Curtis and Brousseau Building Society - Case Study Example

Curtis and Brousseau Building Society Name: Number: Course: Lecturer: Date: Introduction Curtis and Brousseau Building Society (“CBBS”) is a small building society based in Cardiff with three offices which includes head office. The three offices include Roath which is 2.1 mile from Cyncoed, head office and 4.5 mile from another branch, Thornhill while Thornhill is 3.5 mile from Cyncoed. It is also opening two branches opening in Swansea and another opening in Newport. This will increase transactions requiring an overhaul of the current computing and networking for the company. The main aim of this paper is to design a network that will improve connectivity between the branches and the head office. It will also be used within the branch to ensure transmission of information from the cashier to other departments. LAN template for wired/wireless implementation Wireless networking is best suited to solve the problem the company is currently facing and optimise communication between the branches. Wireless networking wireless technology allows communication and transacting between employees of CBBS from any location within the area of connectivity. Employees will able to carry their laptops, notebooks and personal digital assistance if they are away from the office and still manage to communicate so long as they are within the communication area and they have the necessary web applications that enables communication. They will be able to communicate with the server as well as access other employees computers to transact. Curtis and Brousseau Building Society have the need to increase their downloading speed as well as manage to increase the number of connectivity and this will be made possible by employing a high speed network which will be wireless networking. They will employ fibre optical media in interconnecting the sites which are within network area. It will allow urge data to be transmitted since it has a bandwidth of large capacity as well as high speed of more than 16 Mpbs. In designing this networking one of the considerations that will be used is the analysis of cost –benefit the network will have to the building society. There will be more than 30 connections using the same networking, which means that the networking should be protected against hacking or interference by un authorised users. With such kind of protection connectivity from remote areas will be easier as well as avoid interference. This shown by the two diagrams below; Network diagram for a branch From the above networking of a branch we note that there is a use of cables which will help in the transmission of transactions. Cost- Cost is an important element that has to be taken into account when one is either building or upgrading a network with an aim of attaining a high availability state. Consequently, High Availability network considers the cost of the leased WAN connectivity especially those that are obtained from the third party. In a bid to reduce such costs, it utilizes less bandwidth for WAN and a higher bandwidth for LAN (Steward and Adams, 2008). It is also perceived that the downtime cost of designing a High Availability network is worth than the risk of not designing and implementing such service. However, the general impact that redundancy designs have on the organization is above its anticipated trade-off cost. Moreover, the presence of e-commerce that would be offered by faster network would double the benefits that the organization and the customers would obtain as far as the user-application and application-back-end database is concerned. The downtime cost further becomes relatively large in the presence of high speed network. This is owed to the inherent fact that High Availability network allows more customers to be in the storefronts. However, the downtime cost of High Availability network can collectively be resolved by handling aspects such as customer relations, legal issues, competitive with care and ensuring that such aspects don not interfere or become liability to the business. Good Management Practices: High Availability network integrates various aspects such as process, people, and technology. The implementation process would require the organization to hire qualified personnel, support continuing education and training in network so as to minimize instances of downtime and network service failures. It is also important for all aspects of the network to be documented to offer continued support for successful High Availability network implementation. High Network Availability: The second step in implementing High Availability network is a clear understating of the network’s resiliency and redundancy capacity (Fletcher, 2012). This is because the customers and users are always critical of the network and rarely understand the reason behind their inability to reach various applications. Servers that are Fault Tolerant: In designing and implementing a High Availability network, it is advisable that the servers be installed an appropriate location that allows continued power back-up, efficient security and an electric fence (Fletcher, 2012). The aim of such conditioning is prevent any unauthorized encroachment to the network provider that can eventually make the service unavailable. The other aspect is fixing the server with redundancy and ensuring that other hardware is properly fixed to facilitate continued service availability. Diligent Security: Diligent security is another aspect that should be considered when implementing a High Availability network. To ensure diligent security during implementation, servers need to be up to date through strict controls and audit to ensure that only those with authorized administrative functions access the server (Fletcher, 2012). Such measure is required to prevent intentional or accidental downtime and ensure continued service availability. Traditional Clustering: During the implementation process, it is advisable for administrators and designers install multiple machines that can service the “same applications and data” (Fletcher, 2012). This involves using two nodes, active and passive stored in Storage Area Network (SAN), where the passive node is set to automatically take over when the active node fails. Through the failover, the internet users would be able to continue with their applications because of the availability of the service even the server breaks at primary location. Server Virtualization: The last procedure to be taken into account during the implementation of a High Availability network is the ability of the IT administrators to utilize the hardware appropriately and ensure continued service availability for all critical applications. According to Fletcher (2012), implementing a High Availability network would also require Server Virtualization to allow the network administrators to deploy and test new applications in a remote environment during the production process. Other benefits of server virtualization include managing server workload among several servers, providing continued server access even in an event of breakdown, consolidating multiple servers to a single server thus increasing efficiency and service availability. Timeline for Implementing a