Probable Difficulties and Risks Associated With Using a Public Infrastructure - Assignment Example

This paper illustrates that as revealed in the case scenario of ING, it also had to witness similar difficulties when incorporating technology initiatives in its business process. Consequently, the company incorporated a more advanced internet network by building an extranet to offer a Web-to-host service that would enable the brokers of ING to rapidly access the mainframe data ensuring a time-efficient process in responding to the brokers’ needs. The incorporation of an advanced extranet system in ING was also expected to help in accommodating new partners.

However, the technology innovation in ING was also criticized to limit the security of confidential data owing to the fact that through its inbuilt extranet system, the private data of the company would be placed over the public internet which would become easily accessible by unknown users. Such intrusions are quite likely to affect the customers’ privacy which is quite likely to ultimately affect the company in its long-run performance. Another important security concern for the company can be identified as the database level.

Due to lack of configuration in the database maintenance system through the newly incorporated extranet framework, any unauthorized employee or external user can easily hack the system and access to all the private information about the company. In order to mitigate its security concerns as a consequence of incorporating an extranet system, ING has been using two NT servers, i.e. a (Private Internet eXchange) (PIX) firewall strategy and an SNA gateway system. It is worth mentioning in this context that the function of the PIX firewall is to prohibit illegal access from the external users to the company’s data acting as an Internet Protocol (IP) firewall.

The PIX firewall delivers the advantages of a ‘stateful firewall safety’ system and secures Virtual Private Network (VPN) access to the extranet system applied. The security protection software also provides scalable safety solution with failover support for chosen models to offer maximum dependability within the technology communication system.