Business Intelligence: Process And Utilization Of BI Essay At AT&T.

Choose an organisation in the industry you have worked in the previous assignment that have used
some BI solutions.
Explore the process and utilisation of the BI work they have done so far.
Describe the existing works and present the results in graphical format.
Understand the key components of the business and explore potential inputs that can change their
outputs in one or more aspects of their business.
Show how new variables can impact their business and prepare a proposal to the business.

Two Definitions of Business Intelligence

The term business intelligence has two major definitions which give different perspective of the term intelligence. The first being human intelligence where it relates to the human mind, knowledge, and capacity when it comes to business activities. This field takes into account the cognitive faculty of any businessperson and bases them on the various platforms of business intelligence when it comes to exploration of the new business field that requires the application of the human intelligence based on experience, knowledge, and skills (Moss, and Atre, 2003). The key backbone of this business intelligence is how good the businessperson can make the decision regarding the operation and management of the business when presented with a business opportunity and or a business problem.

The second business intelligence definition focuses on the valued information for its relevance and currency. This relates to the businessperson’s knowledge of information and their efficiency in technology to conduct excellent management of the business organization. This second definition defines the aspect of business intelligence in a bigger picture of application of one’s business skills and the incorporation of technology for acquiring, giving a smooth access to and the analysis of relevant data to information so that the businessperson can make a wise decision based on the data and information provided (Yeoh, and Koronios, 2010). This business intelligence requires that the businesspersons have all the relevant knowledge of every factor of production, their strengths, weaknesses, and potential so that he can clearly analyze data that will be helpful in the process of decision-making. This knowledge in any business organization relates to such aspects as competition, partners, consumers, internal operation, market forces, and the external environment. An in-depth knowledge of these factors will ensure that they make good and viable decision in relevant situations like marketing, production, or sales exercise (Negash, 2004).

Competitive intelligence is a major branch of business intelligence that mainly focuses on the external competitive environment. Relevant information are collected based on the business’s competitors on certain aspects such as the quality, pricing, quality and distribution channels used by the competing firms and this is used by the business to improve on certain areas of their productivity in the production line to improve on quality and quantity, and also externally with factors to consider such as the market forces, the market preference, the market demand and the best channel of distribution so that they can become better from their competitors and gain the lion's share of the market for the products that they are producing (Negash, and Gray, 2008). This paper explores the real business intelligence used by AT&T organization, their major business intelligence components, their design and efforts made in the implementation of business intelligence, the technological requirements that they have incorporated in their organization and the various business intelligence technique that they are being put into practice at AT&T organization (Herschel, and Jones, 2005).

Business intelligence tools are ways used by different organizations and companies to monitor their continuous data in an effort of generating business insights. This is useful as it helps the organization in making a smart and informed decision. For it to be effective, a business intelligence tool should have the following set of characteristics:

Business Intelligence Tool Characteristics

The business intelligence tool should have proper channels of connections and an excellent visualization of data to enable it to make a faster meaning from the data.

The business intelligence tool should have an excellent user interface that provides the best interaction platform. Should focus more on drag and drop, and minimize command prompts and complex programming for data manipulation and retrieval of information.

The business intelligence tool should have a fast processor that enables quick sharing of data and information.

It should be able to provide multiple views of data for the best business insight possible.

The tool should be able to manipulate any form of data whether in numerical, alphabetical, functional and even symbols.

Data volume in AT&T has increased enormously over the past six years. There has been an estimated 50,000% percentage increase, and the figures are still increasing. To counter this enormous growth in data, the company has invested forty million United States dollars in running their wireline and wireless communication networks (Singhal, 2000).  It is estimated that the company collects a total of thirty billion data each hour and uses this data in creating the perfect customer experience through efficiency optimization. This clearly led to the company to introduce business intelligence in their operation since no one could handle such huge data and yet it is a continuous figure and grows every day (Lönnqvist, and Pirttimäki, 2006).

AT&T has to embrace business intelligence by putting work in a tower-outage analyzer. The gathering of information by AT&T from these outage tower analyzers has been challenging to the consumer as most often calls are simply added to the nearby towers. The analyzer in these outage towers was characterized by the offering of data driven by the consumer in the form of picture activity in the affected region. Through business intelligence in this technology, AT&T has been able to create a priority list and decide on which to tend to first about repairs in the regions that have had greatest customer negative impact regarding communication process. Through the implementation of outage tower analyzers, AT&T has released a report showing that there has been a 59% increase and improvement in customer experience in the communication sector (Jourdan et al., 2008).

