ANZ Banking Group: IT Infrastructure And Operations

Services Offered by ANZ

Discuss About The Governance Strategic Risks In Systemically.

The “Australia and New Zealand Banking Group” is one of the largest banking group in Australia after Commonwealth Bank and Westpac Banking Corporation. Various operations of Australia is responsible for making the largest part of the business of “Australia and New Zealand Banking Group” (anz.com, 2018). Australia and New Zealand Banking Group are also commonly known as ANZ. It is the largest bank of New Zealand as well.

ANZ bank is associated with providing various types of services in Australia as well as in New Zealand. ANZ has an experience of many years on a full range of the banking products and services. It is also known for its expertise and reliability in operations starting from cash flow to complex deals related to financing (Gibson-Graham, 2014). Services provided by ANZ include “Financing, Transaction services, Investments, Risk management, International service and FX and Insurance and superannuation” (anz.com.au, 2018).

ANZ is associated with various types of operations in that they’re having various types of departments so as to continue with their operations. And to favor its different operations they make use of the Information Technology (Chuang and Hu, 2015). Some of the departments of ANZ and how they make use of the IT. Personnel or HRD department: This department of the bank is associated with the recruitment of manpower for the organization along with this they are also associated with identification of vacancies, updating of the employees with the latest technology and many more (Stockport et al., 2012). They use IT so as to store all the vital data of every employee along with finding new employees and store their data as well. Later this information stored can be used for various purposes.IT and testing department: There exist several technical types of equipment so as to check all the networks along with the various devices that are being used by the bank employees so as to perform their daily tasks. Along with there are also other departments that make of the IT infrastructure so as to perform the various works.

The following data structure and IT infrastructure are used by ANZ for achieving success:

• Replication of the all the systems and the client data between the primary as well as the secondary data centers.
• Backup on a daily basis
• Application server farm needs to have a provision which Is responsible for the hosting of all the Transactive (Nidar & Bestari, 2012). Which is to be distributed over all the primary and the secondary data centers.
• Providing provision over the standby channel data server present at all the secondary data centers.
• Providing provision over the components of standby core banking system which is present at all the secondary data centers.
• The provision of the secondary locations for bank staffs who are responsible for supporting the ANZ Transactive
• The business continuity planning is reduced from the client-side by using ANZ Transactive the web-based nature of ANZ Transactive where the system and much of the data for critical business is held in the Bankside (Lee, Lim & Lim, 2013). Consequently, for most of the part, there is only a need from the client side that they have an access to a compatible computer situated in an alternative location which has a suitable Internet connectivity.

The diagram provided below depicts the systems that support the ANZ Transactive from end-to-end. For the operation of all the applications feature there is a need of relying on a number of ‘Plug-ins” and configurations so as to host the client side within the web browser (Taylor & Wagland, 2013). The communication between the customers and the bank totally depend on the` encryption of the connections that is the “Hypertext Transfer Protocol”. The traditional browser is associated with requesting the Bank and those from the applets used so as to use such connections which are shown in the figure.

Departments and IT Infrastructure

The data transfer between the customer of ANZ and the bank is carried by making use of the 128-bit SSL encrypted channels. Like other applications the ANZ Transactive present within the Bank is also audited on a periodic basis by ANZ Group’s specialist security team so as to make sure about the compliance with the Group standards and policies (Moradi-Motlagh & Babacan, 2015). Along with this the ANZ Transactive has also undergone certain extensive Security and Penetration testing, to ensure the system’s safety.

