Introduction
The Sequential Label and Supply Company (often referred to as SLS) is a
. national supplier of stock labels as well as a manufacturer of custom labels
and distributor of supplies often used in conjunction with labels, such as
envelopes, adhesive tape, mailing cartons, and related office supplies. The
company was founded by Fred Chin in 1992 and has grown steadily in the
intervening years.
As the case study begins, the company has recognized its growing
dependence on information technology and has organized its information
technology group as shown in Figure D-1. (FOUND ON LAST PAGE)
Trouble
It started out like any other day for Amy Windahl at Sequential Label
and Supply Company. She liked her technical support job at the help desk.
Taking calls and helping the office workers with PC problems was not gla-
morous, but it was challenging and paid pretty well. Some of her friends
worked at bigger companies, some at higher-tech companies, but everyone
kept up with each other, and they all agreed that technology jobs were a
good way to pay the bills.
The phone rang. This was not a big deal for Amy. She answered her
phone about 35 times an hour, 315 times a day, nine days every two weeks.
The first call of the day started out the same as usual, with a worried user
hoping Amy could help him out of a jam. The call display on her screen
gave her all the facts: the user’s name, his phone number, the department
in which he worked, where his office was on the company campus, and a
list of all the calls he’d made in the past.
“Hi, Bob,” she said. “Did you get that document formatting problem
squared away after our last call?”
“Sure did, Amy. Hope we can figure out what’s going on today.”
“We’ll try, Bob. Tell me about it.”
“Well, my PC is acting weird,” Bob said. “When I go to the screen that
has my e-rnail program running, it doesn’t respond to the mouse or the
keyboard.”
“Did you try a reboot yet, Bob?”
“Sure did. But the window wouldn’t close, and I had to turn it off. Once
it finished the reboot, and I opened the e-rnail program.Tt’s just like it was
before-no response at all. The other stuff is working OK, but really, really
slowly. Even my Internet browser is sluggish.”
“OK, Bob. We’ve tried the usual stuff we can do over the phone. Let me
open a case, and I’ll dispatch a tech over as soon as possible.”
Amy looked up at the LED tally board on the wall at the end of the room.
She saw that there were only two technicians dispatched to desks ide support
at the moment, and since it was the day shift, there were four available.
“Shouldn’t be long at all, Bob.”
She clicked off the line from Bob and typed her notes into ISIS, the com-
pany’s Information Status and Issues System. She assigned the newly gener-
ated case to the deskside dispatch queue, knowing the roving desks ide
team would be paged with the details and would attend to Bob’s problem
in just a few minutes.
A moment later, Amy looked up to see Charles Moody walking briskly
down the hall. Charlie was the senior manager of the server administration
team. He was being trailed by three of his senior technicians as he made a
beeline from his office to the door of the server room where the company
servers were kept in a controlled environment. They all looked worried.
Just then, Amy’s screen beeped to alert her of a new e-mail. She glanced
down. It beeped again-and again. It started beeping constantly. She
clicked on the envelope icon, and after a short delay, the mail window
opened. She had 47 new e-rnails in her inbox. She opened one from Davey
Martinez, an acquaintance from the Accounting Department. The subject
line said, “Wait till you see this.” The message body read, “Look what this
has to say about our managers’ salaries … ” There was an icon for a file
attachment that Amy did not recognize. But, she knew Davey, he often sent
her interesting and funny e-rnails. She clicked on the icon.
Her PC showed the hourglass pointer icon for a second and then
resumed showing its normal pointer. Nothing happened. She clicked on
the icon for the next e-mail message. Nothing happened. Her phone rang
again. She clicked on the ISIS icon on her computer desktop to activate the
call management software, and activated her headset. “Hello, Tech Sup-
port, how can I help you?” She couldn’t greet the caller by name because
ISIS had not yet opened the screen on her Pc.
“Hello, this is Erin Williams in Receiving.”
Amy glanced down at her screen. Still no ISIS. She glanced up to the tally
board and was surprised to see the inbound call counter tallying up waiting
calls like digits on a stopwatch. Amy had never seen so many calls come in
at one time.
“Hi, Erin,” Amy said. “What’s up?”
“Nothing,” Erin answered. “That’s the problem.” The rest of the call was
an exact replay of Bob’s earlier call, except Amy couldn’t type the notes
into ISIS and had to jot them down on a legal pad. She also couldn’t dis-
patch the deskside support team either. She looked at the tally board. It had
gone dark. No numbers at all.
Then she saw Charlie running down the hall from the server room. He
didn’t look worried anymore. He looked frantic.
Amy picked up the phone. She wanted to check with her supervisor
about what to do now. There was no dial tone.
The next day at SLS found everyone in technical support busy restoring
computer systems to their former state and installing new virus and worm
control software. Amy found herself learning how to install desktop com-
puter operating systems and applications as SLS made a heroic effort to
recover from the previous day’s attack.
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Write My Essay For Me- Do you think this event was caused by an insider or outsider? Why do
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do to be ready for the next incident? - Do you think this attack was the result of a virus, or a worm? Why do
you think this?
Starting Out
Fred Chin, CEO of Sequential Label and Supply, leaned back in his
leather chair. He propped his feet up on the long mahogany table in the
conference room where the SLS Board of Directors had just adjourned their
quarterly meeting.
“What do you think about our computer security problem?” he asked
Gladys Williams, the company’s chief information officer, or CIa. He was
referring to last month’s outbreak of a malicious worm on the company’s
computer network.
Gladys replied, “I think we have a real problem this time, and we need
to put together a real solution, not just a quick patch like the last time.”
Eighteen months ago someone had brought an infected floppy disk in from
home and infected the network. To prevent this from happening again, all
the floppy drives were removed from the company computers.
Fred wasn’t convinced. “Let’s just add another thousand dollars in the
next budget to fix it up.”
Gladys shook her head. “You’ve known for some time now that this
business runs on computers. That’s why you hired me as CIa. I’ve been
researching information security, and my staff and I have some ideas to dis-
cuss with you. I’ve asked Charlie Moody to come in today to talk about it.
He’s waiting to speak with us.”
Charlie joined the meeting, and Fred said, “Hello, Charlie. As you know
the Board of Directors met today. They received a report on the expenses
and lost production from the virus outbreak last month, and they directed
us to improve the security of our computers. Gladys says you can help me
understand what we need to do about it.”
“To start with,” Charlie said, “instead of setting up a computer security
solution, we need to develop an information security program. We need a
thorough review of our policies and practices, and we
