Blog 7.1: Threats and Security

Threats to our information network or site are viruses, outside intruders, employees/consultants, natural disasters, and links to outside business contacts.  Viruses are programs that are for malicious intent and it could slow down our site or create harm to it.  Outside intruders/hackers are people that could alter our information such as prices, they could create something that would make our cabins cheaper for them, and so on.  Employees/consultants could unintentionally make errors of our information or they could use that for malicious intent.  Natural disasters/accidents are things that we cannot predict such as animals eating our cables, something from the ceiling falling and destroying our computers, and fire damage.  Finally, links to outside business contacts is a threat to us because they could try to find out how we make our money(family secret) and they could rip-off our business plan.

Before you get worried, we have technological safeguards for the things described above.  Physical access restrictions takes care of hackers and other people by authentication of use of a password, photo ID, and so on.  Firewalls were designed to detect intrusion and prevent unauthorized access.  Encryption takes care of links to business contacts by coding our messages and allowing only our employees to encrypt and decrypt information.  Virus monitor and protection takes care of viruses by detecting viruses before they do serious damage to our site.  Finally, Audit-control software such as time restriction access and accesses only files required for work.

Blog 6.1 Pillars of 2.0

The four pillars of Web 2.0 are Utilizing the Web as a platform, Harnessing Collective Intelligence, Leveraging the Data, and Implementing Innovative Web Capabilities.

Utilizing the Web as a platform standardizes the Web for any person to be able to use the Web through a browser and an Internet connection.  Our company needs this so people will be to access our site as easily as possible.

Harnessing Collective Intelligence enables users to contribute on a site, thus improving the content of a site.  Our company would use this by creating a site that displays a review of our cabins and allows people to post comments and ask questions which would be answered by us or our other customers.

Leveraging the Data is using powerful databases to make decisions.  Our company would use this by using our special database to extract information to determine which cabins sell better and what needs to be improved.

Implementing Innovative Web Capabilities is key to having a competitive edge over our competitors.  Our company would incorporate this by introducing widgets (programs with usually a single purpose) such as registering for a new deal with a countdown, mash-ups, and so on.

Intranet Diagram: 5.3

Hello again!  Today we are going to talk about how the Intranet works and about each part of the intranet Diagram.  Basically, the Intranet consists of a private network using web technology to send secure information within an organization.  So technically, it is a Business-to-Employee Commerce type. 

The diagram starts with the client which is the company on a LAN sending information through an e-mail server, which is a router.  The router then sends it through a firewall and through the Virtual Private network (VPN).  It is then received by a client within our company and to send information back, it has to do the same thing that we did.

We, as a company, can benefit and use this because of the amazing applications that make up the Intranet.  Those applications include: Training, Personalized Internet pages, Application Integration, Online Entry of Info, Real-Time Access, and Collaboration.

What our employees would see when they go to our website would be their re-training videos, their schedules, and their payroll.

Extranet Diagram: 5.2

Hello, everyone!  Today's new subject is the Extranet Diagram which is displayed above here! Before we talk about the diagram, let me explain what extranet is.  Extranet is a network that enables 2 or more firms to use the Internet to do business through use of VPN and firewall technologies.

Displayed above in the first box (LAN A) is the name of our company, what role we are playing (client), and it shows that we have a firewall which is the gatekeeper to our technology that keeps unwanted information out of touch.  We send our requests to the server(Haynes, LAN B) through VPN (Virtual Private Network).  VPN ensures secured transmission of proprietary information.  We then wait for a response from the server seeing what they could do for us.

Critiquing Our Competitors's Website 5.1

The website that we chose to be our competitors was www.perfect-cabin-vacations.com.  It is a website that deals with renting or selling cabins to customers who want to do it for their honeymoon or for a summer or winter home.  We are going to rate the website by applying the rules of e-commerce. The rules are:

1) The web site should offer something unique.

2) The web site must be aesthetically appeasing.

3) It must be easy to use and offer.

4) It must motivate people to visit, stay, and return.

5) It must be advertised on the Web.

6) They should learn from the website.

With all of these rules in mind, anyone can make a really great website.

Now we need to talk about which kind of business-to-consumer strategy that the website uses.  Business-to-Consumer is a transactional process between a business and a customer wanting a certain product. 


There are 3 types of B2C strategies:

Brick & Monitor, Click & Mortar, and Click Only.

I believe that the website is a click only strategy because they have no physical stores and everything is online.

Entity-Relationship Diagram 4.4

 

The diagram displayed above is an Entity-Relationship diagram.  An entity-relationship diagram is used to display the structure of data and show relationships between the entities.  Entities are what the data itself represents.  For example, Customer, Product, and Invoice are all entities because they are all nouns.   Below each of those entities are attributes or individual pieces of information about that entity in a database.  Data types are numbers or text that describe each of those individual attributes.  All of those attributes within each entity make up a record or a collection of related attributes.  The relationships are shown between each entity by an arrow or a line describing that relationship between each entity.  It could also be from attribute to attribute.

With all of this, we can make a database table in Microsoft Excel to emphasize the diagram greatly.

Packet-Switching 4.3

 

 In the diagram above, it shows us how the packet-switching technology works. There are messages that are being transferred from multiple web servers and it can cause problems.  That problem is called concurrent data transmission.  In order to solve that, packet-switching technology is needed.  Messages get sent to routers which are the "mailboxes".  They then get sent to Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) which divides, discards duplicates, and rearranges the mission in the correct way.  The messages are then sent to the IPs (Internet Protocol) which are then sent through ip addresses.  The IPs job may be done, but the TCP has more to do.  It makes sure that they go to the right addresses, checks to make sure if they are more packets that go with the entire message, etc.

