Design Specifications
Explain on Foundations of Information Systems?
Unites States Pharma Corp. is a pharmaceutical company that designs, manufactures and researches pharmaceutical products and the company has its headquarters in New Jersey, United States. The company has its sites in every part of the globe and is a developed firm in the market. In order to enhance the communication and research work that is carried out in the organization, it has been recommended that a corporate knowledge environment portal shall be developed and implemented in order to provide the enhanced abilities to the employees that are associated with the company. Researchers along with medical staff members will be primarily making use of the portal.
The corporate knowledge web portal that will be designed for Unites States Pharma Corp. will have a number of internal system components such as the dashboard that will be designed for the portal along with the functional aspects for communication and research facilities.
There will also be a component installed as a tele-conferencing medium to allow the researchers to carry out audio and video teleconferencing with the fellow researchers and guides.
The database that has been recommended for the portal is MySQL database as it will allow the information associated with the portal to be stored and managed efficiently and access to the database will also be required to be provided (Seethamraju, 2012).
There are a number of external systems and sites that are available and have been created that comprise of research articles, research papers and journals. Link and access to these external sites will be required to be incorporated on the portal such that the research work that is carried out is executed in a better manner.
Pharmaceutical research is a critical process as the outcomes that are obtained after the research process are sensitive and have a direct impact on human and animal life.
It is therefore required that the corporate knowledge web portal that is being developed for the organization has the facilities to share files and messages with the others in the business and fellow research scholars as well. There shall also be communication systems in the form of tele-conferencing mediums and instant messengers incorporated in the portal.
There will be a lot of information that will be available within United States Pharma Corp. that the researchers may search and seek for their research work. Also, there is a lot of information that is externally level on the pharmaceutical subjects that may aid in the research process.
Internal Systems and Databases
In order to reach to the specific research works, search tools shall be incorporated to search for the information on Intranet and Internet as a whole.
Pharmaceutical companies and industries are being improved with a new work of research and development with each passing day. It is necessary to maintain pace with the latest news and information in the business and therefore analysis and information collection tool in the form of a news application shall be included in the portal that shall gather the latest information from the industry and show the same to the user.
There is a lot of work being done at a global scale in the pharmaceutical industry. The users of the web portal shall be provided with a link and access to the popular forums and organizations to collect and gather meaningful information for their research work.
Business Intelligence is commonly referred as BI and it is an umbrella that comprises of many tools and technologies for better processing and handling of information associated with a particular organization. In case of United States Pharma Corp. there will be a lot of information that will be associated which will be required to be analyzed, stored, processed and handled intelligently. The web portal that will be set up for the organization shall therefore include and apply the following BI techniques to provide better information handling and management.
- Data Mining
Data mining is a technology that comes under BI and it includes analysis along with classification of information as per the classes and categories. In this case, the information around the research topic will be analyzed and studies from several angles and viewpoints which will provide the users with the ability to reveal specific patterns on the pharmaceutical research. The information that will be analyzed will include the information collected from several sources (Nicta, 2015).
- Online Analytical Processing (OLAP)
It is required to perform strategic monitoring on the information that is collected for the research work so that the appropriate aggregates of the data are collected. The same will be performed on the portal by OLAP technique (Olap, 2016).
- Real time BI
There are occurrences wherein it will become essential for the user to obtain the latest news and the real-time information from the industry. Real-time BI will be a technique that will be included in the portal to provide the users to have this capability.
- Data Warehousing
There is a lot of inter-related information and components that are present in the work of research from the research work that has already been done along with the ongoing processes. Data warehousing is a process that will allow the researchers and medical staff members to sift through the information sets for understanding the inter-relationship present. The research data that will be available will allow the development of the research work being done (Villanovauniversity, 2016)
- Data Analytics
External Systems
There will many of the data and information sets that will be associated in the research work and there will only be a few that will be of actual need. Also, it will be necessary to have a technique through which the specific areas and patterns are highlighted. It will be done with the aid of data analytics tools that will be used and implemented on the portal (Searchdatamanagement, 2016).
- Data Sources
This will be one of the most important BI techniques that will be used and incorporated on the web portal of United States Pharma Corp. The data sources that will be used for the research work will be collated to highlight the ones that are actually applicable.
There will be a number of stakeholders that will be involved with United States Pharma Corp. in terms of business owners, partners, medical staff members, research scholars, guides, end users, staff members and many more.
Every stakeholder will have his or her own set of needs and requirements from the organization and would want to earn the maximum benefits from the organization it is engaged with. With the development of the corporate knowledge web portal, the research and developmental work that is being carried out at the organization will see some of the marked improvements. There will be streamlining of all the processes that will be achieved along with the obtaining of better results. It will also make sure that the organization delivers better services to its customers as the latest research results will be available.
All of these reasons and features will enable the stakeholders to benefit from the organization and the inter-relationship between the stakeholder and the organization along with the stakeholders themselves will also see improvements as a result.
