Risk Assessment

Overview

       Risks are unavoidable when IVK implements a new software system. Gallaugher (2017) states that cloud firms often argue that their expertise translates into less downtime and failure than conventional corporate data centers, but no method is without risks. Shifting existing on-premises data to a new cloud storage will bring several risks. For example, there will be a security implications problem. If AWS becomes unresponsive due to some system problem, IVK will not retrieve their data. Basically, AWS does not provide a technical support, so IVK needs to purchase a support plan, which costs up to 10 percent of monthly AWS usage. Also, AWS may not be familiar with IVK’s culture, so they cannot understand IVK’s language.

Privacy Issues

            Some risks are of high expectation but trivial consequences, whereas others are of low probability but significant impact. These various competitors are incredibly unique based upon their overall costs, values, and risks associated with implementing the software. However, there are similar characteristics amongst this software, making them very comparable. They include supply chain management, electronic data integration, sales order processing, and customer data management. AWS is based upon few characteristics that make it standout to  IVK. Some of these items are: abstraction of support, resource democratization, service-oriented architecture, flexibility and dynamism, utility model of consumption and allocation. These different software’s possess different value, which will be compared to see which software has better value for IVK. This system will also assist in decreasing operational costs and increasing business profitability.

            IVK is a company that is in a financial crisis at the moment from its decreasing stock price. The company is currently firing and laying off employees, due to financial issues. Although it could be resolvable through analyzing the risk factors it shares with competitors. Since everyday, data is communicated throughout companies, there is information going from consumers to suppliers and even supplier to manufacturers. With all of this data transactions, there is heightened risk of potential exposure.

Security Issues

            While AWS is a very secure cloud service, there are still some potential security issues that may be present and users should be aware of. In a cloud-based service it is very hard to determine who is accessing what and to control when, how, and who is logging into the different systems and if the activity is malicious or not. (Cheslock, 2018). Making sure that data is protected from data breaches and intruders is also a major security issue. In addition, there is the possibility of an outage which would leave the company unable to use or access any of the AWS services which would more than likely cause the business to go into a temporary shutdown. From a behavioral perspective, managers may compromise security by having too loose security group policy by giving access and logins to people that do not need them. (Kakarla, 2018). Oftentimes, human errors and mistakes by network users misconfigured settings, and violations of standard procedures. (Winnefeld, Upton, Kirchhoff, 2015). It is important to restrict access to only employees that it is absolutely necessary for them to access the cloud. Looking at the probability of these risks and the potential consequences, the behavioral risks have the highest probability of occurring with more trivial consequences, while the higher impact risks would be hackers and malicious people trying to still data.

References:

Amazon Web Service. (2018).Compare AWS support plans. Retrieved from https://aws.amazon.com/premiumsupport/compare-plans/
 

Cheslock, P. (2018, July 20). The Top 7 AWS Security Issues: What You Need to Know – Threat Stack. Retrieved November 6, 2018, from https://www.threatstack.com/blog/what-you-need-to-know-about-the-top-7-aws-security-issues
 

Gallaugher, J. (2017). Information Systems: A Manager’s Guide to Harnessing Technology. Boston, MA: FlatWorld
 

Kakarla, S. (2018, March 08). Common AWS Security Threats and How to Mitigate Them. Retrieved November 6, 2018, from https://www.sumologic.com/blog/amazon-web-services/aws-security-threats/
 

Winnefeld, J., Upton, D., & Kirchhoff, C. (2015, November 10). Defending Your Networks: Lessons from the Pentagon. Retrieved November 4, 2018, from https://hbr.org/webinar/2015/10/defending-your-networks-lessons-from-the-pentagon