJUSMENTS DID DST MAKE TO USE SRUM MORE EFFECTIVELY I ITS SOFTWARE PROJECTS? WHAT PEOPLE, ORGANIZATION, AND TECHNOLOGY ISSUES HAD TO BE ADDRESSED?

DST got TeamForge from CollabNet as its ALM platform to unify its software development environment. They had to address that Scrum didn't work as well with DST's existing tools, processes broke down and the lack of standardization among the tools and processes used by DST prevented Scrum from providing its maximum benefit to the company.

Chapter 10

THE NATIONAL BANK OF KUWAIT.
Question 1: how has NBK benefitted from the implementation of SHOROUQ?
            NBK was the first indigenous bank in the Gulf Region and it was one of its advantage but it did not help to maintain their position anymore. They need change.
NBK decided to build new ERP system and it made NBK able to expend its market share sucessfully. New EPR system would close the gaps between top management and operating management teams. It helped the bank to be more flesible and more productive by coordinatings its business processes more closely and integrating group of processes so that it could focus and efficient resource management and customer service.
            Also, SHOROUQ can be ungrade easily, and additional sercer capacity can be added without a great deal of maintenance. Because of SHOROUQ, NBK was able to expend its market locally, opening 71 local branches spanning all of Kuwait.

Question 2: list the advantages and disadvantages of implementing the SHOROUQ system of NBK?
            Advantages:
ü  ERP system would help the bank to be more flecible and more closely and intergating group of processes so that employee could focus more on the customer service and rsource management.
ü  In the NBK had old system that could not support the huge databases with paper-based system.
ü  After NBK changed to new ERP system, employees can work more efficiently because the ERP system can handle it.
Disadvantages:
ü  It will cost much to set it up.
·         It can be NBK’s dangerous investment implementing the new ERP system because they just servived from the economic crisis in 2008.
·         They night have financial difficulties.

ü  It will take 2-3 years to stablilize the new system.
·         NBK’s employees might have difficult time to learn how to we now ERP system so company will need few years to wait until the system ste up.
·         In oder to make their employees to learn about the new system, it will cost more again.
Question 3: how do you think NBK’s would have developed if it had not integrated SHOROUQ?

            SHOROUQ was a core system for NBK. This system was developed by the team members taking into consideration their mission as well as the NBK regional status. This is why it was critical for the company and development group to develop a strategic system such as SHOROUQ.

Chapter 9

Chapter 9 E-commerce---Case study questions
Question 1
Assess the people, organization, and technology issues for using social media to engage with customers.
Nowadays, most people will use the social media to keep in touch with friend and let them know what they recently doing. However, these social media such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Line can become powerful tools for engaging customers in business for all companies of all shapes and sizes. In addition, location based businesses like gourmet food trucks can tweet their current location to loyal followers and fans. Appointment-based businesses can easily tweet or post cancellations and unexpected openings. Larger companies run sweepstakes and promotions and cn have an opportunity to shape the perception of their brands and to solidify relationships with their customers.
Companies are rolling out ads that capitalize on the social media features of Facebook to achieve greater visibility. For example, Facebook ads feature the ability to ‘Like’ a brand, send a virtual gift, amswer a poll question, or instantly stream information to your news feed. Facebook also allow you to following the fan page of the brand and can get the new feed about the brand or the updates news, promotion, and competition.

Question 2
What are the advantages and disadvantages of using social media for advertising, brand building, market research, and customer service?
Advantages
a)      Companies of all sizes have an opportunity to shape the perception of their brands and to solidify relationships with their customers.
b)      To achieve greater visibility- Facebook ads feature the ability to “like” a brand, give comment, answer poll question, send a virtual gift
c)       To allow customers to socialize and share their purchases with friends through social media
d)      Answer user question and respond to complaints. Companies can easily manage the complaints of products from user and get improvement overall through these application.
e)      Companies uses text mining to gather data and convert then to useful information and uses the information to gauge the success of promotions, which products are hot and which are duds, and the impact of advertising campaigns.
f)       Use social media- Facebook’s targeting capabilities to determine which types of people respond to the various ads it has created.


Disadvantages
a)      The result can be unpredictable, and not always beneficial, as Starbucks learned. Starbucks launched a social media contest, which was essentially a scavenger hunt for advertising posters in Twitter. The campaign backfired. At the urging of anti- Starbucks protesters, users flooded Starbucks’ Twitter feed with pictures of employees and protesters holding signs criticizing Starbucks’ labor practices.