The organization has also used business intelligence system to capture network policies. AT&T has made it their responsibility to design, development, and management of virtualized network functions. By Doing so, they aim at creating a dynamic, flexible and policy driven manner with regards to changing system software. These new policies have enabled the organization to interpret, evaluate and express policies and then pass them to network elements for enforcement. These policies have been formulated by AT&T as a means to capture the service provider's intelligence about domain knowledge that gives an explanation on how networks and services are managed by service providers. The business intelligence has made it possible for the organization to automate the lifecycle of network services. This is on performance, service management through analysis of their control loops and fault analysis and correction. The have also enabled their overseer of the control loop which controls how service impairment and virtual machines are detected and resolved. Through enforcing of policies In areas such as control loop detecting that if a machine is faulty and not responding, then the virtual machine needs to be restarted has helped in ensuring customer satisfaction. To ensure correct overseer of these virtual machines; AT&T has developed the following framework:

1. Policy creation: this is a stage that enables the creation of policies by the specified network operators and service designers via the user interface.
2. Policy evaluation: this refers to policy reactivity to the desired AT&T regulation.
3. Policy decision distribution: this refers to the channeling of AT&T policies to be enforced and respected by all.
4. Policy validation: this validates the policy that is designated to minimize the risk of introducing unreliable policies.

AT&T has used the above procedure to enforce policies in its business intelligence system in the technological and communication industry.

The AT&T advanced automation facilities have been noted to operate efficiently and fast. They are more consistent when it comes to response to network and service conditioning.

AT&T has also improved its threat intelligence system. As an act to ensure safe continuity of communication and business operation, the organization has made it possible to examine many security events in a short period. This has enabled the organization to stay alerted and be on the forefront of the prevention of any form of attack. Through enabling the business to detect, analyze, and address a security concern, it had improved efficiency and reduced the spread of threat and attacks. The threat intelligence is a security foundation that is built on various factors that form the security backbone with the example of products, people, tools, and processes (Chang et al., 2006). The threat intelligence aid in the business activities as it prevents any form of commotion that may arise from the threat by providing early detect of the threat and thus ensuring peace in a business environment. By providing unparalleled visibility into data pattern, the threat intelligence monitors any threat activity across all networks and thus helping individual and corporate businesses to customize their security needs. The threat intelligence uses some signatures such as analytics, data streams, and intelligence to help in the identification of known and unknown threats.  The AT&T searches across data that crosses their network system with examples of applications, security services, and mobile systems and data centers, identifies and addresses a threat for customers in their network.

Data intelligence is another form of business intelligence that AT&T has made it useful. Through analyzing of business data, both the current and the past and correlating it to the expected future, business intelligence has been able to make the almost precise decision that should be followed to realize a return. The information can be informed of graphical presentation or factual data that the management can use in their decision-making. This information has proven very useful in the expansion of the business. Where the business needs a report on whether to explore new market and the threats associated with that. Factors such as increased productivity in the production line, increasing the number of production lines to create new products, the amount of capital to be invested and the correct measure to be taken has been properly handled by business intelligence system. Threats of future losses have also acted as warning giving the management a clear picture of the policies they will implement to avoid the occurrences such as reduction of human resource monthly wage bills, changing the product in line with the taste and preference of the consumers or lowering the prices of their commodities with respect to market forces in an attempt to make more sales.

Data intelligence is also a form of business intelligence that has been incorporated in AT&T. Data has been collected in a way that it covers the whole scope of the business. This is to ensure that every part of the consumer market is well represented in matters such as pricing, taste, and preference, availability of the products in the markets, competitors’ products and their pricing among other. This data is then formulated into useful information that can be presented to the management committee in the process of decision-making. The data will provide essential information’s that will act as cornerstones for the decision on the next step to be made concerning the organization's prosperity. Since AT&T has a huge and powerful information-processing tool and by embracing business intelligence, they have been able to identify the different consumer needs, corporate needs and governmental need and have been able to provide services per their expectation.