There are seven layers of internet model and this includes the following:

• Application layer: The main purpose of this layer is to share a window for the users and various processes of the applications so as to get access to the network services. Some of the commonly needed functions contained in this layer are:
• Redirection of devices and sharing of the resources
• Access to the files remotely
• Access to the printer remotely
• Communication of the inter processes
• Management of the network
• Directory services
• Handling of the electronic messages or e-mails
• Network virtual terminals
• Presentation layer: This layer is associated with the formatting of the data that is to be presented to the application layer (Akman & Mishra, 2015). This layer can also be termed as the translator for the network, as this layer is associated with translation of the data from a format which is used by the application layer into a format which is common the stations that are responsible for sending and this is followed by translation of the common format to a format compatible with the application layer present at the receiving station. Some of the major things provided by this layer include:
• Translation of the character codes
• Conversion of data
• Data Compression
• Encryption of the data
• Session layer: This layer is associated with the allowing of the establishment of sessions between various running processes on a different Along with this, it is also associated with the following:
• Establishment of sessions, along with maintenance and termination as well. Which means that two application processes which are present in two different machines can be allowed to establish a connection and terminate a connection (Akman & Mishra, 2015). This is also known as a session.
• Supporting of the session which means that it performs certain functions that are associated with the allowing of the processes to establish a line of communication over a network along with performing security, recognition of the name and any more.
• Transport layer: This layer is associated with ensuring the fact that messages are delivered without any type of error and in a sequence without any loss or duplication. This layer helps in reliving the higher layer protocols from any type of concern regarding the transfer of data (Bhushan, 2014). The type of service received from the network layer helps in determination of the size and the complexity of transport protocol. Some other functions of transport layer include the following:
• Segmentation of the messages that is acceptance of message from the layer present above it and then splitting those messages to the smaller unit along with the passing of smaller units down to the network layer
• Acknowledgment of messages which means that it provides a reliable end-to-end delivery of message associated with acknowledgments.
• Controlling of the traffic present in the message which means asking the transmitting station to back-off when there is no availability of the messaging buffers.
• Multiplexing of the Session which means “several message streams” or “sessions” are multiplexed onto a single logical link. Along with this, a track of the messages is kept so as to identify to which session the message belongs.
• Network layer: this layer is associated with controlling of the operations of the subnet along with decoding of the physical path that is to be taken which would be based upon the conditions of the network, priority of the services and other factors as well. Some other functions of this layer are listed below:
• Routing which means that it routes the frame among the networks.
• Controlling of the subnet traffic which means that the routers are associated with instructing the sending station to throttle back the transmission of the frame whenever the buffer of the router gets filled up (Craigie, Gillmore & Groshenny, 2012).
• Fragmentation of frame which means if the downstream of the routers maximum transmission unit is determined to be less than the size of the frame then a router would get fragmented into a frame for the transmission an then reassemble at the destination station.
• Logical-physical address mapping which is associated with the translation into physical address of the logical addresses or name.
• Keeping an account of the usage of the subnet, this means there is an accounting feature which is capable of keeping track of the frames that are forwarded by the subnet intermediate systems so as to proceed with the billing information (McConnell, 2012).
• Data link layer: This layer is associated with the providing transfer of data frames which is free of errors from one node to the other over the physical layer allowing the layer above this layer to assume a virtual transmission which is also error free over the links. Some other function includes the following:
• Establishing and terminating the logical links which exists between two different nodes.
• Controlling of the frame traffic which means it is associated with telling the node responsible for transmitting to back off whenever the availability of the buffer is no more.
• Sequencing of the frame that is transmitted and receiving of the frames is done in a sequential way.
• Acknowledgment of the frames
• Delimitation of the frames
• Checking for the errors in the frame
• Management of the media access.
• Physical layer: this is the lower layer of the internet model and is concerned about the transmission and the reception of the raw bit streams that are unstructured over a physical medium (Harorimana, 2012). Some other features of this layer include the following:
• Encoding of the data
• Techniques of transmission
• Transmission through a physical medium

