Baidya Nath Pandey

MCA (B5)
Roll - 011
What is Information?

 “Information is the processed and refined

form of data that is meaningful or useful to the
recipient”.

 Information processing is a societal activity.

A significant part of an individual’s working

and personal time is spent in recording,
searching for, and absorbing information.
Some facts and figures!
 As much as 80% of a typical executive’s time is
spent in the processing and communication of
information.

 More than 50% of the united states work force is

employed in jobs that primarily involve some
form of information processing like :-
documentation, report generation , analyses,
plans etc.
Importance
 A valuable asset of any organization to achieve
its goal and securing its existence in today’s
competitive market.

 We can say that it works like a backbone for any

organization.
Helping facets
 Hardware
 Software
 Database
 Procedures (documentation at each step)
 Operations personnel (operators, system analysts,
programmers, data administrators etc.)
What we do for their proper safeguarding?

Implement so many information system controls:

 Physical facilities control

 Terminal access control

 Backup and recovery

A catastrophe
 Time :- 6 am
 Venue :- Huntsville, Alabana
 Organization:- General Computer Services (GCS), a
data processing bureau.
 Event :- GCS caught fire at 6 am.

 Loss:- Items like all the documentation, company

records and corporate information destroyed in this
catastrophe.
Also hardware were the biggest losses.
 Problem :- GCS was scheduled to deliver 15
payrolls on the same day.

 Now, what did GCS people do to manage and

survive without losing a single customer?
Physical facilities control
 Computer and its other equipment installation
consumes few thousands to several million dollars
depending on the size of installation. So, it
requires protection.
 Data are mostly stored in magnetic tapes or
magnetic disk packs are highly valuable to the
organization.
 Any type of disk damage or unauthorized access
and the potential loss from theft may destroy the
information.
Remedies
 Division of duties (so that a single person does
not have complete control over the processing of
an application), internal and external audit review,
restricted access by operators to program
documentation and restricted access to data files
and program files.
 In spite of centralized processing, distributed
system is implemented.
Advantage of distributed system
 Gives the “fail-soft” protection.
 Fail-soft protection :- “The capability to continue
processing at all sites except the non functioning
one is called “fail-soft” protection.”
 Disadvantage of centralized system :- If the server
“goes down” all processing ceases.
Some other facets
 Fire
 Flood
 Human riots
 Earth Quakes
 Employee dishonesty .

 Employee dishonesty problem can be removed from

organization by combination of careful employment
screening plus fidelity insurance.

 From fire, flood, human riots, earth quakes like loses, the
organization must be well insurance.
Terminal access control
 Today most of all systems are working online and
for this, uses communication networks; there
should be protection against illegal access.
 Terminals represent access to computer, also
processing capabilities and stored data , therefore ,
there should be :
 Password control (from password security S/W ,or
computer OS).
 Various locks to prevent unauthorized physical
presence.
Backup and Recovery
 For events like fire, natural disaster, malicious
damage or accident that destroys equipments, S/W
or data, there need to be procedures to recover
from errors or failures to correct procedures.
 The general approach to recovery is backup by
creating copies of the files.
 Example:- If an error destroys records in a file,
backup procedures permit a previous version of a
file to be restored and the processing is repeated.
 Backup copies of data and S/W stored at off
premises.

 Arrangement of backup sites and facilities .

 Backup and recovery plan should be established.
 The backup may be in the form of diskettes or
cassettes with which data should be copied each
night from the organizations.
 The backup copies should be stored in a secure
locations.
How GCS’s problem was solved?
 At 10 am GCS operating unit was established at four employee’s
homes.

 Customers were informed about the fact and the entire processing
was continued without any break.

 Cause of Success:-
 Nearly all the GCS S/W programs were accessible because a
“backup system” was housed.

 Within 10 days ,GCS’s hardware vendors (insurance company)

had supplied them the needed equipments.