Abdulalah Al-Jobore
Unit 33 – The impact of Communication Technology on Business
P4
P4 describe the actions taken to reduce risks to security whilst using the internet for
different types of businesses
Wide range of business activities are progressively occurring on the internet, as businesses can buy
and sell from each other (Business to business transaction) and also selling to private consumers
( Business to consumer transaction). Due to the increase of the number of activities taking place on
internet, new businesses that want to open an online sales channel (web presence), will need to
consider a number of things before planning to do that. For example, one of these considerations is
that does the business have the capacity to meet increased demand? That mean does the business
can cope with potential global interest in its products/service. Therefore, when a business decide to
go online (an online sales channel), and then they must consider a few issues before doing it:
Setting up an internet-linked computer
Equipment requirements and costs
The first issue that a business must consider before using the internet, is how they would be
connected to the web. First of all, they will need to purchase PCs (hardware) that will enable them to
connect to the web, using the traditional method (cables/lines) or wireless technology. If a business
decided to buy in bulk, then the costs of these equipment will be reduced further, as when you buy
products individually, then obviously will be higher. There are other costs in addition to PCs, such as
printers, routers/modems, cabling as well as computer software.
In order to be connect effectively to the internet, it is important consider that the website need to
be hosting on a web service that will allow the customers to access the website on internet, as it will
make it available on the internet. Therefore, hosting will help the business to house, serve and
maintain files which will allow the users to able to see the content of the website. Hosting the
website will have many different factors, which have to be considered when going online as it will
impact the overall success of the website. These factors include, the website functions (such as
navigation system), performance (speed of response) and reliability (The availability of the website
and the frequently of the website suffers from downtime). In additions, a business will have a
domain name which will help to identifies it as belonging to a particular domain. Therefore, there
will be costs associated with this, it will costs a business a small amount of money for them to have
their own domain name, but hosting services will depend on the type of website the business will
have and the professional techniques and feature in the website. Therefore, small businesses will
have a cheap site that simply acts as an online billboard will cost them around £300 to £500. This is
because the business will not use high features, functions and transactional site, as the website will
be designed for information and communications purpose. However, the average costs of a large
business websites might be around £2000 to £3000.
Protecting a computer system and methods of reducing risk
It is important for any business to consider the security of its PCs when setting up a PC for internet
use, as there are a number of potential security threats, and these include:
Trojans – this is a type of malware (virus) that is often disguised as legitimate software
Worms – this is a type of malware that spreads copies of itself from computer to computer
without any human interaction.
Hackers – It is an individual who uses computer, networking or any other skills to overcome
a technical problem to someone’s computer
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