1. When an email is sent a data would be created and the application layer would place a header field which would be consisting of the information like the size of the screen, fonts and many more and then data would be passed to the presentation layer.
2. The presentation layer then places a header containing the information of the 6^th layer and this might include conversion of the message into ASCII and then it is passed to the 5^th
3. The same step is followed by the session layer as well it would also place a header containing the information of 5^th This might include the information related to the management of the flow of data. Then it is passed onto the 4^th layer (Bora et al., 2014).
4. Similar to the previous steps and the information that is placed by the transport layer will contain thing like acknowledgment regarding receiving of a segment. Then it is passed to the 3^rd
5. After receiving from the transport layer the network layer would place the header containing information of this layer. The information might include things like the address of the source and the destination which would help in the determination of the best path of delivery. Then it is passed onto the 2^nd layer (Bora et al., 2014).
6. The data link layer is associated with placing both headers as well as trailer information. This might include Frame Check Sequence so as to ensure that the information does not get corrupted and after this, the new data is passed to the physical layer.
7. The bit stream is transmitted to be physical layer as ones or zeros. At this stage, the physical layer ensures that bit synchronization is done which would ensure that the data that has been transmitted from the end user is in the correct order in which it was sent.

ANZ or Australia and New Zealand banking group makes use of the WAN or wide area network. As this type of network would help in connecting different local area networks. This helps in connecting different branches of bank together. WAN technology is used because it helps the bank in carrying out its various operations regardless of the geographical location of the various branches. This also helps them in sharing their official data very easily (Kuzlu, Pipattanasomporn & Rahman, 2014). The computers of the bank of capable of communicating with the other computers of the bank located at some other geographical location.

References:

Akman, I., & Mishra, A. (2015). Sector diversity in green information technology practices: technology acceptance model perspective. Computers in human behavior, 49, 477-486.

anz.com. (2018). Anz.com. Retrieved 23 March 2018, from https://www.anz.com/Documents/AU/corporate/techspecguide.pdf

anz.com.au. (2018). ANZ Personal Banking | Accounts, credit cards, loans, insurance | ANZ. Anz.com.au. Retrieved 23 March 2018, from https://www.anz.com.au/personal/

anz.com.au. (2018). Business products and services | ANZ. Anz.com.au. Retrieved 23 March 2018, from https://www.anz.com.au/business/products/

Bhushan, P. (2014). Relationship between financial literacy and investment behavior of salaried individuals. Journal of Business Management and Social Sciences Research, 3(5), 82-87.

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Chuang, C.C. and Hu, F.L., 2015. Technology strategy-innovating for growth of ANZ Bank. International Review of Management and Business Research, 4(3), p.682.

Craigie, R., Gillmore, D., & Groshenny, N. (2012). Matching workers with jobs: how well is the New Zealand labour market doing?. Reserve Bank of New Zealand Bulletin, 75(4), 3-12.

Gibson-Graham, J. K. (2014). Being the revolution, or, How to live in a “more-than-capitalist” world threatened with extinction. Rethinking Marxism, 26(1), 76-94.

Harorimana, D. (2012). Impact of CRM Systems on Organizational Performance: A case study of ANZ Bank.

Kuzlu, M., Pipattanasomporn, M., & Rahman, S. (2014). Communication network requirements for major smart grid applications in HAN, NAN and WAN. Computer Networks, 67, 74-88.

Lee, J. H., Lim, W. G., & Lim, J. I. (2013). A study of the security of Internet banking and financial private information in South Korea. Mathematical and Computer Modelling, 58(1-2), 117-131.

McConnell, P. (2012). The governance of strategic risks in systemically important banks. Journal of Risk Management in Financial Institutions, 5(2), 128-142.

Moradi-Motlagh, A., & Babacan, A. (2015). The impact of the global financial crisis on the efficiency of Australian banks. Economic Modelling, 46, 397-406.

Nidar, S. R., & Bestari, S. (2012). Personal financial literacy among university students (case study at Padjadjaran University students, Bandung, Indonesia). World Journal of Social Sciences, 2(4), 162-171.

Stockport, G. J., Godley, M., Guagliado, D., Leung, O., Mercer, B., Varma, G., & Wong, S. (2012). ANZ Bank: Building a strategy for Asia. South Asian Journal of Business and Management Cases, 1(1), 31-41.

Taylor, S., & Wagland, S. (2013). The solution to the financial literacy problem: what is the answer?. Australasian Accounting Business & Finance Journal, 7(3), 69.