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ENSURING RELIABLE AND SECURE IT SERVICES (High-availability facilities …
ENSURING RELIABLE AND SECURE IT SERVICES
Management of IT service delivery
IT is a critical component in interaction between business and the "outside". A small failure or improvement of IT can have a dramatic effect on the business's ability to operate and could possibly it'ss profitability.
A service is deemed as adding value to a customer by faciltating the outcomes customers wish to achieve.
IT service deliveryis what an outsourcing company dores for companies to help them find the optimal integration between business and IT.
Estimating Availability
Firms should strive to
maximize the reliability of their systems
. Increased reliability often requires increased resources.
The reliability of a system is defined as the ratio of the
amount of time the system is actually available to the amount of time the ststem is expected to be available
.
The cost of unreliable systems can be quantified through a simple examination of the cost of downtime.
High-availability facilities
The following facilities should be available for firmsto remain reliable.
Uninterruptible electric power supply
-
To maintain power even if the facility power supply is interrupted. Example: Diesel generators.
* Physical security
Security guards can be hired to protect the point of entry and patrol the facility regularly.
Climate Control and fire suppression
-
Facilities contain redundant heating, ventilating and airconditioning equipment capable of maintaining tempretures in ranges suitable for computing and network equipment
Network connectivity
-
At least two backbone providers and enter the buildings from separate points.
Help desk and incident response procedures
-
Firms have staff on standby to attend to customers who are experiencing problems with the information system.
N
+ 1 and N+N redundancy
Securing infrastructure against malicious threats
Firms must protect themselves from malicious threats that can be posed by rivalry, hackers, end-users and customers.
External attacks
such as Denial of service (DoS) which disable infrastructure devices by flooding them with an overwhelming number of messages
Intrusion
whereby intruders gain access to the internal IT infrastructure by for example obtaining usernames and passwords
Viruses and worms
which are malicious software programs that replicate, spreading to other computers
The organisation must
devise defensive measures
such as:
Security policies
Firewalls
Authentication
Encryption
Patching and change management
Intrusion detection and network monitoring
Managing IT Service delivery continued
Service transition
- Helps manage and control changes in the IT services that are implemented in a company's working environment. Ensures continuity when IT services when changes occur
**Service strategy
- Which focuses on how to transform service management into a strategic asset. A company has to plan for implementing IT service management strategies.
Service strategy allows companies to define new IT services and helps ensure that the current defined IT services meet the business requirements of the company.**
Service operation
- This is where value is seen. Measures for optimmisation are identified in continual service improvement.
LEARNING UNIT 2: THE BUSINESS AND IT INFRASTRUCTURE