Designing An Inventory Storage System For ABC Organization: Essay On Components, UI, And Security Measures. (70 Characters)

The report has been developed for the inventory storage system being developed and implemented for ABC organization. There are several phases and activities that are involved in the system design, development, execution, implementation, and deployment phases. The details of the system components and user-interface design concepts are included in the report. The security concerns and mitigation measures are included along with the planning and management of implementation, testing, and deployment phases.

The cloud-based platforms will be used for the system deployment and delivery. It is because ABC organization operates from varied geographical locations. The deployment of cloud-based system will ensure that the easier access is provided to the users and the remote monitoring and control is also made possible. The delivery and deployment models of the cloud are as explained below.

There are primarily three types of cloud delivery models that have been developed as Platform as a Service (PaaS), Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), and Software as a Service (SaaS). The delivery model that is recommended for the inventory storage system of ABC organization is PaaS. The systems tasks and activities will be performed with the PaaS cloud framework. The model has been recommended for the system due to the security framework and platform that it will provide (Comendador & Guillo, 2014). There will be built-in security protocols that will be integrated in this platform which will enhance the overall security of the inventory storage system. The requirements of the system will be met by PaaS cloud model along with cost-savings and cost effectiveness.  

There are three categories of cloud deployment models that have been defined as public cloud, private cloud, and hybrid cloud models. The inventory storage system of ABC organization will include varied sets of information as critical data sets, non-critical data sets, private data sets, public information, sensitive, and internal sets of data. The services and activities performed by the system will make use of these data sets. Some of the applications may use sensitive and critical data sets and private cloud will be apt for such services (Sood, 2013). The ones utilizing public data sets will work best with private cloud. The hybrid cloud model will provide a combination of the two. The architectural model shall make use of three tier network for its implementation.

Figure 1: cloud model (Author)

The office has three clear and distinct areas in the building facility. The first room is the main office itself, the second is the room where computers are kept and the third one being the warehouse. The router connects to the ISP using a T1 Router and it remains behind a hardware Firewall. Connection is split using Ethernet and Network switches and it is connected to the main server as well. Further ahead, the two facilities are also connected to one another by Fiber Optic as well as Horizontal cable above ceilings and also within the walls. After that, yet another switch is placed in the warehouse room as it also has several workstations there to manage the warehouse.

Platform-as-a-Service

There are design considerations that have been included while developing the user interface of the inventory storage system.

• User-experience is the primary goal for any of the applications, such as inventory storage system. The navigation and scrolling that has been included on each of the system screens is designed in such a manner that the navigation is smooth and over-scrolling on the screens is avoided.
• Consistency is one of the primary design principles that are required to be maintained. The element of consistency in terms of color scheme and layout has been followed in all the screens (Javaid, 2013).
• The dashboard is updated on the real-time basis and the timestamp is included with every update on the dashboard. The users will get to access reliable and valid information at all instances.
• Interactivity is one of the primary requirements of the design interface. There is a search functionality included on the dashboard to make sure that the users can search for the desired information and updates on the basis of the keywords that are entered.
• Users are provided with acknowledgement on the screen, for instance, once the user clicks on the login screen then the color of the login label changes. Similarly, when the user clicks on the register option then a visual acknowledgement is provided to the user with the change in the color of the text (Williams, Lindtner, Anderson & Dourish, 2013).
• It is required that the textual content and elements that are included in the design interface are readable to the users. The dashboard along with the login and register screens have the text elements that can be read easily and there is no overlapping of the contents as well. The unnecessary use and presence of the whitespaces has also been avoided in the system. The overall user-experience will enhance as a result.

Figure 2: Administrator Dashboard - Check logs

This will allow administrator check the real-time logs of the products in the warehouse.

Figure 3: Administrator dashboard - Check customer orders

Figure 4: Login screen

This is the login screen for both customer and administrator.

Figure 5: Register screen for the customer

This is the registration screen for the customer.

Figure 6: Administrator dashboard - Activity of customers

This screen is for the administrator where activities performed by the customer on the system can be checked.

