IS Management Plan And Analysis Of Spark New Zealand

Environment Analysis of Spark New Zealand

Discuss about the Information Security Policy Procedure and Standard.

Managing of information system refers to computerized databases where financial data are programmed and organized. Thus it helps in producing daily reports at every level of operations of management in any company.

To understand the innovation, Spark New Zealand is chosen as the case study. It is a telecommunication organization delivering mobile network, telephone services and internet service provider.

The following report explains Spark New Zealand’s mission and a reason for existence. Their environment is analyzed using SWOT, PEST and Porter’s five forces. Further, an organizational chart is developed with existing and recommended IS management plan. Lastly, business application areas are demonstrated and methods to provide them with process and control mechanism are analyzed.

The Spark New Zealand, a popular mobile service provider in New Zealand, intends to provide its service in a most effective way. They aim to expand their wireless networks to mobile customers. Their ultimate mission is to supply free high-speed Wi-Fi as required by their customers (“Spark | Mobile Phones, Plans & Broadband”, 2018).

They along with their subsidiaries have been delivering ICT or Information and Communication Technology and telecommunication products and services mainly in New Zealand. Their mobile and business segment, also known as Spark Home has been offering various content, services, data and voice services. All of theses has been taking place around the fiber, wireless, mobile, copper broadband public Wi-Fi zones. Further, Spark has been delivering online video entertainment to different customers and small-medium business customers. This digital segment has been integrating telecommunication and IT services providing a converged ICT resolution.

An environment of Spark New Zealand is analyzed through following techniques.

A threat of new entrants	Bargaining power of buyers	Rivalry among existing competitors	A threat of substitutes:	Bargaining power of suppliers
Customer switching costs for Spark New Zealand is low. Further, their products are nearly identical.	Spark New Zealand is threatened towards backward integration Buyers have been price sensitive.	There are numerous competitors for Spark New Zealand. Competitors are of similar size	The danger occurs as clients find substitute products within attractive prices and enhanced quality.	There are few substitute raw materials for Spark New Zealand. Costs to switch raw materials are high.

PEST Analysis
Political Factors	§  Rise in governmental support regarding automation. §  Rise in various international agreements of trade.
Economic Factors	§  Notable financial stability of New Zealand. §  High development of New Zealand.
Social/ Socio-cultural Factors	§  Rise in cultural diversity. §  Stable attitudes regarding leisure.
Technological Factors	§  Fast adoption of mobile technology. §  A rise in the amount of online transactions. §  Rise in automation for Spark New Zealand’s business (“Spark New Zealand Limited PESTEL / PEST & Environment Analysis[Strategy]”, 2018).

SWOT Analysis
Strength	Weaknesses
§  Positive attributes of people like skills, reputation, credentials, knowledge and others. §  Tangible resources of Spark New Zealand like credit, distribution channels, capital and patent. §  Alliances or cooperative projects with capable partners §  Valuable competencies or know-how	§  Lack of access to technology or skills and expertise. §  Limited resources. §  Subpar profits §  Weak balance sheet and excess debt
Opportunities	Threats
§  Recent market growth at New Zealand and additional changes in the market creating opportunities. §  Smart timing to take advantages of ongoing opportunities. §  New Zealand Government (industrial policy, favorable changes in taxation, philosophy) §  Suppliers (acquisition or integration, alternative or new resources)	§  Challenges from unfavourable development and trend leading to deteriorating of profits and revenues. §  A significant change in the cost of suppliers and availability of various raw materials. §  A shift in consumer behaviour. §  New technology or products introduced in market making services, equipment and products obsolete (“Library Guides: Company and Industry Research: Spark New Zealand Ltd”, 2018).

Spark has been organized across different customer-facing business units. They are supported by infrastructure-focused resources and digital technology with a lean corporate centre.

The IS Management Plan governs confidentiality, security, privacy and integrity of highly sensitive information and roles of departments and people. The measures are intended to secure information resources and preserve the privacy of employees, suppliers and other related entities. Improper use can expose to risks like virus attacks, legal issues and compromise of network services and systems.

