Systems Analysis - Adopting a Mac System in LM Photography - Case Study Example

Running head: Systems analysis: adopting Mac system Student name: Student number: Course title: Lecturer: Date: Table of Contents Table of Contents 2 Company background 3 Current system 3 Rationale 4 Problems and Opportunities 4 New way of photo management 5 Network design 5 Web services 7 Network security 7 Requirements 8 Processor 8 Application software 9 9 Email server 9 Conclusion 9 Reference 11 System Analysis Company background LM photography is a company which deals with photography. The company was started in the year 2005 and has 20 freelance photographers. They are to use Macintosh operating system. The business is still being managed and run on family level by the family member of the owners. There is a proposal by the management that the company will be upgraded to be a journalism company. There is therefore a need that the system be upgraded to use Macintosh operating system. They have been using the Windows operating system when they are sending their photographs from the places where they took them from. This has had loopholes for viruses to be invited to the company system and website. This is because there are numerous attacks which are designed for Microsoft networks and operating systems. Current system The company uses Windows 2000 server as the network operating system and the client machines use Windows XP operating systems. There have been problems with the network especially at the heightened era of computer fraud which has been experienced of late. This has been boosted by the availability of fast Internet connectivity. The attackers on the Internet are no longer teenagers trying their hands in the world of programming. They are sophisticated full-time working professionals out to cause havoc on the Internet. The sad side of this is the fact that Windows operating systems are on the receiving end. They are receiving the full bite of this. It is due to this that the company is shifting to the use of Macintosh operating system. Rationale The rationale on the use of Macintosh operating system is the fact there are a lot of invaluable benefits that come with the use of Macintosh operating system. Top on the list and of equal an importance is the fact that the system is not as vulnerable to attacks when compared to Windows operating system. The CVE bugs are dealt with as they are noticed. There is a community of developers who work round the clock to make sure that the attacks which are directed Macintosh operating system are mitigated before they are well established in the system. The network is also very efficient in the management and the sharing of resources on the network. Problems and Opportunities I have compiled the following list of problems and opportunities to be addressed in the project. The list is not final. There are still a lot to be improved in the system. This is not the whole lot of problems that are there in the system. There are still a lot to be expected in the system:- a. Current system does not have security measures that have been implemented b. The current network setup does not have a central point of control. The administrative roles can be made at any point of the network. c. Current system has no point of controlling and monitoring the attacks that are found on the network d. Current system does no facilitate photographers to place their photo shoots directly on the network. e. Current system does not generate statistics on the photographs that have been taken and the tracking of the photo shoots in the network. f. Current system does not match orders to the particular consultant g. Hardware service management is easier in Mac than in Windows; in addition, Mac rarely gets faulty when compared to Windows hardware. h. The current system does not allow the security of the data and the multimedia that are stored on the company network. New way of photo management With the proposed system, there will be a new way of managing the photos. With the introduction of iPod, the management of photos has not been much easier. With the use of iPhoto, the owner of the photos can organize, edit and even make a publication of the photographs. After the photos are shot, they can be imported and edited in iPhoto. Even a superbly designed image display and editing application (like iPhoto) would look overwhelming if everything were jammed into one window. Thus, Apple developers provide different operation modes (such as editing and book creation) that you can use in the one iPhoto window. Each mode allows you to perform different tasks, and you can switch modes at just about any time by clicking the corresponding toolbar button. Network design In today's world business connectivity is crucial. In an organization where computers, and hence user, are connected through networking has much better productivity and is able to make decision much more quickly and reliable. These benefits are achieved through connectivity and sharing of information and resource. By connecting to network, users are able to communicate with each other through the use of instant messengers as well as email while also sharing files. Also, through networking, it is possible to share hardware resources such as Hard Drives and Printer which makes the use of resource much more efficient. The design of the network is illustrated as follows: The LM photography office was initially designed so that there is a hub connecting the different devices. Apart from offering restricted