The inventory information system will be implemented using the cloud-based platforms and models. There will be several risks and security concerns that may emerge and will be required to be handled. One of the primary concerns will be the occurrence of the malware attacks. There may be virus attacks or ransomware attacks that may occur. The confidentiality of the data sets will be compromised as a result. In the ransomware attacks, the attackers may lock the user access and demand a ransom amount in return. There will be several network-based security concerns that the system will be exposed to. These will include man in the middle attacks and eavesdropping attacks. The network activity will be captured by the malevolent entities in an unauthorized manner. Data breaches and leakage will also occur in the inventory storage system due to an unsecure network access point or malicious user activities (Blandford, 2011). The denial of service attacks may occur on the system which may result in the compromise of the information availability. The devices that will be used to access the system may get lost which will also result in the compromise of the information properties.

There are various security controls and mitigations measures that shall be used and integrated with the inventory storage system. The basic security of the system shall be enhanced using access control mechanisms. The login screen shall be protected with advanced access control using role-based and attribute-based access control. Also, the user identity shall be verified and validated using multi-fold authentication in which one time passwords, single sign on, and biometric authentication shall be used. The data sets shall be protected using encryption of the same. With the encryption of the data sets, the textual elements will be converted to their cipher forms using a security key (Nazir & Rashid, 2013). The receiver will not be able to access the data sets without applying the security key at their end. As a result, the malicious user will not be able to misuse the data sets. There are various encryption algorithms that may be used as triple data encryption standard, advanced data encryption standard, multi-path encryption standard, and hashing algorithms. The use of cryptography shall be done with the digital certificates and hashing algorithms.

There must be identity management and verification done using these certificates and algorithms to make sure that the information sets are always protected.

Hybrid Cloud Model

It will also be necessary to make sure that any of the transactions occurring on the system are secure. Network security will be necessary for this purpose. The system shall be integrated with the anti-denial and anti-malware tools. There shall also be used of firewalls and proxy servers that must be done (Zineddine, 2015). The network security tools, such as intrusion detection and intrusion prevention systems must also be used. With the enhancement of network security, the network-based risks and attacks will be prevented and the security of the transactions will be ensured. There shall also be use of network logs and their tracking for the overall system security.

Existing information needs to be embedded in the newer database before booting the system. Additionaly, employee related information should also be integrated. Furthermore, data such as product images, meta information, description, user data among others should also be added to the inventory management system.

Training user

Training plays a critical role in how the project is ultimately a success at the organization. In training, the users will be divided in two classes. First would be system operators and the second would be end-users. End users would essentially be the bulk of the staff of various departments such as sales, inventory, marketing, IT etc. The other part of the users i.e., the system operators would be the ones who would be handling the back-end of the inventory management system.

The training is scheduled for over 4 days. Both of the class of users would be given a walk-through tutorial of the entire system which will then be followed by step-by-step instructions. Furthermore, each of the trainers would then proceed to give hands-on training to each of the employees in using the system and then they would be asked to execute certain tasks. The trainers would guide the users wherever they make a mistake and ensure they receive complete information regarding the system. The trainers would also provide these staffs with different documentation pertaining to the system such as system documentation, manual, FAQs and guides among others.

1. Configuration the product environment

The entire inventory system consists of layers of hardware and software that combine to form a usable system. The system consists of a logic server and the database server. These servers are connected to the networking infrastructure which are further connected to Hardware firewalls, switches, routers and workstations. The core IT Team is responsible for managing the inventory system. They would also be responsible for managing the underlying platform and operating system that helps run the inventory system such as the CentOS Operating System, XAMPP, MySQL among others.

1. Packaging, installing and deploying the components

The developers would be deploying the newer system and would also be responsible in supporting the IT team at the company to feed the initial data into the system. Furthermore, they will be training and guiding them extensively during the initiation period of the system. This will ensure that the users learn the system correctly. If users have knowledge regarding the system, they would have good motivation in using the system. Any errors and issues encountered here will be resolved swiftly.

1. Change and version control

Several changes could occur while the system is being developed and these result in versioning of the system and the same would be managed using GitHub for version control of the system. The final release of the system will ensure that the system is perceivably bug free and any kind of syntactical or logical errors have been resolved before the final release. Further ahead, the team would be supporting the system for any future maintenance and support related issues in capacity, frequency and timeline as specified in the documents.

References

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Nazir, M., & Rashid, M. (2013). Security Threats with Associated Mitigation Techniques in Cloud Computing. International Journal Of Applied Information Systems, 5(7), 16-27. doi: 10.5120/ijais13-450935

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