Business continuity and disaster recovery	It has been providing a secure, safe IT scenario serving their customer requirements assuring continuity and stability of the business (Peltier, T. R. 2016).
Physical security of facilities	It has been securing and controlling sectors that are utilized to decrease unauthorized access, interference with information and damage to information systems
Privileged access	It can alter key system configurations, change control parameters and so on. Further, it is helpful to access and audit to security monitoring system, circumvent security measures, and exclusive access to troubleshooting systems.
Hardening of operating environments	As configured insecurely, operating environments has been providing scopes towards unauthorized access leading to disclosure or fraud of sensitive information (Soomro, Shah & Ahmed, 2016).
Hardening of databases	This includes removing of unneeded operating system and software components. Further, it involves disabling of undesired and unused functionality in software, implanting of access controls on related objects limiting system programs and users to minimum access needed. Moreover, there has been a configuration of remote logging and transfer of local event logs towards the core server. There has been a removal of unused accounts and deleting and renaming of default accounts. Default passwords are replaced and users are prevented from disabling or installing software without any approval.
Hardening of servers	It involves removing unneeded software and components of operating systems. Access controls on related objects are implemented limiting system users and programs to the least access needed (Huang & Farn, 2016). Antivirus software is also required here. Unused accounts are removed and default accounts are deleted and renamed. Default passwords and replaced and users are prevented from disabling and installing software without approval.
Hardening of workstations	This involves removing of unneeded software and components of an operating system. The processes are same as the previous one. Besides, there has been restricting of users from disabling or installing software without any approval (Tøndel, Line & Jaatun, 2014).

• Product patching and updating:

Testing plans are to be described and security patches are to be applied to applications and operating systems. This plan must involve referenced of monthly maintenance windows. Moreover, for systems that are always online, high availability strategy are to be included.

• Web application and web application development:

Techniques Used for Environment Analysis

It must provide potential points of entry for Spark New Zealand’s systems as proper security measures are inappropriately put in place. These applications should be tested by ITS security because of its presence of coding and vulnerabilities previously to deployment in Spark’s environment.

• Development of software application:

This is to be done as insecurely created software applications give rise to opportunities for unauthorized users making unauthorized changes and achieving unauthorized access to different sensitive information.

• Identification and authentication:

Unique identification of Spark’s community members must be ensured. Access should be allowed to information resources by the authorized people. Periodic review of membership in the community must be assured in the community and approved access rights must be reviewed. Effective access mechanisms must be maintained around evolving technologies. It is to be noted that identity information is recorded in EPR or Enterprise Person Registry. There have been different authorization and authentication services. This always depends on what has been accessed.

Business Information System consists of analysis and organizing of business data with the application of technology. It assimilates the central ideas of management, information systems and operation theories with engineering and computer science methods and technologies managing organizations data.

The various are illustrated below:

Areas of application	Discussion
Supporting business functions areas	The sectors are human resources, accounting and finance, production, marketing and sales.
Marketing Information Systems	This supports decision making related to the marketing mix. They involve promotion, place, price and products (Laudon & Laudon,  2016).
Manufacturing information systems	International competitive pressures of information society are pronounced mainly in manufacturing and radically changed that. Current marketplace calls for new construction that must be managed for quality, flexible, agile and lean.
Human Resource Information Systems	This deals with identifying people who work for Spark frequently as the most valuable resource (Kerzner & Kerzner, 2017).
Integrating functional systems for superior organizational  performance	Information technology deals with crucial support to integrate business processes to incorporate operations for Spark’s business partners, suppliers and customers.

The various process of improvement at Spark is demonstrated below.

Organizing data	It is vital for Spark to come up with quick solutions and make smarter decisions under any situations. This helps employees to control all their data and develop execution of their business processes.
A proper perspective on business future	It is an excellent method for quickening the progress of Spark. It helps in saving time and money over additional tasks (Schwalbe, 2015).
Storing information	Quality information system helps in grouping vital data as per date and time. This makes the searching process convenient.
Avoiding crisis	Assessing stocks and investigating their prior performances helps in predicting the potential crisis (Galliers & Leidner, 2014).

Spark needs to develop a thorough understanding of nature of information. By this, they can build and design set of managerial and technical tools contributing to problem’s solutions. Studying process and control mechanisms also includes learning of Spark in standardization and development of technologies. It indicates that Spark should learn to measure and evaluate effects of those choices on performance and behavior of the host organization. Control is related to regulations applicable to activities in organizations (Li et al., 2016). This is to attain intended results for establishing practices, plans and policies. They are set as per as product attributes, functions, overall strategic and financial objectives and geographical attributes

Processes and Controls	Mechanisms included
Knowledge Discovery	Web-based access to data, databases, web-portals and databases, electronic discussion groups, data mining, repositories of information.
Knowledge Capture	Lessons learned databases, expert systems, AI-based knowledge acquisition (Nazareth & Choi, 2015).
Knowledge Sharing	Team collaboration tools, expertise locator systems, electronic discussion groups.
Knowledge application	Managing information systems, Enterprise Resource Planning systems, case-based reasoning systems, capturing and transferring expert knowledge, decision support systems, troubleshooting systems (Peltier, 2016).

