Security Issues Addressing Cloud Computing - Myassignmenthelp.Com

Question: Discuss About The Security Issues Addressing Cloud Computing? Answer: Introduction The Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery of Colorado is a small business organization that has been profited by the introduction of new point of sale system in the year 2008. The system compiled all the essential business data for improving the decision making process of the Nursery. The point of sale system allowed the owners to track the business data and sales transaction in real time that helps in enhancing the estimation process (refer to appendix 1). This system has considerably helped the organization in increasing the amount of profit as previously, with the system of manual record keeping the amount of profit of the nursery was negligible. The timely availability of the product information helps in proper maintenance of the inventory (Laudon and Laudon 2016). The report gives an overview of the different advantages, disadvantages and risks associated with the new point of sales system. Advantages and Disadvantages of POS system The advantages of the new point of sales system are as follows (refer to appendix 2)- The new point of sale system eliminates the need of manual tracking of the sales by allowing the owners to track the transactions immediately. Therefore, the new point of sales system makes the tiresome process of compiling the sales history considerably simple. Furthermore, it eliminates the possibility of error in updating the sales details manually (Stadtle 2015). The new point of sales system increases the accuracy of the financial data of the system. With the implementation of the system, the manual entry of the sales transactions is eliminated as well. This reduced the number of errors in calculation of the financial data and associated with the sales. The new Point of sales system furthermore helped in carrying out the vital tasks of business such as estimation of inventory and sales in a relatively lesser time in comparison with the manual data keeping system. This is because the details of the sales and the inventory are updated in real time (Diallo, Rodrigues and Sene 2012). The accurate and flawless data keeping by the point of sales system have considerably helped the organization with their business decision-making process. The accurate inventory count and negligible guesswork have furthermore helped the business in operating in a leaner inventory unit. A proper report of the detailed transaction of inventory items such as the number of units purchased, sold or discarded is now possible to obtain with the help of the point of sales system, which was earlier impossible due to the manual record keeping. The new point of sales system has considerably helped the organization in understanding and identifying the higher profitable products. The perspective of real cost have considerably helped the organization in shifting the production to the higher profit items thereby increasing the profit percentage. The real time reporting has furthermore helped the managers in becoming more effective with their business operation. The new system has furthermore helped in controlling the employee schedule and allocating labour expenses to the specific departments and functions, as it has been easier to track the requirements with the help of the new point of sales system. This function helps the owners in delegating more responsibility to the staffs for establishment of the accountability within Four Seasons. However, with the numerous advantages, there are certain disadvantages as well. The disadvantages of the new point of sales system are as follows- Implementation of the point of sales system is a somewhat costly for small and medium sized enterprises. This is because in order to implement the system within the organization, various hardware and software configuration changes are needed in the organization. This indicates investment of a huge amount of money for the system. It is very essential to impart training to the staffs of the organization in order to make them understand the operation of the new point of sales system. Incorrect operation of the system might lead in generation of the erroneous data or incorrect results. The system needs a regular maintenance. The organization will have to invest a certain some of money for the maintenance of the system. However, if the system is successfully implemented within the organization, it will help the organization in gaining competitive advantage in the marketing, thereby increasing the profit percentage as well. The disadvantages of the system are negligible in comparison to the advantages it offers to the organization. The Competitive advantage of the Business The implementation of the new point of system is expected to offer various competitive advantages to the business organization in the market place. The competitive advantage that the business gain by implementation of the new point of sales system are as follows- The point of sales system integrates all the business operation in a single place. This helps in clear view of the business operations thereby helping in proper management of the business. This in turn helps in gaining a competitive advantage in the market place. The elimination of the manual record keeping of the financial transactions helps achieving a correct data set that in turn helps in improving the business operations of the organization. This certainly provides a competitive advantage to the organization in the market place. Since the new point of sales system helps in tracking the most profitable product and proper management of the inventory, it helps in producing the more profitable product thus giving the organization a competitive advantage in the marketplace (Romney and Steinbart 2012). The major competitive advantage of the company in implementing the new point of sales system is that apart from helping the organization in proper management of the inventory goods, it also helps in proper management of the labours and the employees of the organization (Peppard and Ward 2016). Therefore, it can certainly be said that the new point of sales system will help the Four Season in gaining Competitive advantage in the market. Advantages of having a centralized database The advantages of having a centralized database are as follows- A centralize database considerably improves the data preservation as all the important information regarding the sales and other financial data are stored in a single place (Coronel and Morris 