Technology Solution, Research Paper Example

Subject of Course Project

Network Security

Business Problem Statement

Since many companies rely on the internet and intraoffice networks to transfer information, it is imperative that they adopt a strict network security policy to protect important documents. Recently, the social media accounts of many businesses have been hacked which indicates that they have a poor level of internet security. In these situations, it is important for information technology professionals to understand that it is possible for employees to gain access to files that they’re not supposed to and hackers from outside the business could gain private information. As a result, it is important to increase security standards to protect this important information and protect against unintended access to business accounts.

On February 18, 2013, someone hacked the Burger King Twitter account as a prank and replaced the Burger King logo with the McDonald’s logo (Manker, 2013). In addition, they posted vulgar tweets, said terrible things about employees, and posted inappropriate videos. It took the company more than an hour to shut down the hacked Twitter feed, which negatively impacted the company’s reputation. While the company responded to this by posting “We apologize to our fans and followers who have been receiving erroneous tweets about other members of our industry and additional inappropriate topics”, the company would have benefitted if it had tighter internet security and the situation could have been prevented altogether.

Name of the Company or Organization

Burger King

Brief Description of Proposed Solution

While it’s difficult to determine whether the hacking was an inside job or done outside of the company, the first step that Burger King needs to take is to ensure that the password for their Twitter account and other social media is difficult to guess. It’s best to use at least one capital letter, numbers, letters, and one symbol in the password to prevent both humans and machines from guessing it. Second, the people in charge of the company’s social media have to have improved protection on their computers. To prevent unauthorized access from within the company, the employees should all have passwords on their computers that follow the format mentioned above. In addition, their sessions should time out after a few minutes in order to ensure that someone isn’t able to use the computer to walk away.

General Benefits it Will Provide the Organization

Social media hacks are bad for the company’s publicity and improved security measures will prevent these kinds of problems from occurring in the future.

Audience to Whom I’m Presenting the Recommendations

The recommendations will be written as if they will be presented to Burger King’s social media and advertising departments. Despite the fact that this report will be written for one specific company, its advice should be followed by other companies who wish to prevent themselves from entering a similar situation. Therefore, any company that uses social media as a method of advertising themselves, which is most, would benefit from regulating their social media passwords and account access more tightly.

References

Manker R. (2013). Burger King Twitter hack: BK latest company in social media spotlight. Chicago Tribune. Retrieved from http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2013-02-19/business/ct-burger-king-twitter-hack-0219-20130218_1_tweets-mcdonalds-hack

Microsoft. (n.d.). Create Strong Passwords. Retrieved from http://www.microsoft.com/security/online-privacy/passwords-create.aspx

van der Aalst, WMP. (2011). Process Mining: Discovery, Conformance and Enhancement of Business Processes. Springer.

Villasenor J. (2010). The Hacker in Your Hardware: The Next Security Threat. Scientific American. Retrieved from http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=the-hacker-in-your-hardware