There are several custom and off-the shelf methods that are available and may be used for the development of the corporate knowledge web portal for the organization. Some of these methods have been described below with their advantages and disadvantages and the recommended method has also been included at the end.
There are several packages that are available in the market that come with a readymade template along with the functional and non-functional aspects that may be required by the portal. These packages may be used by the organization to include and implement the desired web portal in its architecture. Since the package is readymade there will be a very little time that will be involved in acquiring it. However, it may not be in complete accordance with the desired aspects and time and cost may be spent in these areas.
Communication and Collaboration Facilities
Outsourcing is another method that may be used for acquiring the desired results in the organization. The development of the corporate knowledge web portal cannot be carried out internally in the organization as there is lack of environment and skills in the organization in this area. Outsourcing will include contacting a third party which will be accomplishing the design, development and deployment activities related with the portal. There will however be a lot of time that will be required to be given in order to complete the process through this method. There will be lesser support and maintenance activities associated in this case.
Another method that may be used by United State Pharma Corp. for the development and implementation of corporate knowledge web portal will be the use of custom developed software. The software will be developed according to the needs and specifications of the organization and there will also be specific attention paid to the required integration and compatibility areas. These packages will score high in terms of the cost but will have the adequate features and functionalities implemented in them.
The method that has been recommended for acquiring and developing the corporate knowledge web portal is the outsourcing method. It is because of the reason that it will fulfill the requirements of the portal and will also provide the maintenance and support services after the delivery is made. Maintenance and support cannot be carried out by the staff members of the organization itself as their nature of work and domain is completely different. Also, it will be apt in terms of the budget and schedule constraints and the end product that will be delivered will be as per the requirements of the organization.
There may be several risks that may be possible to the information that is present in the portal and these risks have been listed below
- Breaching of information
The corporate knowledge web portal that will be designed for United States Pharma Corp. will include a number of internal and external systems along with the database. The users will access these systems on the internal and external networks which will have multiple access points. These access points along with the transition of information may be used for breaching the same (Wood, 2016).
- Unauthorized Tracking
The information related with the research work along with the communication activities that will be carried out may be tracked through the network by the attacker and hackers.
- Data Mining Attacks
Search Tools
There are many BI techniques that will be incorporated in the portal such as OLAP, data analytics, data warehousing, data mining etc. These techniques may be used to introduce attacks that are associated with them that may impact information confidentiality (Amato, 2016).
- Malware Attacks
Malware is defined as a code or a program that is defined as a specific purpose of devastation to the system that it will be installed in. There are several types of malware that are present such as viruses, ransomware, spyware, Trojan horses, logic bombs etc. These malware may be launched on the portal through any of the entry points which may bring down the information privacy and confidentiality.
- Message Alteration
The researchers and medical staff members will make use of the knowledge portal to enhance and strengthen their research work. There will be a lot of information that will be needed for the purpose and this information will not remain stagnant as it will be necessary to discuss the details and share the information with many entities. The information will therefore be in transit and there will be many messages that will be shared on a constant basis. These messages may be captured, analyzed and transformed by the malicious entities that will have an effect on the integrity of the same (Microsoft, 2016).
- Media Alteration
The researchers and medical staff members will make use of the knowledge portal to enhance and strengthen their research work. There will be a lot of information that will be needed for the purpose and this information will not remain stagnant as it will be necessary to discuss the details and share the information with many entities. The information will therefore be in transit and there will be many media contents that will be shared on a constant basis. These contents may be captured, analyzed and transformed by the malicious entities that will have an effect on the integrity of the same (Aws, 2016).
- Flooding Attacks
Researchers and medical staff members would want the system that is the web portal to be available and accessible at all times. However, the availability will be impacted by numerous types of denial attacks that will be given shape by introducing a garbage research data and traffic on the portal.
- Server Impersonating
There will be a collaboration of multiple internal and external servers on the portal which may be used as an attack agent by impersonating the same (Mahmoud, 2015).
- QoS Abuse
QoS is an acronym that stands for Quality of Service and there may be attacks that may be executed on the system quality so that the availability is directly affected (Panetta, 2016).
- Disaster recovery measures and plan shall be installed and introduced so that in case of a risk or an attack, the information is stored and safeguarded. There shall be backups that shall be automatically scheduled and conducted so that there is no loss of the information in case of an attack.
- United State Pharma Corp. along with the part that is outsourced for the development of the web portal will be required to make sure that the portal has in-built anti-denial and other anti-malware systems installed.
- Authentication and access control on all the components of the portal shall be upgraded and transformed to two-fold authentication and multi-step access checks (Lu, 2014).
- Most of the risks and attacks that have been highlighted get executed through the network. It is therefore required to upgrade the network security by making use of the tools and measures such as network audits, network log maintenance, network monitoring etc. (Jing, 2014)
- The research information along with the information associated with the users shall be encrypted on the portal and during its transition as well so that the attackers cannot misuse the same.