Machine learning is another branch that AT&T business intelligence has ventured in. Through the availing of a list of several machine and equipment and their functionality, costs and other relevant information, the organization has ensured a boost in the production process. Human labour will be replaced by machines which is more efficient. They are also known to produce quality products when in comparison to human resource. Another advantage of machines is that they do not get tired as much as the human resource and can run even in late hours in the case of the heavy production process. Business intelligence has incorporated the use of machines to increase productivity, improve the quality of products, reduce the cost of production, as there will be a reduction in monthly wage bill from the less number of human resource required to run the machines and will boost the economy. Business intelligence provides the operation instructions of the machine for it to operate efficiently. From the database found in AT&T, a production company can find a machine of their desire, compare it with other, and make the correct decision based on its functionality, durability, cost, and efficiency.

Proactive measure is also a form of business intelligence in AT&T. This is with regards to monitoring of business activities in various points of the country and ensuring a smooth business operating environment.

Advanced Analytics is a business intelligence tool that makes use of the technology to understand and select out abnormal and malicious activities in the business world. This is due to the data pattern monitoring that the business intelligence continuously process and an extraordinary data will be detected, and an alarm will be raised on the same. AT&T uses this tool in monitoring economic trends in the country. Through the engagement of legal business activities, the data trend is expected to be normal. However, in the case of a sudden rise or fall of a business trend and if there is a problem, then the business intelligence will raise the alarm. The abnormal rise may be because of commodity overpricing for example in the incident of a monopolistic form of business. Moreover, since consumer requires the product, they will be forced to buy the product at a higher price than expected. This will be detected by the business intelligence at AT&T and correction measures initiated such as price control measure or advertisement of the production line to potential investors and entrepreneurs who will engage in the production of the product, offering competition to the monopoly company who will be forced to lower their prices if they are to maintain their consumer market share. Advanced analytic can also be useful in cases where the business is not providing the expected quality of the product, through conducting a consumer survey, AT&T will analyze consumer complaints of certain products and services. They will then alert the relevant authorities, or the company concerned so that they can make relevant improvement of correction techniques.

AT&T program is focused on the provision of the best cloud technology. They also foster of providing the network virtualization intended in the offering of services at the expense of reduced expenditure and capital operation. The AT&T came up with a software ECOMP (Enhanced Control Orchestration, management, and policy) that is efficient in the delivery of products and services regarding their creation, design and life cycle. The software by AT&T consists of subsystems that fully cover the architectural design. These are:

1. A design time environment: this is primarily used in the design, definition and the creation of program platform
2. Execution time environment: this is mainly used in the execution of program logics that was created in the design phase. It is characterized by the utilization of the closed loop and policy-drove automation.

ECOMP is used in the creation of increased value for our network to consumers by creating an onboarding services. It also enables the creation of a new ecosystem that is based on cloud consumers and the provision of enterprise services that is aimed at minimizing the operational and capital expenditure. By doing so, the software is defined to have achieved operational efficiency in cloud business operation (Gangadharan, and Swami, 2004, June).  The software delivers an enhanced customer experience by giving them the mandate of reconfiguring their services in network operation. Since the organization does not conduct a direct support legacy, it formed a partnership with OSS's to improve the customer experience when it comes to both the physical and virtual elements. ECOMP is noted to provide efficiency by providing a real-time automation of the various cloud network services that the offer. They also involve themselves in life cycle management. Also, this is made possible the operational management framework.

The software gives telecommunication and cloud connectivity. It also offers solution vendors, and to interested third parties, they provide an overview platform on aspects such as Orchestration, Enhanced Control, Management, and Policy (ECOMP) that operate within the organization's cloud system specifically the AT&T integrated cloud infrastructure. Initially, the cloud technology primarily focused on information technology (Vitt et al., 2002). The cloud technology made it possible to manage and operate diverse workloads such as:

1. Real-time application of virtual machines. This was done on commercial hardware where it was found to be appropriate.
2. The assignment of applications and workloads to virtual machines.
3. There was the movement of dependent function and applications to various virtual machines on the server across the data.
4. The control of application that has been made available to the virtual machine.

The AT&T strategy is based on network function and virtualization based on cloud technology. This virtual network function enables the running of an application, and the ECOMP makes use of the dynamic capabilities of cloud-based technology in defining, managing and instantiating network services, and infrastructure. This shaped the ECOMP functionalities, and the AT&T integrated cloud infrastructure enabling it to converge some clouds into a single corporate cloud that is capable of interoperating dynamically with the third party and the controlled ACOMP virtual functions.

