Network Security Assessment of an Organization

Network Security Assessment of an Organization

Executive Summary

Unfortunately, there has been observed a steady decline in the performance of the network in the Head Office building of Marks and Spencer. The communication amongst the different departments through the intranet in the company has been affected due to the connectivity issues that have been observed to hit the intranet at least once a day in the last two weeks. The uploading and downloading speed has slowed down as well. In addition, a couple of departments have complained regarding various alarming network viruses penetrating into their systems. Some of the employees have complained that they have observed some changes in their portal profiles and fear that their accounts might be hacked.

The department of the online marketing and sales have also complained stating the there has been observed confusion in the order placement of the products on the official Online site. Several complaints from the employees in the SMM department have also been reported. The individuals stated that they have observed some strange activities at the official pages of the company on the social networking sites.

It is evident through all these mentioned problems that the network of the Organization needs immediate assessment because of the penetration of certain alien users into the network. This assessment or evaluation will identify the root cause of all the mentioned issues in the network. The first step in the procedure is to simply form a team of expert individuals who will identify the fundamental problem and then find an appropriate suitable solution. The Company Director must immediately contact network administrator and the data management system administrator. These two individuals must coordinate effectively to solve the network security issues within or outside the Organization. The software department in addition to the network team must use all the necessary tools including software, firewalls, cookies, encryption codes and various other internet tools for the detection of the issue.

Introduction

The network of any Organization plays an important role in the management of the information and communication system of any Organization. Hence, just like any other business Organization, Marks & Spencer is also dependent on its network for a number of business operations. In fact, the company needs a network to establish and maintain not just an internal communication system within the Organization. The company is also dependent on the global network, which is the internet, for a number of its business functions including marketing, sales, etc. Therefore, for the company it is essential that the network stays running and operational. The network and the data management team however must make sure that they utilize all the available hardware and software assets and utilize them effectively to find hardware or software solutions and select the best solutions to solve the problem.

Discussion

In case, if we assume that the company had already installed or incorporated all the necessary hardware or software tools for ensuring network security, then the task of the network and data management ...