2016). A centralized database improves the data security as storage of data in a central storage limits the security risks the data can face. Centralized database further helps in reducing the cost of the cost of storage, increases the speed of data process. Furthermore, it offers a proper disaster recovery technique and decreases the risk of data manipulation (Stair and Reynolds 2013). It is a cost saving solution and increases the operational efficiency of the organization. The POS in facilitating decision-making The new point of sales system integrates the different operations of the organization thus facilitating the decision making process. The point of sales systems processes the business activities more effectively by providing an accurate data of inventory and sales. For example, in Four Seasons, the products were ordered merely on basis of speculations and there were no proper inventory data. However, with the implementation of the POS system, the units of the products are no longer ordered based on speculations, thus helping the business in operating on a leaner inventory units (Hall 2012). The manual information tracking is difficult to conduct in an effective manner, as it is not only time consuming but also prone to human errors. Therefore, it becomes very difficult to track the information in an effective manner (Galliers and Leidner 2014). Thus, the implementation of the new POS enhances the decision making process. With the implementation of the new POS system, it has been easier to track the inventory and the sales. It is easier to answer the questions related to the amount of purchased orders, orders sold, and orders discarded. Furthermore it increase the control over the employees of the organization as well, thereby facilitating the decision making process (Pearlson et al. 2016). The accurate information provided by the new POS system will help in effective management of all the processes running within an organization. Proper knowledge about the detailed product costs helps in managing and producing products that are more profitable. Furthermore, the detailed management information offers control over schedules and labour expenses as well thereby enhancing the process of decision-making. Telecommunication options There are different types of network options for the implementation of POS in Four Seasons, such as LAN, WAN and MAN. LAN or local area network shares a common wireless communication link to the server within a distinct geographical location. WAN or Wide Area Network on the other hand interconnects a multiple LAN connection in a distributed geographical location. Metropolitan Area Network or MAN interconnects the users with the computer resources in a specific geographical area or region. It is beneficial for the organization to implement the new POS system in WAN (Zhang et al. 2012). This will help the employees of the organization in easier access and management of the data. Furthermore, WAN centralizes the IT infrastructure thereby helping in centralized data management (Barakah and Ammad-uddin 2012). A wired network connection although increases the security of the network, it is a very costly process. Furthermore, it becomes very difficult to manage a wired connection in a wide area network. Therefore, it is recommended for the Four Seasons to establish a wireless network connection for the new POS system. Business Risks The new POS system although offers various advantages to the organization, it is exposed to a number of risks as well (Zissis and Lekkas 2012). The implementation of the system in a wireless network increases the security risk. This is because a wireless network is very vulnerable to attacks and can lead to data loss or data theft. This security risk can be avoided by installing a proper intrusion detection system in the network. The storage of companys data in a centralized database might invite a privacy risk as the database can be compromised due to various virus and malware attacks. This can be prevented by proper data encryption and protection of the system by an up to date antivirus (Al Ameen, Liu and Kwak 2012). Tracking the sales and financial data with the help of the new POS might invite breach of the confidentiality of the customers data due to data compromise by the hackers of loss of data due to malware or security attack. This can be prevented by storing of data in encrypted form and enforcing authorization levels for data access. Conclusion Therefore, it can be deduced that, implementation of the new POS system will considerably help the Four Seasons in obtaining competitive advantages in the marketplace. The report discusses the advantages and disadvantages of the POS system proposed along with the business risk and organization might face while implementing the system. The report further suggests the different risk mitigation process for the identified business risks. Recommendations A proper plan is to be made for implementation of POS and should be implemented according to the needs In order to increase the security and privacy of the data, proper intrusion detection system is to be installed. It is recommended for the organization to allocate proper time and money for the system maintenance. References Al Ameen, M., Liu, J. and Kwak, K., 2012. Security and privacy issues in wireless sensor networks for healthcare applications.Journal of medical systems,36(1), pp.93-101. Barakah, D.M. and Ammad-uddin, M., 2012, February. A survey of challenges and applications of wireless body area network (WBAN) and role of a virtual doctor server in existing architecture. InIntelligent Systems, Modelling and Simulation (ISMS), 2012 Third International Conference on(pp. 214-219). IEEE. Coronel, C. and Morris, S., 2016.Database systems: design, implementation, management. Cengage Learning. Diallo, O., Rodrigues, J.J. and Sene, M., 2012. Real-time data management on wireless sensor networks: A survey.Journal of Network and Computer Applications,35(3), pp.1013-1021. Galliers, R.D. and Leidner, D.E. eds., 2014.Strategic information management: challenges and strategies in managing information systems. Routledge. Hall, J.A., 2012.Accounting information systems. Cengage Learning. Laudon, K.C. and Laudon, J.P., 2016.Management information system. Pearson Education India. Pearlson, K.E., Saunders, C.S. and Galletta, D.F., 2016.Managing and Using Information Systems, Binder Ready Version: A Strategic Approach. accounting Sons. Peppard, J. and Ward, J., 2016.The strategic management of information systems: Building a digital strategy. John Wiley Sons.