The ECOMP platform enables the creation, design and lifecycle management to be enabled in any product or service. For the use of ECOMP in product creation, there should be a metadata-driven architectural design and enforced policy to ensure their flexibility in ways that they can be delivered and used. There should be a design period that will define, design, and program the platform and a runtime execution framework that will be used in the execution of logic programs in the design time framework (Gupta et al., 2006).

A reference architecture framework developed by the European Telecommunication Standards Institutes supports the NFV Management and Orchestration (MANO). It constitutes the VNF Manager, Orchestrator, and the Virtual infrastructure manager. There is also the inclusion of policy and controller components in the ECOMP. Policy plays a vital role in managing and controlling of the behaviors of various management frameworks and VNFs. The ECOMP design framework is useful in the creation of services and resources for product definition. The metadata driven Generic manager makes it possible for a quick onboard of new VNF types. This is in fact with the avoidance of the long process of development and integration cycles. Putting the VNF onboard enables the design time frame facilities to be easily incorporated into the future services. ECOMP is considered an enhanced VNF manager given its management and orchestration architectural characteristics (Michalewicz et al., 2006). 

Metadata is a critical architectural component that focuses on both the methodology and abstraction. It is used in the expression of operational and structural aspects regarding the visualized elements that include the products, resources, and services that are expressed informality model space. The purpose of these objects is to embody a semantic that resembles aspects in the real world in the modeled elements. The modeling process makes use of features and behavior similar to the natural environment in an attempt to drive the architectural consistency and efficiency in operation. The representation of the underlying elements can be extended by the designer in various ways and be uniformly consumed by the runtime execution framework. The AT&T‘s design‘s benefit is for a virtualized network plan; it is a much decreased time for service concept to the market. The management of this design is primarily in the execution environment as running it through the service specific basis could be the form of an obstacle to the goal intended (Turban et al., 2008).

Given the vision intended for our ECOMP, we rely on the installation of both the network element and the services by both the consumer and the provider in a dynamic process that constitutes a real-time response to actionable events. The dynamic services such as a strong design framework should be created. The framework should allow specification of services in all sectors be it in the modeling stage of the relationship that makes up the services and the resources to be used. There should be a clear specification of the policy rules that is meant to control the server behavior and the specific application, and the analytics in the closed-loop events that is supposed to be elastic for the management services. There should be a development of an orchestration and framework that is meant to provide the automated instantiation of the specific services when the need arises (Plevel et al., 1994). Such services as managing the demands in the elastic relationship require the installation of the automated services. There should also be an analytic framework that will function primarily as a monitor of service behavior in the process of the service lifecycle. This will be specific to the base design, the analytics, and the policies implemented for their execution to deliver a response from the control framework. This will be resourceful in dealing with situations that different regarding healing to those that need resource scaling for an elastic adjustment based on the demand variations.

This is a component in the design time environment that provides multiple organizations with the mandate of creating and managing AT&T assets about modelling. The models are categorized into four types:

Resource model that represent a crucial AT&T capability in the model. This includes such aspects like infrastructure example being the cloud resource such as storage and compute. Network resource too does fall under this category and represents functions such as network connectivity. The application resource features aspects of the software application.

The service model is defined with a perfectly formed objective with a resource that is developed and operated in an AT&T environment. Service support may be personalized to support only one customer but in some instance, it can serve more than one.

Automating the Lifecycle of Network Services

Product modelling includes services that have a commercialize attribute designed for customer billing and ordering based on the underlying services. For example, an offer model will specify product bundling based on specific market configurations focused on consumer purchase.

The specific model in the ASDC master catalog is reusable by the entire enterprise. Its contents are distributed to the runtime execution to be executed and interoperated. This model allows the AT&T to reduce the time required for bringing in new services, resource market, and products and ensures that the AT&T opens its network to industry and partners for a successful onboarding.

This is the platform that plays a crucial role in the realization of the ECOMP vision based on the closed loop automation and lifecycle management. The platform in the policy catalog's main objective is to control, affect, and modify behavior the complete ECOMP environment. It makes use of field configurable rules that do not necessary require a development cycle. The policy is also considered a constraint to influence the behavior of certain systems and functions. The policy is known to permit the control or management of complex mechanisms through the process of abstraction. In a system that has incorporated high goals, a complex design architecture, and technology used and the supportive pattern and methods, the policy used is mainly updateable made possible by the implementation of the policy in various behaviors. In any ECOMP, policies are used in controlling, influencing and ensuring a full compliance of the set goals (Wright ET AL., 1993).