Question 3
Should all    companies use Facebook and Twitter for customer service and advertising? Why or why not? What kinds of companies are best suited to use these platforms?

Yes, companies should use these social media-Facebook and Twitter for customer service and advertising. This is because Facebook and Twitter more effective compare to others. Facebook and Twitter is a social web and have a large amount of people or companies link their business, company products to social media. Companies with selling digital goods like camera, smartphone and so on are suitable to use the platform because social media need be efficiently and good performance with digital products.

Chapter 8

CHAPTER 8:
CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT HEADS TO THE CLOUD.
1. What types of companies are most likely to adopt cloud-based CRM software services? Why? What companies might not be well-suited for this type of software?

The traditional enterprise software vendors like Oracle are using their well established position to grad a share of the cloud-based application market; new comers like Right Now, Compiere, and Sugar CRM have found success using some different tactics. Because most companies that are interested in cloud computing are small or midsize and lack the know-how or financial resources to successfully build and maintain CRM applications in-house. However, the large companies have made the switch to cloud. Company officials were hoping to eliminate maintenance and administrative costs, but not at the expense of a storage system that meets their requirements, were never out of service, and worked perfectly.

2. What are the advantages and disadvantages of using cloud- based enterprise applications?

The cloud-based advantages as it attempted to merge information from different sources, and many smaller companies have taken advantage of a new type of cloud computing. For example, cloud-based applications can merge customer data 25 disparate sources and applications into a single system.
Disadvantage is that company officials were hoping to eliminate maintenance and administrative costs, but not at the expense of a storage system that met their requirements, was never out of service, and worked perfectly and they will cost a lot of money from enterprise.

3. What people, organization, and technology issues should be addressed in deciding whether to use a conventional CRM system versus a cloud- based version?


Nikon found that not only Right Now had the capability to implement that system, but also it had an array of other useful services. When Nikon discovered that it could combine outbound e-mail, contact management, and customer records into a single system in Right Now’s cloud, it made the move, expecting to receive a solid return on the investment. However, more customers found the information they needed on the Web, call response times dropped by 50 percent, and incoming e-mail dropped by 70 percent. While Nikon still hosts its SAP system internally due to its complexity, Nikon switched its entire CRM system to Right Now. Companies that manage their CRM apps with a cloud infrastructure have no guarantees that their data will be available at all times, or even that the provider will still exist in the future.

Chapter 7

1. Is cyberwarfare a serious problem? Why or why not?
Cyberwarfare poses a unique and daunting set of challenges for security experts, not only in detecting and preventing intrusions but also in tracking down perpetrators and bringing them to justice. The most prominent threats so far include:
·         Successful attacks on the FAA airline system, including one in 2006 that partially shut down air traffic data systems in Alaska.
·         Intruders successfully penetrated the Pentagon’s $300 billion Joint Strike Fighter project and stole several terabytes of data related to design and electronics systems.
·         Cyberspies infiltrated the U.S. electrical grid in April 2009 and left behind software programs whose purpose is unclear.
·         In Iraq, insurgents intercepted Predator drone feeds using software downloaded from the Internet.
·         An act of cyberwar against a critical resource such as the electric grid, financial system, or communication systems would likely be devastating.
2. Assess the people, organizational, and technology factors that have created this problem.
·         People: For cybercriminals, the benefit of cyberwarfare is that they can compete with traditional superpowers for a fraction of the cost of other types of warfare. Because more and more modern technological infrastructure will rely on the Internet to function, cyberwarriors will have no shortage of targets at which to take aim. Users of targeted systems are still too careless about security and don’t do enough to help protect sensitive systems.
·         Organization: The U.S. has no clear policy about how the country would respond toa catastrophic level of a cyberattack. Eventhough the U.S. Congress is consideringlegislation to toughen cybersecurity standards, the standards will likely beinsufficient to defend against attacks. The organization of U.S. cybersecurity ismessy, with no clear leader among intelligence agencies.
·         Technology: While the U.S. is currently at the forefront of cyberwarfaretechnologies, it’s unlikely to maintain technological dominance because of therelatively low cost of the technologies needed to mount these types of attacks.Secret surveillance software can be installed on unprotected systems and canaccess files and e-mail thus spreading itself to other systems. Tracing identities ofspecific attackers through cyberspace is next to impossible, making deniability ofsuspected intruders simple.



