Chapter 13 Using Technology To Manage Information

Procedures To Protect IT Assets

- Develop a comprehensive plan and policies that include portable as well as fixed equipment. - Protect the equipment itself with stringent physical security measures to the premises. - Protect data using special encryption technology to encode confidential information so only the recipient can decipher it. - Install firewalls, hardware or software designed to prevent unauthorized access to or from a private network.

Questions for IT Project Planning

What are the company's overall objectives? What problems does the company want to solve? How can technology help meet those goals and solve the problems? What are the company's IT priorities, both short- and long-term? Do you have the in-house capabilities to develop and implement the proposed applications, or should you bring in an outside specialist?

Data Warehouse

combines many databases across the whole company into one central database that supports management decision-making

Virtual Private Networks (VPN)

connect two or more private networks (such as LANs) over a public network, such as the internet. Include strong security measures to allow only authorized users to access the network and its sensitive corporate information.

Wide Area Network (WAN)

connects computers at different sites via telecommunications media such as phone lines, satellites, and microwaves.

Intranet

private corporate networks

Online, or Real-Time Processing

processes data as they become available. keeps the company's data current

Executive information system (EIS)

provide specific information for strategic decisions, customized for an individual executive

Database Management System (DBMS)

quickly and easily enter, store, organize, select, and retrieve data in a database

Transaction Processing System (TPS)

receives raw data from internal and external sources and prepares these data for storage in a database similar to a microcomputer database but vastly larger

Chief Information Officer (CIO)

responsibility of managing all information resources

Application Service Providers (ASP)

service company that buys and maintains software on its servers and distributes it through high-speed networks to subscribers for a set period and price.

Data Marts

special subsets of a data warehouse that each deal with a single area of data. organized for quick analysis.

Management Support Systems (MSSs)

use the internal master database to perform high-level analyses that help managers make better decisions

Data Security Prevention

Unauthorized access and security breaches. Computer viruses, worms, and Trojan horses Deliberate damage to equipment or information Spam Software and media piracy.

Trends in IT

Cyber Sleuthing (Crime Busting) - Digital evidence taken from an individual's computer or corporate network—web pages, pictures, documents, and e-mails are part of a relatively new science called digital forensics. Digital-forensics software safeguards electronic evidence used in investigations by creating a duplicate of a hard drive that an investigator can search by keyword, file type, or access date. The Distributed Workforce Grid & Cloud Computing Offer Powerful Solutions - Cloud and grid technology provides a way to divide the job into many smaller tasks and distribute them to a virtual supercomputer consisting of many small computers linked into a common network. Combining multiple desktop machines results in computing power that exceeds supercomputer speeds

Data Mining

Sophisticated database applications that look for hidden patterns in a group of data to help track and predict future behavior.

Knowledge Workers & Management

contribute and benefit from information used to perform planning, acquiring, searching, analyzing, organizing, storing, programming, producing, distributing, marketing, or selling functions. focuses on researching, gathering, organizing, and sharing an organization's collective knowledge to improve productivity, foster innovation, and gain competitive advantage

Batch Processing

data are collected over some time period and processed together. uses computer resources very efficiently and is well-suited to applications such as payroll processing that require periodic rather than continuous processing.

Database

electronic filing system that collects and organizes data and information

Information Technology (IT)

equipment and techniques used to manage and process information

Computer Network

group of two or more computer systems linked together by communications channels to share data and information

Decision Support System (DSS)

helps managers make decisions using interactive computer models that describe real-world processes.

Enterprise Portal

internal website that provides proprietary corporate information to a defined user group. Portals can take one of three forms: business to employee (B2E), business to business (B2B), and business to consumer (B2C).

Local Area Network (LAN)

lets people at one site exchange data and share the use of hardware and software from a variety of computer manufacturers

Expert System

management support system that gives managers advice similar to what they would get from a human consultant; it uses artificial intelligence to enable computers to reason and learn to solve problems in much the same way humans do.

Management Information Systems (MIS)

methods and equipment that provide information about all aspects of a firm's operations provide managers with the information they need to make decisions

Managed Service Providers (MSP)

offers greater customization and expanded capabilities that include business processes and complete management of the network servers.