How E Technologies Have Changed Modern Organizational Business Operations And How Suppliers Of Such Technologies Have Sought To Overcome Threats And Risk Associated With This Technologies

E Technology is a broad based term which has various definitions according to the various scholars and researchers. According to (Lan and Young, 1996) they emphasized that technology has various definitions according to the academic discipline of the author or the researcher. Over the years getting a clear definition of technology is not easy (Reddy and Zhoa, 1990) and this has made technology to be defined from different angles. (Volti, 2009) describes “techne” to mean “skill” and “art”. He said that both skill and art refer to the same concept but under different circumstances. The aim of this paper is to bring to make the reader understand how dynamic e technologies have changed the modern organizational business in terms of how they conduct their businesses. The second part explains the threats associated with these technologies as the developers and suppliers deploy them at customer premises.

Impacts of E technology on organizational business operations

E technology has enabled business organization to dispatch information to their customers in real time. With the telephony and internet, information can be sent from the source to destination within a very short time as compared to traditional hand delivery. This increases efficiency and maximum use of the resources and the target audience get the information within the right time.

E technology has also made division of labor very easy, businesses are able to continue to run their productions from anywhere in the globe which includes outsourcing personnel from anywhere in the globe where market is cheap. A perfect example is whereby an organization running on big projects with strict deadline can decide to outsource the project to china where there is cheap labor while they tackle the other part of the project. This ensures that there is continuous flow of work and strict deadlines are met.

With the advent of Computer Aided Design (CAD) businesses in the manufacturing sector are able to produce their goods in good time. CAD will replace human thus increasing efficiency and boosting production. With introduction of drawing softwares like ArchiCAD and AutoCAD, users are able to do analysis in 3D and be able to solve complex designs within a short time.

E technology has reduced distance among the managers of a particular organization. A good example will be a situation whereby when managers want to have a meeting, it may not be necessary for them to be physically present in the boardroom. The CEO of the company can do a Skype meeting among his junior managers in real time no matter the distance. The meeting could continue  even if the manager is miles away in another continent.

E technology has led to ecommerce where companies do a lot of advertising via their websites. The role of marketing managers has been reduced adversely with the advent of the internet where computers communicate globally using internet protocols which are globally standardized. Businesses can post their products on the internet which is accessible anywhere in the globe via a browser. Customers can get product information and make informed decisions before purchasing it.

E technology has made business monitoring simple as opposed to traditional methods of book keeping. By a click of a button, a finance manager is able to  get the daily productions, returns and even do analysis of how the business is doing. Analysis can be done using spreadsheets, excel, word processors and through sophisticated programs like ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) and CRM’s (Customer Relations Module).

Stock track has been made simple by technologies such as barcode readers in stores and supermarkets. The store’s manager can  keep track of the stock and get information of the available stock and he or she can plan for the reorder levels. Barcode readers also prevent shoplifting in supermarkets whereby people who plan to steal as they are exiting the door the stolen product will be detected by the sensor just at the entrance and this will assist whoever on duty to stop this.

Another way e technologies have changed how business operate is the mobile money transfer whereby people pay bills using their phone without necessarily carrying cash. This revolution has gained momentum in African countries particularly Kenya where almost everybody is using M-PESA. The technology has made life simpler whereby people do not queue in banking halls to get cash over the counter. Another thing is that people can access their money 24 hours a day, transfer their money from their respective bank accounts to their phones, top up their phones with airtime and request their statements just using the phone.

Threats associated with E Technologies

As the world appreciates e technologies, there are various threats that come along with it. With information being downloaded from the internet cybercriminals are coming up with more sophisticated ways of attacking various networks either to bring the organization down or just to spying to get information to another third party and they are paid for it. The worst was the ransom ware which attacked Microsoft in the year 2017 and the world was caught unaware  by this phenomena. In this paper I am going to drill down various threats that interfere with E technologies that are currently in existence.

Cybercriminals

Most e technologies are prone to this type of individuals who gain access to systems for the purposes of stealing information either for personal use or to get profit out of it. Law enforcers are challenged by this act because getting the culprits has become a nightmare. Another issue is that cybercriminals are always a head in terms of technology and their usage of sophisticated technology to obtain  information is another contributing factor. A perfect example was on May 2017 when china was attacked by a ransom ware, this affected various services including vehicle manufacturing, hospitals, schools and law enforcement agencies.

