Digital Transformation Project – ConsultingExperts

13

October

2016

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Group 11

ConsultingExperts is an IT consultancy and temporary staffing agency founded in 2010, specialized in IT-infrastructure and security. The company has shown continuous growth and proved to be profitable over the years. Its goal is to provide suitable IT solutions to larger companies, institutions and governmental organizations.

 

It is a relatively small company consisting of around 20 highly educated employees. Much of the value of the company delivers for their customers, is in their ability to provide high-quality tailor-made solutions rather than using a one-size-fits-all approach. This is complemented by letting the consultants work in a very independent manner, giving them all the space they need to handle projects as they deem fit.

 

The competition is quite fierce as there is an abundance of other small IT consultancy firms, and also some big ones (think of Fox-IT, KPN Consulting, Accenture, etc.)

 

An analysis of the environment of the company and a series of interviews with the owners and a consultant gave a clear picture of the current trends and developments that the enterprise has to take into account. One of the most important is the rise of cloud computing.

 

ConsultingExperts is relying on word-of-mouth marketing by satisfied customers to increase its new customer base. They are already fully booked with projects for 2016, so there are more from its current clients that they can handle. Therefore, they want to grow steadily by hiring two highly qualified employees.

 

The alignment of the business and IT strategy is weak at ConsultingExperts. Due to the size of the company, the weak alignment is not a critical problem, but they should not forget to keep this in mind for the coming years.

 

The SWOT of ConsultingExperts indicates a few crucial points that they should take into consideration.  Due to a low number of employees, they heavily depend on the skills of their staff and their personal network. Also because they do not have an active acquisition team they have the risk of losing current clients while not being able to attract net clients.

 

Cloud computing is both a threat and an opportunity for ConsultingExperts. When cloud computing is implemented at their clients, they will not need the advanced security services of ConsultingExperts anymore, as that risk moves to the cloud provider. The cloud can also be seen as an opportunity for ConsultingExperts. As moving the IT to the cloud can be a large project, they can help their clients with this and get new project by helping their clients with this.

 

When ConsultingExperts adds cloud to their expertise, they can attract new clients and new projects from existing clients as the cloud is a growing area for the future. They can train their consultants to become an expert in the Cloud which will be already profitable in a year, as these costs will be covered by the extra revenue this will generate for ConsultingExperts.

 

The recommendations for ConsultingExperts are to retain their current consultants, develop partnerships and hire new personnel.

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The Future of the Universities in South Africa

7

October

2016

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As a kid, daily suspension of education is a positive surprise. However, in South Africa, the clashes between police and the protesting students have forced several universities to suspend the daily program for the second time in less than a month. The protests are expected to continue for at least the coming month as many black students see the cost of university education as a prohibitive factor. Two decades after the apartheid ended, feelings about inequality seem to have risen once again.

The discussion that has been started seem to have a future positive effect for the black students, as the cost of education may be decreased. However, might we miss a significant disadvantage of all these protests? Adverse selection might be on hand.

Universities are enduring enormous pressure to cut cost. The hashtags #feesmustfall and #freeeducation have become normal on Twitter in South Africa. However, the learning and teaching environment have taken a hostile character. The protests can affect the image of the universities and discourage future teachers and students (Reuters, 2016).

Mr. Akerlof (1970) explained the phenomenon of adverse selection through the car market. Buyers could not distinguish the high-quality car from an average car. The price that they are willing to pay equals the average of the high and normal quality car together. However, the companies that sell the high-quality cars will be aware of the value of these cars. So they will not sell below the appropriate value. The consequence is that the sellers of high-quality cars will leave the market. The remaining cars will be of average and poor quality.

The same situation is developing in South Africa. Instead of cars, the adverse selection is relevant towards the students and lecturers of the various universities. Normally, Universities are populated by below average and above average students and lecturers. However, when the environment of the university is changing towards a high risk, because for example the student protests. This hostile environment will be more desirable to the below average students and lecturers. For the reason that they are not able to gain access to the above average universities where the environment has a considerably lower risk.

These kind of environments are a danger because of the opportunities it will create. The high-risk environments of the Universities will be suitable for the below average students and below average lecturers. Thus, the remaining above average students and lecturers will try to find other options. The demand for private intuitions might be able to rise, and this can lead to the decline of the quality of the South African universities.

#educationstandardswillfall

 

 

References

Akerlof, GA., 1970, The market for ‘lemons’: Quality and the market mechanism, Quarterly Journal of Economics 84, 488-500.

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-safrica-protests-idUSKCN1250JJ

 

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Does a Guarding Dog prevent a Data Breach?

25

September

2016

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after-data-breach

Drip, Drip, Drip…..

The sounds of a leakage are always a good recipe for attracting people’s attention. These annoying little drops are a reminder that something needs fixing. Online, users will not get the same feeling. The drip,drip,drip……cannot be heard in case of a data leakage.

Yahoo admitted on 23th September 2016 that sensitive information of half a billion users was stolen in 2014 (The Guardian, 2016). This included names, email addresses, phone numbers and security questions. This breach may be the biggest data leakage of all time. You might be saying to yourself, what do criminals want with my personal details? I am nothing out of the ordinary. Well, firstly the quantity of stolen information may come as a surprise. From the expected financial data and email addresses to your system configuration to see which malware would work best on your system defences. The most common reason for cyber criminals to steal your intellectual property is to sell the data or use it to blackmail the original individuals.

Data leakage is not something that occurs very sporadically. About eighty to ninety percent of the companies that are on the Fortune 500 list, plus several government agencies have fallen victim to data breaches. Since January 2005, close to a billion records containing sensitive personal information have fallen into the wrong hands. The leading cause of these data leakages is first of all the intrusion by hackers. This is followed by laptops being stolen and the information theft of insiders of the respected organizations. Finally, those data leakages are also responsible for fraud. The internet crime complaint center reported that in 2015, the fraud-related losses from companies/individuals in the United States had a total amount of 242 million dollars. (ICR, 2015)

So what can companies do to prevent this? These high-tech criminals are not the “cute vandals” they used to be. They evolved to organized criminals who have expertise in exploiting the IT weaknesses of the organization. In my opinion, the needed security that prevents the extraction of data needs to be implemented along the whole breadth of the organization.

The quality of a security strategy is influenced by different factors. I think that strong policies and a decent governance strategy are the backbones of a good data security. The consultation of IT experts will help the organization to account for every aspect. These two factors ensure a stable system where an efficient network can work best. This network needs to be able to discover, store, analyse and protect the data. After a policy is in place, it is essential to design a network that can discover, analyse and secure data. Furthermore, the network needs to possess abilities that enable it to leverage its intelligence, services, and devices which are already present in the organization.

How do you guys think we can prevent Data Breaches?

References:

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/sep/23/yahoo-questinos-hack-researchers

IC3. (2015) 2015 Internet Crime Report, Accessed on 23 September 2016

 

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