High Availability Network- Generally, an organizations network system is expected to be available 99.85%. As such, the system cannot be taken offline to design and implement a High Availability network. This implies that a High Availability network can be an on-going process until such a time that the organization shall have attained the intended High Availability network. Resources for Implementing a High Availability Network Generally, it is advisable for network administrators to utilize physical resources while designing and implementing a High Availability network. This is owed to the belief that physical resource not only reduces the cost that is required for the project, but also utilizes the modern strategies to migrate the servers to a common virtualization server. Internal Requirement for a High Availability Network Cost of Downtime: In most cases there is large costs involved downtime because of the perceived need to offer solutions for continued service availability. Compliance: Owing to the fact that it is expensive for a company to realize 100% availability of network, there is need for compliance to be maintained so as to allow an organization opting for a High Availability network to decide on tradeoff between high availability network and the downtime cost. Executive Support for High Availability Network Financial Drivers: The financial drivers for High Availability network design and implementation are the stakeholders. Considering the need for efficient and an all time e-commerce and web system, customers have increasingly pushed organizations to adopt a High Availability network. Does it gain or save the Company money: High Availability network provides numerous benefits to the company especially with regard to downtime. For instance, the present High Availability of 99.9000% and 99.9900% offers a service downtime of 8 hours, 46 minutes and 52 hours, 33 seconds per year respectively. However, because of the continued demand for an effective High Availability network, it is anticipated that the next generation IP should have an availability of 99.9990% and 99.9999% which would have a downtime of 5 minutes, 15 seconds and 31.5 seconds respectively. Comment on the suitability of the archive server connection Archive server connection is vital in a networking system roughly equivalent to that of mainframe computers in an earlier era. Although there are micro-computer servers that can handle high capacity transactions and allow information sharing care has been taken to ensure that they function properly. Servers are the source of many of the IT services that branch receive from across the network. A server usually has software that will help in its functions and this has been incorporated in our archive server. We have have server connections to allow a transmission of 100Mpbs on ports of the branch and 1200Mpbs on the server at the head office. This allows a ratio of 12:1 in terms of transaction handling simultaneously. Appropriate bandwidth and download speeds for the real time transaction server. We hear that computer viruses, hacker, and other security breaches have found new ways to steal identities, financial records and other information we thought were secure. Because of the increase in such cyber crimes, data protection laws have tightened and the punishments hardened. With this comes the need for all businesses to take data security very seriously Currently the download speed is 2Mbps which takes 20 seconds to send each transaction to and should be reduced to 10 seconds. As designing was taking place a consideration was made regarding the additional 2 branches that were to be increased. Additional branches means an increase in the of customers requiring high downloading speed. This should be increased to 16Mpbs in each branch instead of 2Mpbs Information from different branches will be communicated to the head office at a high speed as well as when there is fault in the system the entire network is not affected. It is extremely important to improve network security for your business on a regular basis. Aside from encrypted pages and passwords, there is a multitude of ways to improve network security for your business, which include firewalls and other infrastructure protective measures. Before a business can adequately protect its network, it is important to understand that there is no such thing as a completely secure system, as technology is always changing. However, to stay one step ahead and keep the network secure, business owners and their IT department should learn and understand any and all risks associated with security standards and network systems. Network security is a very serious matter; one cannot neglect any possibilities of risks as the number of threats keeps growing. Much sensitive information is held on computers. CBBS hold information about its members and information about members of the public transacting with the society. The society has data they may not want other people to gain access to on their computers, while bank details are another good example of data that needs to be kept secure, either if held on the banks own systems or by people at home. All this means that it is important that networks are kept secure. Wireless networking is prone to insecurity due to attack from worms and viruses as well as hackers. A hacker can attack a wireless networking from a car park outside a branch or head office and cause massive damage to communication. This calls for the use anti-virus and pass words by the employees of the company. There is a manual requiring all employees to desist from downloading materials which are from unknown locations. CBBS network structure is designed to handle data within a certain radius from the office, this limits a number of potential attackers. There are measures that can be taken to ensure a networks security. The simplest thing is to use simple antivirus software. There are many brands available and they mostly do a similar job, but there is more advanced antivirus software available. Firewall systems are another commonly used security measure used for IT security. This is software that prevents unauthorized users by blocking them if they attempt to gain access. This is a must for highly confidential information, particularly if it is the type of information that someone may want access for cynical reasons . The difference between firewall and antivirus software in that a firewall is like a wall between a computer and the network which intercepts security threats while antivirus software scans a computer for viruses and then removes anything that should not be there. References Axelrod, C. W., Bayuk, J. L., & Schutzer, D., 2009. Enterprise Information Security and Privacy. Boston, MA: Artech House. Bertsekas, D.P., & Gallager. (1992). Data networks (2nd ed.). Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Prentice hall. Hill, D. G. 2009. Data Protection: Governance, Risk Management, and Compliance. Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press. Jacobs, S. (2011). Engineering information security: The application of systems engineering concepts to achieve information assurance. Hoboken: IEE Press. Kasacavage, V. (Ed.). (2002). 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