The team has identified several security issues that they want to resolve before they move forward with the Web site design.
Lou would like you to help the team understand encryption and digital certification technologies and how they might be used in the new Web site.
2 pages work based on the article Case 4 - Midwest TEK - information security You are an information technology (IT) consultant to Midwest TEK (MT), a major industrial equipment distributor. Its products include materials-handling machinery for assembly lines and product-packaging areas. Although an important number of MT customers have product lines that require moving fluids, MT has not expanded into that business.
Instead, it works with another supplier that specializes in fluid-related products. MT has been in business for more than 70 years and sells more than $200 million worth of parts and equipment each year to its 3000 customers. MT's customers are located all over the world, but most are in the United States, Mexico, Malaysia, China, and Singapore.
Lou Andrews, who is MT's sales director, has hired you to help him as he begins planning for a new Web site. MT plans to operate the new website with two other companies that sell products such as bearings, seals, hoses, and hose fittings used in moving fluids and services such as design layout, and installation of materials-handling equipment and that are complementary to MT's products.
The Web site would provide MT customers a single destination where they could buy MT products along with the products and services of MT's strategic partners. The site would also offer information about current trends in industrial equipment technologies and the application of those technologies along with a used equipment marketplace in which MT customers could list equipment for sale. Lou believes that giving customers a convenient way to liquidate old equipment will make it easier for his sales representatives to sell new equipment to those customers.
Lou has put together an internet team to examine the feasibility of the website, including key employees from MT's Sales, Finance, Product Engineering, and IT Services departments. The team has identified several security issues that they want to resolve before they move forward with the Web site design. Lou would like you to help the team understand encryption and digital certification technologies and how they might be used in the new Web site.
Prepare a presentation for the team explaining what digital certificates are and how they might be useful to MT, its strategic partners, and their customers if they were to be used in the operation of the new Web site.
Be sure to discuss which parts of the site or communication among MT, its strategic partners, and their customers might benefit from extended validation certificates and consider the potential cost of acquiring digital certificates of any type in your evaluation of their benefits. At the same time, explain how and why MT might use encrypted email in communicating with its strategic partners and with its customers.