Case Study – Chapter 3 (#1)
Tyler Linkous
3/31/2015
Between the three choices of disk mirroring, computer mirroring, or an SAN (Storage Area Network), in my opinion, is the Storage Area Network. With that being said, the reasoning behind my choice of the SAN is that it would probably be the most secure and the most difficult for a hacker to gain access into. This is probably the best thing all the casinos can have for saving their client and customers information. A Storage area network (SAN) is a dedicated high-speed network (or sub network) that interconnects and presents shared pools of storage devices to multiple servers. “A Storage Area Network moves storage resources off the common user network and reorganizes them into an independent, high-performance network. This allows each server to access shared storage as if it were a drive directly attached to the server. When a host wants to access a storage device on the SAN, it sends out a block-based access request for the storage device.” This is great for maintaining information as it can be easily accessible and very clean but at the same time it can also be the best and safest prevention technique against hackers. The price is worth the amount of high tech options you can get with an SAN to keep your information safe from within. “Storage area networks are managed centrally and Fibre Channel SANs have the reputation of being expensive, complex and difficult to manage. The emergence of iSCSI has reduced these challenges by encapsulating SCSI commands into IP packets for transmission over an Ethernet connection, rather than a Fibre Channel connection. Instead of learning, building and managing two networks -- an Ethernet local area network (LAN) for user communication and a Fibre Channel SAN for storage -- an organization can now use its existing knowledge and infrastructure for both LANs and SANs.” If you have the money, which these casinos surely do since just one casino gifted around 286 million dollars, you can afford to buy these high end SANs which will save you from all of your customers identities being stolen. The casinos wish to keep secret the name of its data backup service provider as well as the location of the data backup facility because it stops hackers from easily discovering flaws in their network and eventually getting all of the information stored on the back up networks. They should also keep secret everything on their databases on just their backups because if you know where a database is there are easy ways of getting the information out of the system if you know what you are doing.
Discussion Questions: 1. All companies should have needs for high reliability of data processing and data access because the most important thing about a company is putting the customer first and that includes their information that is stored when they purchase something. But to list 3 companies that would have these needs would be Nike, Adidas, and Under-Armor. All of these are manufacturing and sales companies so it requires that you maintain the customers’ information which includes if they purchase by card and their name and phone number, etc. Every company has the same need for these things because all customers are important. If the databases end up getting taken over by hackers all information is up for grabs because they can either release the information for everyone to steal or sell it on the black market. 2. Identify at least three companies where high reliability of data processing and data access are not critical.
Arch Coal
BNI Coal
Consol Energy