Operational Issues

Operational Changes It is important to organisations to ensure that they abide by the Law when caring for the safety of their employees, customers and assets (data). Without consideration of the legal and ethical factors organisations would open themselves up to devastating results on their current and future business. Eg Law suits, bankruptcy, imprisonment

Operational Requirements New Operational Requirements must be put in place and followed when using IT with personal and private data: facilities to protect data (from loss, ensure privacy, ensure integrity, protect copyright of data, protect from fraud and computer misuse) facilities to protect health and safety (ergonomics, office layout)

Impact on the business operation? Organisations must prove that their day to day operations now support both the legal and ethical issues. This will impact through the following constraints: Costs eg additional resources required, cost of development Impact of increasing sophistication of systems eg more trained personnel, more complex software Security of information Backups eg media types, cost of technology, security and retrieval Health and safety eg cost of ergonomic changes, health care Organisational policies eg time for development, staff training Business continuance plans

Plan of action for the continuation of business and how data will be dealt with and recovered. Needed to reduce risks in the case of data disaster eg building fire, terrorist attack, major virus, fraud, Computer Misuse level 3 infringement This will cover areas such as: How the business will recover How the data will be recovered and what happens with continuing new data The length of time for recovery How the business will continue through the recovery time Approximate costs of recovery

Task In pairs… A small company “Snowdon Renewable Goods” has decided to place all their customer records onto a local area network. They need to consider what needs to be in place before they can do this and what constraints will be placed on the way the business operates. Draw an information diagram that describes and gives examples of the operational constraints that the business will need to consider when setting up it’s IT systems.