This is the definition and execution of the workflow. It can also be defined as the process of managing the completion of a task. This involves the aspect of graphically designing and modifying the process of workflow form the basis of differentiation between orchestration and standard compilation. The orchestration is involved with the adaptability and an improved time to market integration. The orchestration is considered the key driver of flexibility in architecture. In unison with policy, they provide a process through which a guidance can be provided through technical and business policies.  In the ECOMP, orchestration does not involve human beings interventions nor guidance in most cases. The human relation ends in the design process. The orchestration engine will expose a reusable service in an attempt to support a large number of orchestration requests. This will allow any component of the architecture to be able to execute a process recipe. This will ensure that the orchestration service will consume a given recipe until its completion. The service model is noted to maintain reusability and consistency in the process of orchestration. This ensures the version and structure of the workflow plan in executes in the environment. The end-to-end automation of the master service orchestration is considered its primary function. It is the one liable for the release and relocation of the VNFs in ECOMP overall support in management and operation process. The orchestration recipe is retrieved from the ECOMP in the service design and creation component. This is the component where all service designs are developed. Controllers are useful in service installation. They also act as the key players in supporting the ongoing service management process (Larson, 2009). 

These virtualized activities occur across different layers of functionality. They are expected to be arranged in a certain significantly dynamic manner. This is so that they can provide the real-time response in case of actionable events from the virtualized resources. DCEA contained inside the ECOMP framework collects key usage, performance, events, and telemetry data from the dynamic components. The multi-vendor infrastructure is the ordered to compute different analytics, and it gives feedback with an appropriate response base on the noted anomalies (Watson, and Wixom, 2007).

The following are graphs representing different parameters in the AT&T corporation based on their involvement selling of services that they offer to its consumers.

The organization made use of the string bite-sized acquisition to move the prices of their shares up. The company realized a close 5.9% of share price.                   

ii The AT&T revenue graph

The chart measures the quarterly growth of the company over the years.                                 

iii AT&T profit margin graph

                         

Business components and potential inputs that can change their outputs in one or more aspects 

Stachowiak et al. (2007) explained that business intelligence is the process that involves taking an enormous amount of data, then performing analysis on the data and finally delivering a report that is based on the analysis done on the given data. The report should act as a summary of a condensed information that makes particular sense for the data under analysis. The report should then be used in making a business decision and ease the workload that the management has to process while making an essential call while running the business organization (Anandarajan et al., 2012).

This business intelligence component gives a directory through which businesspersons can break down huge data with the aid of complex tools such as applications that will allow them to easily navigate every dimension of the data on their various hierarchy and time. This platform of business intelligence is majorly known to provide multidimensional and summarized views of the given data that the business had collected. This is then used for analysis, planning, modeling, and reporting of various aspects so that they can make excellent decisions for the business based on facts from the data (Dhar, and Stein, 1997). This online platform is also useful in working with data warehouses that have been designed specifically for specific enterprise intelligence system. The software designed for reporting will continuously generate views based on the data fed to the system that will ensure that the management is aware of the current situation of the business. Certain business intelligence as specifically useful in the storage and analysis of data such as the data warehouse and data mining. They are very useful tool for forecasting and decision support system, document management, and warehousing. They also provide data mapping and information visualization (Chaudhuri et al., 2011).

This is a business intelligence component that focuses on data mining and prediction. Analytics can then be done on this through statistical analysis techniques that help in predicting future business occurrences based on certain factual measures (Chen et al., 2012).

This is a business intelligence component that acts as a backbone through which various pieces of business data are plugged into so that the aggregates provide relevant information from the data. Taking an example of a scorecard that has portlets defining the financial merits will provide information on the organization's growth metrics (Liautaud, and Hammond, 2000).

This is a component of business intelligence that permits the real-time distribution of metrics through social communication channels such as emails and messaging systems as a platform for business analysis.

This component form a significant base of business intelligence. Its analysis is based on business data integration and orientation. This business intelligence component supports data propagation through handling numerous enterprise records that are then integrated, cleansed, aggregated and a query task is then developed. Most of the mart maps contain operational data that is the updateable set of integrated data that is used for the tactical process of decision making based on a particular subject. It is characterized by containing live data and no memory storage in case of historical reference to be made at a later date. The sources of data for the data marts and warehousing ranges from the operational database, through external data to historical data category as long as the data is relevant to the line of business application (Cody et al., 2002).