3. What makes Stuxnet different from other cyberwarfare attacks? How serious a threat is this technology?
Stuxnet different from other cyberwarfare attack this is because stuxnet the software uses previously unknown tricks to worm its way into industrial control systems undetected, searching for a particular configuration that matches its target—at which point it wreaks havoc by reprogramming the system, closing valves and shutting down pipelines.A new software “worm” called Stuxnet (its name is derived from keywords buried in the code) seems to have been developed to attack a specific nuclear facility in Iran. Its sophistication suggests that it is the work of a well-financed team working for a government, rather than a group of rogue hackers trying to steal secrets or cause trouble. America and Israel are the obvious suspects. But Stuxnet's origins and effects are unknown.
For security reasons SCADA systems are not usually connected to the internet. But Stuxnet can spread via infected memory sticks plugged into a computer's USB port. Stuxnet checks to see if WinCC is running. If it is, it tries to log in, to install a clandestine “back door” to the internet, and then to contact a server in Denmark or Malaysia for instructions. (Analysis of traffic to these servers is continuing, and may offer the best chance of casting light on Stuxnet's purpose and origins.) If it cannot find WinCC, it tries to copy itself on to other USB devices. It can also spread across local networks via shared folders and print spoolers. Stuxnet seemed to be designed for industrial espionage or to allow hackers to blackmail companies by threatening to shut down vital systems. WinCC is a rather obscure SCADA system. And Stuxnet searches for a particular configuration of industrial equipment as it spreads. It launches an attack only when it finds a match.
In each cyberwarfare incident, the governments of the government of the countries suspected to be responsible have roundly denied the charges with no repercussions. The real worry for security experts and government officials is an act of cyberwarfaceagainst critical resource, such as the electric grid, financial system, or communication systems. In April 2009, cyberspies infiltrated the U.S electrical grid, using weak points where computers on the grid are connected to the Internet, and left behind software programs whose purpose is unclear, but which presumably could be used to disrupt the system. The U.S has no clear strategy about how the county would respond to that level of a cyberattack, and the effects of such an attack would likely be devastating.




4. What solutions have been proposed? Do you think they will be effective? Why or why not?
Proposed solutions include the following along with an assessment of their effectiveness:
·         Congress is considering legislation that would require all critical infrastructure companies to meet newer, tougher cybersecurity standards. As cyberwarfare technologies develop and become more advanced, the standards imposed by this legislation will likely be insufficient to defend against attacks.
·         Secretary of Defense Gates ordered the creation of Cybercom, the first headquarters designed to coordinate government cybersecurity efforts. It was activated in May 2010. It will coordinate the operation and protection of military and Pentagon computer networks. It will coordinate efforts to restrict access to government computers and protect systems that run the stock exchanges, clear global banking transactions, and manage the air traffic control system. Its ultimate goal will be to prevent catastrophic cyberattacks against the U.S. Some insiders suggest that it might not be able to effectively organize the governmental agencies without direct access to the President, which it currently lacks.

·         Because spy agencies like the CIA are prohibited by law from acting on American soil, some people are proposing to entrust some of the cyberwarfare work to private defense contractors. There is no effective way for a domestic agency to conduct computer operations without entering prohibited networks within the U.S. or even conduct investigations in countries that are American allies. Preventing terrorist or cyberwar attacks may require examining some email messages from other countries or giving intelligence agencies more access to networks or Internet service providers.

Chapter 6

Chapter 6: Telecommunication, the Internet, and Wireless Technology
INTERACTIVE SESSION : PEOPLE
Monitoring Employees on Network: Unethical or Good Business?
1. Should managers monitor employee e-mail and Internet usage?  Why or why not?
Ø  Managers should monitor employee e-mail and Internet usage because managers worry about the loss of time and employee productivity when employees are focusing on personal rather than companies business.
Ø  Too much time on personal business translates into lost revenue.
Ø  Some employees may even be billing time they spend pursuing personal interests online to clients, thus overcharging them.
Ø  It can also clog the company’s network so that legitimate business work cannot be performed.
Ø  Management in many firms fear that racists, sexually explicit or other potentially offensive material accessed or traded by their employees could result in adverse publicity and even lawsuits for the firm.
Ø  Companies also fear leakage of confidential information and trade secrets through e-mail or social networks.
2. Describe an effective e-mail and Web use policy for a company.
Ø  The effective e-mail and Web use policy for a company is companies should write corporate policies on employee e-mail and Internet use.
Ø  The policies should include explicit ground rules that state, by position or level, under what circumstances employee can use company facilities for e-mail, blogging or Web surfing.
Ø  The policies should also inform employees whether these activities are monitored and explain why.