Now, the study introduces various recommendations that must be undertaken by Spark.

This includes keeping focus to deploy one technology in isolation and purchasing a very extensive suite of applications from one vendor. This can resolve every information management problems very fast.

Decentralized authors should utilise content management systems for updating Intranet on a regular basis. Employees should create every key file to records and document management systems.

Delivering tangible and visible benefits:

The delivery of real benefits has been including seeking actual business necessities that are needed to be met. It must permit meaningful measurement of the effect of projects on an operation of Spark.

SWOT Analysis

This must help Spark to drive projects by their ability to denote business necessities.

Provide strong leadership: Spark must create a clear view of the intended outcome of information management strategy. It must describe how they should operate apart from expressing the way how information systems would work.

Conclusion:

At present, every organization around the world is involved in a race to enhance their ability to survive in competitions in the new century international market.  The above report shows that implementation of information system solutions under a complicated and ever-changing environment of Spark is never straightforward. Challenges inherent to information system projects for Spark indicates that new approaches are needed to be undertaken, as they wish to succeed.  The study included recommendations for Spark’s executives and involved required strategic statements and actions that must be conducted to gain organizational objectives and goals. This must help to enhance customer services, develop their satisfaction, increase employee productivity and harden competitiveness.

References:

Demian, P., & Walters, D. (2014). The advantages of information management through building information modelling. Construction Management and Economics, 32(12), 1153-1165.

Galliers, R. D., & Leidner, D. E. (Eds.). (2014). Strategic information management: challenges and strategies in managing information systems. Routledge.

Huang, C. C., & Farn, K. J. (2016). A Study on E-Taiwan Promotion Information Security Governance Programs with E-government Implementation of Information Security Management Standardization. IJ Network Security, 18(3), 565-578. l Journal of Information Management, 36(2), 215-225.

Kerzner, H., & Kerzner, H. R. (2017). Project management: a systems approach to planning, scheduling, and controlling. John Wiley & Sons.

Laudon, K. C., & Laudon, J. P. (2016). Management information system. Pearson Education India.

Li, J., Li, Q., Liu, C., Khan, S. U., & Ghani, N. (2014). Community-based collaborative information system for emergency management. Computers & operations research, 42, 116-124.

Library Guides: Company and Industry Research: Spark New Zealand Ltd. (2018). Aut.ac.nz.libguides.com. Retrieved 5 March 2018, from https://aut.ac.nz.libguides.com/c.php?g=205020&p=1352859

Liu, S., & Wang, L. (2016). Influence of managerial control on performance in medical information system projects: the moderating role of organizational environment and team risks. International Journal of Project Management, 34(1), 102-116.

Nazareth, D. L., & Choi, J. (2015). A system dynamics model for information security management. Information & Management, 52(1), 123-134.

Peltier, T. R. (2016). Information Security Policies, Procedures, and Standards: guidelines for effective information security management. CRC Press.

Peltier, T. R. (2016). Information Security Policies, Procedures, and Standards: guidelines for effective information security management. CRC Press.

Schwalbe, K. (2015). Information technology project management. Cengage Learning.

Soomro, Z. A., Shah, M. H., & Ahmed, J. (2016). Information security management needs more holistic approach: A literature review. Internationa

Spark | Mobile Phones, Plans & Broadband. (2018). Spark.co.nz. Retrieved 5 March 2018, from https://www.spark.co.nz/

Spark New Zealand Limited PESTEL / PEST & Environment Analysis[Strategy]. (2018). Fern Fort University. Retrieved 5 March 2018, from https://fernfortuniversity.com/term-papers/pestel/nyse4/6346-spark-new-zealand-limited.php

Spark New Zealand Limited Porter Five (5) Forces & Industry Analysis [Strategy]. (2018). Fern Fort University. Retrieved 5 March 2018, from https://fernfortuniversity.com/term-papers/porter5/asx/2157-spark-new-zealand-limited.php

Tøndel, I. A., Line, M. B., & Jaatun, M. G. (2014). Information security incident management: Current practice as reported in the literature. Computers & Security, 45, 42-57.

Zealand, S. (2018). Org Chart Spark New Zealand. The Official Board. Retrieved 5 March 2018, from https://www.theofficialboard.com/org-chart/spark-new-zealand