capabilities due to the use of Hub, this network offered a new challenge in security since the office also hosted a public web site of the company, whose computer was also connected to the internal network through the same Hub. One of the solutions is to disconnect the web server computer completely from the network and operate it as stand alone. But that option would take away the facility of remotely accessing the website for maintenance and updates. Thus, the network design for the company uses two routers. The first router is used to route the traffic coming in and out of the company. The second router has been use to restrict the hide the internal network from the external network so that any attack on the website would be limited to web server computer only. The connectivity between users’ computers has been provided by using a Switch instead of a Hub, for advantages earlier defined in the report. The existing 622Mbps ATM connection has not been used to provide connectivity to WAN. This has been done because the use of router on ATM connection would have been quite expensive in terms of budget, while using the Web Server computer to switch the data from internal network to WAN would have slowed down the website considerably. This purpose has been accomplished by connecting the company main router to an ADSL2 connection. All connections to public networks have been protected by the use of Firewalls (Lammle, 2007). Web services The new network will also provide a way of using the larger wide area network in the transaction processing. The use of the Internet will enable the freelancers to post their photo shoots in the web server. They will be given privileges so that they access the network resources. Network security For the security to be assured in the proposed network there will be the use of SSL. SSL is a protocol that is used to provide protection over http protocol. This is a set of rules that provide security over TCP/IP networks for communication using cryptographic methodology so as to also attain data integrity. Cryptography involves encryption and decryption of the information in form of plain text (Kahate, 2008). This protocol therefore can dictate and bring about secure communication between two endpoints such as two computers transacting via the internet. Microsoft, IBM and Netscape are some of the companies using SSL as part of its secure channel. Requirements After a careful analysis of the system, there are requirements that need to be there for the proposed system to be working. The following list will be required for the same: Processor The processor should support the following: Quad-core Intel Xeon “Nehalem” processor: Two 2.26GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon 3500 series processor; 8MB of fully shared L3 cache per processor Integrated memory controller Turbo Boost dynamic performance Hyper-Threading technology for up to 16 virtual cores 128-bit SSE4 SIMD engine 64-bit data paths and registers The communication should be supported by using two independent 10/100/1000BASE-T Ethernet (RJ 45). The hard disks must support up to 4TB of internal storage in hard drive bays 1 through 4 using hard drives in capacities of 640GB SATA 3Gb/s, 7200 rpm, 16MB cache, 640GB, 7200-rpm SATA, 3GB hard disk. Operating system The system will use Snow Leopard operating system. This is the latest operating system from Macintosh operating system. It has the latest security features that seal the bugs and CVE openings that were recently discovered. Application software Final Cut Studio 3; which should include the following:- Final Cut Pro 7, Motion 4, Soundtrack Pro 3, Colour ver 1.5, Compressor 3.5, DVD Studio Pro 4 iLife ’09 (includes iPhoto, iMovie, iDVD, iWeb, and GarageBand Adobe Creative Suite 4 Design Standard for Mac (to include Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Acrobat and Version Cue) OpenOffice for Mac (latest version) Email server The web server will be used to host the email server. The server is secured behind the firewall of the company. Conclusion The effective use of Routers, Firewalls and Switches not only create a network that is fast but also secure. By placing Firewalls in front of the external network, we have tried to secure the internal network from external attacks such as viruses, worms or exploitation attempts. The routers placed in the network serve two purposes. They allow for segregation of networks for each department while offering ease for network troubleshooting. They also hide the implementation details of the internal network (the company's Intranet) from external networks, though they can be made accessible for other offices through proper configuration of Routers and Firewalls as well as Domain Servers. The replacement of Hubs with switches is also advantages as a Switch provides a separate channel for each connected device to communicate with. Also in this network design much of the existing equipment has been reused, therefore this design offer an added advantage of being cost effective as well. The use of Snow Leopard operating system from Mac, there will be security and ease of managing the data. Reference Kahate, P. (2008). Cryptography and network security. Tata McGraw-Hill. Lammle, T. (2007). CCNA: Cisco Certified Network Associate Study Guide: Exam 640-802. John Wiley and Sons. Schestowitz, R. (2010, May 6). UNIX/Linux Offer More Security Than Windows: Evidence. Retrieved May 6, 2010, from http://boycottnovell.com/2009/01/16/unix-linux-security/ Read More