The management of local energy can affect the business heavily. Since the mainly harness electrical energy in their operation. With the growing world's population and the growing competition for electrical energy for both consumer and industrial usage, they may run short of the same, and this will affect them as the will not be able to grow (Northrup, and Larson, 1979). 

Global warming has been on the rise over the past decade. This will affect them, as the friendly environment that they now operate under will turn to a hash condition not suitable for any business operation on their side. Safety precaution such as carelessness when income to waste management and lack of proper policies to implement their control could affect their business activities (Hausman et al., 1993).

In the present day, the organization will have suffered due to the availability of fleet in main road creating jams that will hinder their movement and reaching goods to consumer destination.

The organization has thrived to achieve a worldwide network security by ensuring a comprehensive security alert system maintained by qualified and experienced security professionals. The team led by a chief security officer works hard with the aim of maintaining a secure global network and services that come in handy with this networks. The network security team is also tasked with other forms of functions such as the provision of security to consumers who have are facing network security threat or providing of secure lines to important people whose information are way valuable to be tapped by hackers. To ensure that the organization stays hand in hand with the trending and emerging technology, the organization collects reviews, information, and feedbacks. (Mathios et al., 1989).  This is with regards to the corporation's network security efficiency and implements new and viable control posture that help the to keep pace with telecommunication industrial developments. Critical technological solutions are made as the recommendation to the organization in case of a network gap that could be exploited, and this has helped the AT&T maintain an excellent security posture to consumers of their network services.

The organization has also taken their network security much seriously. Aided by a committee of experts, the Chief Security Officer at AT&T established policies. In addition to policies, he also comes up with a comprehensive program that ensures network security at every facet of networking and computing environment in the organization is adhered to (Beutnagel et al., 1999).  By chairing the AT&T security advisory council, the Chief Security Officer enabled the discussion and creation of solutions to enact new network security strategies, concerns, and visions. And since the AT&T global organization maintain a direct line of communication with AT&T business units, they are able to evaluate threats as soon as they appear through the determination of the best protective measures, creation of an immediate response capabilities and ensuring that their organization has complied with the best security practice that they have found to be effective.

Through the creation and enforcing of security control standards, the AT&T has been able to maintain a security policy that has helped the organization maintain a health network. These standards that have been based on leading industrial standards such as the ISO ensures that the organization meets certain requirements that make it easy for their consumers to ensure the network the provider and makes it have for their network system to be infiltrated by hackers. However, given that the technology is constantly evolving, the AT&T support the continuous revision of the security standards through modification and re-evaluation as the network industry continuously change to meet these requirements. The organization has also ensured that protective measures, networking tools, and operational procedures are reviewed regularly in the attempt to ensure that it provide the best security to networks to its consumers (Cohen, 1992). 

To ensure the security of their networks, the AT&T organization has made it such that there is restricted access to a global network, switching centers, office space and the service management centers. These have been enabled by constituting an enterprise-wide physical security standard which has to be met by any person accessing the AT&T offices and its branches. The issue of AT&T smart cards has also helped in the control of physical access to AT&T facilities thus cases of accessing the network control room kept under control. The company has also installed alarms in these critical facilities that enable the monitoring of these ideal locations as a standard security measure. The company also conducts periodic audits that are meant to ensure the adherence to the security requirements of the standard by all of its experts.

The company has protected its network connectivity with firewalls. They are particularly useful in screening incoming and outgoing traffics based on various network factors such as ports, network protocols, the destination address and the source of information. Extranet and Internet connections are secured with firewalls that are particularly useful in blocking of direct network routing between the internal AT&T and internet networks. For consumers at AT&T, they are too protected by access control. This screens the outgoing and incoming packets that are meant to ensure only the authorized traffic are allowed in the line of communication.

The AT&T has ensured the protection of public facing websites through recognition of protection access in each layer of network access. To ensure this, the AT&T has used the management system that is essentially crucial in maintaining other user accounts and the type of access permitted to them. The management system also monitors user systems and activities through event logging. The AT&T also conducts regular= web checks by web scanning tools that enable the assessment of configuration and vulnerabilities issues. The web scanning tools also search for malware in the network.

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