week 7

Learning Aims and Objectives:
Aim: In this week's page, students will learn the.  

Objectives:
1. By the end of this week's page students will be able to.

2. By the end of the week's page students will be able to.

3. By the end of the week's page students will be able to .

4. By the end of the week's page students will be able to 

5. By the end of the week's page students will be able to. 

B4 Considerations when designing an IT service delivery solution

Learners should be able to apply understanding of IT systems to evaluate the appropriateness of IT service delivery solutions in meeting the needs of an organisation in comparison to alternatives.

Understand the implications and considerations for organisations of the selection of, and dissemination of, information and data

Compatibility

When implementing or planning an IT service/improvement or upgrade it is essential to ensure that Compatability is reflected on. Systems that are incompatible can produce a number of potential issues other than the obvious of not working. Systems can ave the potential to have a knock-on effect to systems that are not directly linked to the implementation that is being installed. For example the installation of a new network firewall, this could be a simple installation of a piece of hardware, that was being implemented to reduce the potential from attacks outside of the network, however the system has now stopped a server that sends information to clients from being able to access the internet, and this server cannot communicate with the hardware because it is a specialist "Cisco" or "Huawei" device.  The cost implication could be large as the company would now need to find a compatible version that works with both systems. 

Case studies of this type of occurrences are available, for example, the NHS and its legacy systems only being able to work on windows internet explorer 5.

Using the link provided reflect on the issues that the NHS have had and explore the potential resolution to the problem ( Don't worry if it is not obvious at first as the NHS are still working on this)
https://www.buildingbetterhealthcare.co.uk/news/article_page/The_prevalence_of_obsolete_legacy_applications_in_the_NHS/124486

Corporate message

Cost, processing

Productivity

Privacy

Reliability

Security

Size/quantity

Quality

User and/or customer experience, to include ease of use, performance, availability, accessibility

User and/or customer needs

Working practices.

Understand the implications of selecting data and information sources and methods of dissemination that influence the design of IT service delivery solutions.

Understand the implications for organisations of the factors affecting the use and selection of software and hardware to meet IT service delivery requirements: availability, cost, connectivity, capacity, ease of use, features, privacy, scalability and usability.

Understand the implications for organisations of the factors affecting the use and selection of software and hardware to meet IT service delivery requirements.

Understand how the use and selection of software and hardware influence the design of IT service delivery solutions.

Understand the implications for organisations of the management of IT service delivery to meet IT service delivery requirements

Asset management

Identification of asset utilisation to analyse effectiveness and efficiency

Managing updates and upgrades

When a company installs any update or upgrade to a system it is important to assess the impact of these. I  most cases updates and upgrades improve performance, security, and in a small number of situations presentation. However, these do come with potential pitfalls and drawbacks. 

The installation of an update or upgrade to a system that is old could cause issues with compatibility for both hardware and software resulting in downtime and or corruption to data and/or operating systems. Therefore it is good practice for most companies to test these implementations prior to them being "rolled out".  In small company situations, it may be that they are unable to test the installation of the updates/upgrades, so in this instance, a sufficient disaster recovery process would need to be followed, for example, back-ups of data to external sources. In larger corporations company may be able to use test environments to do this, or, create copies of virtualised servers and run test deployments to see the stability of them.

If implemented well companies can introduce these updates and upgrades in a phased timetable where they trickle them to users and then this would reduce potential downtime.

Installation and/or deployment

Security issues and procedures, including:

– physical security

when looking at the implementation of an IT service such as server hardware and equipment, consideration must be given to the access to these devices/services as they have the capability to hold company sensitive data on them let alone client data. The security measures that need to be put into place must ensure that the right people and only the right people have access. For example, within a doctors surgery you would not allow doctors and general staff access to the physical servers, you would only allow them a rights restricted access through software and applications, however the designated IT technical person would need access, so you would enable their key card to access the room in which the server was in. Again however this individual shouldn't be able to access the data so they could have a technical login to the server that only provides them with the ability to make administrative changes and updates, this would also mean that the USB, floppy and CD drives are all disabled or have physical locks to prevent removal of data.

– security issues relating to the use of traditional, mobile and cloud-based technologies

– security software

Current and relevant legislation

Computer Misuse Act 1990

The Computer Misuse Act was introduced partly in reaction to a specific legal case (R v Gold and Schifreen) and was intended to deter criminals from using a computer to assist in the commission of a criminal offence or from impairing or hindering access to data stored in a computer.

The Act contains three criminal offences for computer misuse: -

• Unauthorised access to computer material 
• Unauthorised access with intent to commit or facilitate the commission of further offenses
• Unauthorised modification of computer material.

The Crown Prosecution Service offer further guidance in relation to the Computer Misuse Act.

COMPUTER MISUSE

Data Protection Act 1998

The Data Protection Act regulates the use of personal data by organisations. Personal data is defined as information relating to a living, identifiable individual.

The Act is underpinned by eight guiding principles:

1. Personal data shall be processed fairly and lawfully.

2. Personal data shall be obtained only for one or more specified and lawful purposes, and shall not be further processed in any manner incompatible with that purpose or those purposes.

3. Personal data shall be adequate, relevant and not excessive in relation to the purpose or purposes for which they are processed.

4. Personal data shall be accurate and, where necessary, kept up to date.

5. Personal data processed for any purpose or purposes shall not be kept for longer than is necessary for that purpose or those purposes.

6. Personal data shall be processed in accordance with the rights of data subjects under this Act. 

7. Appropriate technical and organisational measures shall be taken against unauthorised or unlawful processing of personal data and against accidental loss or destruction of, or damage to, personal data.

8. Personal data shall not be transferred to a country or territory outside the European Economic Area unless that country or territory ensures an adequate level of protection for the rights and freedoms of data subjects in relation to the processing of personal data.

Watch the following video and answer the below questions.

GDPR

GDPR legislation came into Law on the 25th of May 2018, where it replaced the Data Protection Act of 1998. This Legislation was designed to reflect the inclusion of the way in which our data can be used and moved around the world using digital means. The below video demonstrates the changes that companies needed to consider prior to its implementation as the new legislation carried a severe fine if companies were found to be non-compliant.  In the UK, the Information Commissioner's Office can now issue fines of up to 4% of a company's annual turnover, or 20 million (whichever is greater) for the worst data offences.

Ethical and moral issues

Staff training

Whenever and where ever new software or hardware systems are implemented it is best practice to provide clear and appropriate training and demonstrations to the staff team. It is vital to a company that the employees are able to continue to do their jobs and smoothly as possible and any new system is able to complement or improve the operators' jobs. User training is also beneficial to a company as is informs the users of what is expected and what most importantly is NOT. Users/operators will normally be able to provide good feedback to managers and developers of any potential flaws or issues that can/have occurred so that these bugs can be resolved and repaired.

Customer support processes and implications of user problems and IT equipment faults

Challenges faced by organisations when responding to changes in user needs:

additional or changes to services, network expansion, emerging technologies,changes in legislation and security and privacy issues.

Complete page 14 - Considerations when Choosing Software and Hardware,  and 15 - Considerations when Designing Solutions of your Onenote class activities, it is essential that you complete this as this will provide revision notes towards your end of unit assessment

EXAM PREP - REFER TO PAST PAPERS AND STUDENT EXAMPLES

Last Updated
2024-09-04 14:07:51