- It will be essential to enhance the administrative control by carrying out more number of reviews and security inspections on the portal.
- There shall also be use of the intrusion detection packages so that any such activity is detected on time and reported to the relevant people.
- Attackers make use of the vulnerabilities and loopholes that are present in the specific software versions. These versions shall be regularly upgraded to avoid such attacks.
- The portal shall also have the features of One Time Passwords and Single Sign On installed in them (Bhabad, 2016).
News Applications
Conclusion
United States Pharma Corp. is an organization that is looking forward to enhance its communication and research system by developing and implementing the corporate knowledge web portal in its architecture. The database that has been recommended for the portal is MySQL database as it will allow the information associated with the portal to be stored and managed efficiently and access to the database will also be required to be provided. There shall also be communication systems in the form of tele-conferencing mediums and instant messengers incorporated in the portal. Business Intelligence is commonly referred as BI and it is an umbrella that comprises of many tools and technologies for better processing and handling of information associated with a particular organization. In case of United States Pharma Corp. there will be a lot of information that will be associated which will be required to be analyzed, stored, processed and handled intelligently. It is required to perform strategic monitoring on the information that is collected for the research work so that the appropriate aggregates of the data are collected. The same will be performed on the portal by OLAP technique. There will many of the data and information sets that will be associated in the research work and there will only be a few that will be of actual need. Also, it will be necessary to have a technique through which the specific areas and patterns are highlighted. It will be done with the aid of data analytics tools that will be used and implemented on the portal. With the development of the corporate knowledge web portal, the research and developmental work that is being carried out at the organization will see some of the marked improvements. There will be streamlining of all the processes that will be achieved along with the obtaining of better results. It will also make sure that the organization delivers better services to its customers as the latest research results will be available. The method that has been recommended for acquiring and developing the corporate knowledge web portal is the outsourcing method. It is because of the reason that it will fulfill the requirements of the portal and will also provide the maintenance and support services after the delivery is made. There are various risks that are associated with the company in terms of the security risks which will be required to be managed through a dedicated risk management system along with the disaster recovery mechanism.
References
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Aws (2016). Overview of Security Processes. [online] Available at: https://d0.awsstatic.com/whitepapers/aws-security-whitepaper.pdf [Accessed 19 May 2017].
Bhabad, M. (2015). Internet of Things: Architecture, Security Issues and Countermeasures. [online] Available at: https://www.ijcaonline.org/research/volume125/number14/bhabad-2015-ijca-906251.pdf [Accessed 19 May 2017].
Jing, Q. (2014). Security of the Internet of Things: perspectives and challenges. [online] Available at: https://csi.dgist.ac.kr/uploads/Seminar/1407_IoT_SSH.pdf [Accessed 19 May 2017].
Lu, C. (2014). Overview of Security and Privacy Issues in the Internet of Things. [online] Available at: https://www.cse.wustl.edu/~jain/cse574-14/ftp/security.pdf [Accessed 19 May 2017].
Mahmoud, R. (2015). Internet of things (IoT) security: Current status, challenges and prospective measures – IEEE Xplore Document. [online] Ieeexplore.ieee.org. Available at: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/7412116/ [Accessed 19 May 2017].
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Nicta, (2015). [online] NICTA. Available at: https://www.nicta.com.au/category/research/machine-learning/projects/advanced-data-analytics-in-transport-machine-learning-perspective/ [Accessed 19 May 2017].
Olap.com. (2016). What is Business Performance Management? BPM Definition. [online] Available at: https://olap.com/learn-bi-olap/olap-bi-definitions/business-performance-management/ [Accessed 19 May 2017].
Panetta, K. (2016). Gartner’s Top 10 Security Predictions 2016 – Smarter With Gartner. [online] Smarter With Gartner. Available at: https://www.gartner.com/smarterwithgartner/top-10-security-predictions-2016/ [Accessed 19 May 2017].
Searchdatamanagement. (2016). What is data analytics (DA)? – Definition from WhatIs.com. [online] Available at: https://searchdatamanagement.techtarget.com/definition/data-analytics [Accessed 19 May 2017].
Seethamraju, R. (2012). Business process management: a missing link in business education. Business Process Management Journal, 18(3), pp.532-547.
Villanovauniversity. (2016). Business Intelligence (BI) Overview of Major Components. [online] Available at: https://www.villanovau.com/resources/bi/overview-of-business-intelligence-bi-components/#.VzordTB97IU [Accessed 19 May 2017].
Wood, P. (2016). Social hacking: The easy way to breach network security. [online] ComputerWeekly. Available at: https://www.computerweekly.com/tip/Social-hacking-The-easy-way-to-breach-network-security [Accessed 19 May 2017].
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