Telecommunication Network: 4.2

In the diagram displayed above, these telecommunication networks show us how they work.  In the second box that says sender (client) is the person who asks for a task to be done by sending transmission media and protocols, which are rules that have to be followed.  While the receiver (Server) works to complete the task at hand and then sends a response.  They both use digitizing, which is the converting of information into bits and they both have bandwidth, which is transmission capacity or how much could be sent back and forth.  The benefits of this system is that they are wireless, in which they are transmitting info in the air.  Or they could have cable media which is a physical pathway between two or more servers/receivers.

4.1 IFS/HW Infrastructure

This diagram displayed above describes how the Information Infrastructure works.  In the diagram, it shows us that when we input data or information via keyboard or mouse (input technologies), it becomes processed by the ALU or the Arithmetic Logic Unit that calculates/compares data, and then it becomes output and then it gets stored in the registers (internal memory) which we can store in your secondary drive (junk drive).   The data is then stored by bits, bytes and so on.  A bit is the amount of information that can be stored in by a digital device.  8 bits make up one byte, 1000 bytes equals 1 kilobytes, and it goes on and on.

It can allow us to input data, however, the control unit (that is part of the cpu) organizes which function it will do in order one by one.  When we input words or data, the computer doesn't understand it and it will convert into its machine language.  Machine language is otherwise known as binary code which is made up as 0s and 1s that make up the data that we input.  This falls under ASCII or the American Standard Code for Information Interchange. 

Cost/Analysis Report 3.3

The reason for the cost/benefit analysis report is because we want to show you what kinds of costs would be implemented during our business and what we could gain for benefits of using our services.  There are certain benefits that we would like to achieve, both tangible and intangible.  The tangible benefits are the money we could gain over a certain amount of time and the intangible benefits are our customer rating system and employee morale.  It is necessary to have both for our business to survive and prosper!

Our proxy values prove that intangible benefits are necessary to help our business thrive.  This includes employee morale and how our customers rate our services and how we could do better. 

Reasonable Arguments 3.2

Faith: Trust me, if we use this information system, it will help us achieve our organization's goals and gain an ultimate advantage over any other competitors.  It will also be faster, cheaper, and more accurate/consistent than any of our competitors.  All we need is your trust that this will work.

Fear:  If we don't update this system, we will die out and be forgotten.  Then the customers will lose out and you would lose them because we lost our business which equals a really bad situation.

Fact: This analysis shows that updating this Information System will lead to a cost-benefit report, you would gain money over time and lose just a bit of money based on recurring costs and non-recurring costs.

Our Value-Chain Analysis

Cabin rentals looks like an easy business aspect. However, there is more to it than that. In this diagram, we have several business processes. 

Business processes are activities an organization performs to reach their business goals.  For example, for us to be ready for you, we need to gather supplies for the cabins so it would be ready for you and your loved one when you get there. 

We would then advertise our services online, in the newspaper, etc.  People who are interested in our service can call and talk with our receptionist(functional area info systems) to schedule an appointment with us to set up the vacation.

  Once they are there at the appointment, we would discuss on how they are going to pay this off; either with cash or credit.  That describes our transaction-processing info system.  Once we are done with the payment options, we would ask them which cabin they would like to go to: Miami or Bahamas. 

After they come back from their vacation, we would contact them and ask them how it went and how we could make it better, if possible (Customer Relations Management).

Flickr

1)Flickr is a website that allows users to view, upload, download photos, and to connect with friends.

2) The three enablers that the website uses include:

a) Uploading feature

b) In-sourcing

c) "Steroids" (connecting with friends and interacting with them).

Organizational Chart

Below the paragraphs is an organizational chart describing the positions of each of our three departments and the positions that I consider important.  The positions that are considered important are security, software engineer, and the system consultant. 

The Security Team is important because they take care of any issues that deal with our company's website and gets rid of the problems. 

Software engineer is the "thinker" and he/she comes up with the blueprints on how to design our website, so that way the computer programmer will know how to set up the website correctly.

The Systems Consultant helps us by pointing out what either makes our website work or what doesn't work.

Each of these people, will help make our company's website run smoothly and that's how we like it!!  

Explaining Our Information

When we have a customer interested and they want to register in our services, we want to collect data that is considered "personal information".  First of all, once we introduce ourselves, we would want to know their name.  Once that's taken care of, we would ask them their date of birth to make sure that they meet the age requirements which is 18 or older.  We would then ask them the address, so we can able to mail special discounts to them. 

Once we get all their personal information, then we will give them a customer number.  The customer number will describe who is the person the number is representing and whether they will be staying either in the Bahamas or Florida.  After it tells us the location of the cabin, we would then ask them how many people will be staying over there and then we can determine how many cabin items might be needed.  We will then come up with a payment plan of how much they would like to pay and then we take that information and use it to put it on the billing information.  The billing information will tell us how many people were staying, the customer numbers, the date of check-in and check-out, and the bill for the vacation. 

Introduction to Love Shack Cabin Rentals

Hello lovers and future honeymooners!  Are you looking for a place that is romantic and sets the mood for you and your loved one?  Then we have just the place for you!  My name is Carlos Peralta and I am the co-owner of Love Shack Cabin Rentals, the perfect place for lovers.  Love Shack Cabin Rentals is a private-owned business founded on August 29, 2010 that accommodates lovers and just in case, helps you bring that "spark" back in the relationship.  Love Shack Cabins is located in two places: Miami Beach,Florida and the beautiful Bahamas.  They are both set on the most beautiful beaches of the world and at each of these locations are 10 employees (20 total) that will accommodate you both and they will set up activities for the both of you to enjoy together.  We also have special deals and discounts for those that sign up for reservations, so what are you waiting for?  Come and check us out now and we will help make your romantic vacation great!