Lack of encryption

Data protection in transit is very critical for any organization especially banking industry. Several organization do not pay attention to this and this can be catastrophic because hackers can intercept the data and do manipulation to suit their needs. Various countries have come up with laws to govern data security and they have made it a standard for the players in the industry to adhere to it. HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) requires health providers to protect sensitive patient data from authorized access.

Outdated security software

It is best practice to be up to date with the security of the software being used. It is a mandatory for every developer to have this in mind in order to protect consumers from VIRUSES and WORMS that might affect the performance of the software. A malicious person can just insert a code which is enough to bring the software to its knees thereby affecting various departments within the organization.

Lack of proper configurations

Many organization neglect the proper configurations where big data is involved. Data configuration is important as this will determine how people will get data, who gets what and at what level. Issuing of rights and privileges is also key because it enables the IT manager to do audit trail in case of malicious use of data the responsible person can be traced and questioned.

Mobile Malware

This is a software that specifically targets mobile phones to leak data to hackers and malicious people. The first mobile  malware was discovered in the year 2000 and it was called Timofonica which originated from Spain, it was discovered by antivirus labs in Finland and Russia and it was sending messages to mobile phones without the user’s knowledge through the internet SMS gate belonging to Movistar . Currently most antivirus companies are working to adapt their anti viruses to be deployed on mobile platforms in order to curb this menace.

Third party entry

This is a very dangerous scheme whereby a computer developer uses a third party software component which is normally reusable. This poses a great risk because cybercriminals use this to get access to information. A perfect example perhaps to explain this is the Heartbleed bug (O’Cannor, 2014) which is a serious vulnerability in open SSL cryptographic software library. This particular bug allowed anyone on the internet to read memory of the systems protected by the vulnerable versions of the open SSL software. The information obtained includes passwords, usernames and the actual content of the user.

Corporate data on personal devices

With the availability of smart mobile phones and affordability, many employees normally keep corporate data on their personal mobile phones, this poses a great risk because employees most of the time connect to unsecured networks. By doing this they download  application which can corrupt company data. Employees can also visit sites that are dangerous which can facilitate attack on company data which can result to manipulation of data and data integrity can be compromised.

Technology with weak security

The world is currently on the move as far as technology is concerned, many softwares are released everyday same to the gadgets that use it but there is no plan for security.( Mathy, 2017) discovered that WPA2 protocol which secures all wifi network is prone to attack. He stated that an attacker within range of the victim can exploit these weakness using Key Reinstallation Attacks (KRACKS). He said that the attack works against all modern protected wifi networks and the attacker can obtain crucial information  such as passwords, chat messages, emails and photos.

Social media attack

Many users use social media either to communicate or advertise their products. Cybercriminals have leveraged on social media to attack their unsuspecting  victims. A perfect example is the “water holing” which according to  (Gragido,2012) is an attack on legitimate, geographically or topically connected websites that an attacker believes members of a target organization will visit.

The latest example of water holing is VOHO which was discovered by RSA research team which affected local government in Maryland and regional bank in Massachusetts and it was also tied to promotion of democracy in regions where there was oppression.

WORMS (Write Once Read Many) and VIRUSES

This is another factor that has greatly affected e technologies whereby your laptop or PC is turned into a mail server. The PC will send mass emails which will be seen as spam and this causes denial of service because the IP address will be blacklisted by various servers because of bad reputation. According to Theriault a security expert at SOPHOS says that most mass email viruses require the email recipient to open the attachment to run the malicious code.

Conclusion

In as much we appreciate technology, this creates a dependency on it as the world depends on telephone networks, internet and technological infrastructure. This brings risks because the collapse in the infrastructure can bring disasters, collapse in economy and social disintegration. This dependency on technology has compromised  privacy of data for individuals. With the advent of cloud computing and information storage in the  cloud most governments collect information of its citizens and this information can fall into the hands of rogue government officials who can use it for their own malicious acts.

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