A Study Of Control And Security Measures In Air Canada And The FBI, Essay.

In this part of the assignment, you will use your knowledge of control and apply it to a real-life case.

Read the "Air Canada and WestJet Airlines" case, and then answer the following two questions:

1. Should Lafond have given Hill his password? What other ethical issue do you see in this case? What should Air Canada’s chief information officer do to ensure that information is available to those who need it but is not available to outsiders who may use the information for competitive advantage?

2. Which of employees, equipment, or written procedures is most important in protecting a company's information or other valuable resources? Explain your choice.

Read the application "A Control Concern at the FBI" on pages 338 and 339 of your textbook. Then answer the following two questions:

1. Assume you are the director of the FBI. This information has just been given to you. What would you do? Explain your reasoning. (30 marks)
2. "Every agent plays a role in controlling work activities at the FBI." Do you agree or do you think that only the director and other managers within the FBI are responsible for control? Explain your reasoning. (20 marks)

Write a report that answers the following questions:

• Describe several types of controls (feedforward, concurrent, feedback) that are present in an organization or group with which you are familiar (business or otherwise)
  
  
• What kind of feedback do these controls provide, and why are the controls necessary? If you do not think the controls are necessary, justify your stance.
  
  
• What is the nature of the feedback in your organization or group? Is it positive or negative? If it is negative, how could you initiate changes that could result in feedback being viewed as positive?
  
  
• What kind of feedback and controls do you personally prefer? Why?
  
  
• Outline a plan of action for improving the control system for your organization or group.

Part A: Air Canada and WestJet Airlines

1:

No, Lafond should not have divulged the password and confidential information to Hill.  Integrity issue, loyalty to his initial employer, trust between him and his employer, financial fraud issues crop up.   Air Canada’s chief information officer must adopt, enact and practice information security rules and norms in order to ensure justice among the company’s employees.  Information security is the system of pre-empting unauthorized access, use, recording, modification or destruction of information. Generally it is used immaterial of the kind of form data may take, electronic or physical. It is in charge of keeping all the technological factors secure from digital attacks that frequently break into basic private data or take control of interior frameworks. Its purpose is to ensure that the classification, uprightness and accessibility of the data are not overpowered and guarantee that information is not lost when essential issues emerge (Gillen & Hazledine, 2015, p. 129-136). A general method of information security at Air Canada is having an offsite backup of the data in case of server malfunction, natural disasters or physical theft. Risk management is enforced to reduce risk and remove threats. It consists of follows:

Distinguishing resources and anticipating their values, coordinating a threat evaluation, focusing on a vulnerability appraisal and thereby calculating the probability of these factors. Objective is to assess strategies, systems, standards, physical security, training, quality control and security. Utilizing subjective or quantitative methods to compute vulnerability on resources, recognize and execute well-suited controls considering profitability, cost adequacy and asset value.

According to Cameron & Green (2015), change management is a formal system to direct and control processes in the information processing atmosphere. The aim is to diminish the risks and develop the steadiness and dependability of the environment as modifications are made. Furthermore, it controls risk and certifies that necessary adjustments are not enforced during unfavourable periods when they may interrupt essential business processes. The first few steps are defining change and capability of the system. Change administration is used and brought into effect by the following segments in an enterprise: Networking, systems administration, security, applications development, database administration, helpdesk and the desktop support. The responsibilities of change administration can be implemented with the help of systematized workflow operations. The various steps of change management process are — requested, approved, planned, tested, scheduled, communicated, implemented, documented and post change review.

As stated by Karimi-Alaghehband and Rivard (2014), effective security governance at Air Canada consists of the following:

An enterprise-wide solution, accountable leaders, sighted as business necessities, based on risk, responsibilities, functions and seclusion of definite duties, committed sufficient resources, personnel awareness and education, an improvement life cycle obligation, designed, administered and calculated ad reviewed.

According to Whitman and Mattord (2013), Information Security division is the most important division at Air Canada. The data can be subject to threats of the following kinds—software attacks, identity theft, stealing of intellectual property, disruption, theft of apparatus, and information extortion. Further, theft of identity is the endeavour to perform or enact as a different person with a motive to acquire advantage of their delegation to get private information. This would mean huge monetary loss along with downfall of a firm’s reputation. Possible reactions to threats could be as follows: Put into use secure processes and counter-policies to reduce exposure or pre-empt stealing, outsource the rate of risk onto a separate entity and evaluate whether cost of countermeasures dominate the cost of threats. Among the various measures to protect business data the information security system tends to be most contributing element. It is noted that the system protects and greatly takes care of data irrespective of its type or even the size of a firm. In addition to evaluating possible risks and threat situations, the system helps to reduce or even eliminate them, thereby developing security concerns for an organization (Gillen & Hazledine, 2015, p. 129-136). Further, the multi-layered safety structure takes care of product data, financial and customer information in a detailed and effective manner. A highly productive data security system also additionally abides by the regulatory standards and audit compliances as well.

1: Should Lafond have given Hill his password?

As per Neuendorf (2016), the salary of a FBI agent is low and creates lot of problems for the employees. The FBI agent posted in a rich area would find it very difficult to make both ends meet. He has to stay 80 km`s away from his workplace in order to get an affordable housing. If the FBI director would taken up the issue in his hands, he would definitely find a solution to raise the salary of the FBI agent. He would have moved the legislature of the country or taken up the issue in the highest court of justice and thus solved the puzzle. With locality pay added, a newly appointed agent would earn about $50000 a year.

FBI special agents can place themselves forward after GS 13 by taking into place supervisory positions. The base salaries for GS 14 workers ranged between $90000 and $114578 with every stage valuing $2940. Further, a GS 15 ranked officer`s base pay scale in the year 2017 ranged $103672 - $134776 with every stage being valued at $3456. On the outer hand, employees of higher-ranking grades were earning a basic salary amounting to $124406.

In addition to the basic remuneration evaluated in the common schedule, the salary of a special agent (FBI) is primarily distinguished into two separate divisions — by position and availability. Concerning officers based in main metropolitan cities (Alaska or Hawaii) the higher living cost results in an increased amount of pay (Kessler, 2016, p. 190-212). It is noted that in San Francisco, remuneration are 40% higher to the standard pay while in Kansas it is only around 16%. Further, as FBI estimates that the majority of the agents work for about 50 hours a week, the annual pay is 25% more in the kind of availability pay bonus to reward the agents for their extra time of duty.

According to Elliff (2015), FBI agents are recruited based on the federal employee remuneration system (general schedule). It noted that once the agents join as a task force of special officers (GS-10) with the FBI Academy, they can only then be promoted to a higher rank as field cadets (GS-13). Further, when officers rise to higher seniority roles, they are delegated with better levels such as GS-15 or senior administrative rank. Federal employees are judged and compared based on their pay grade. Grades tend to range between GS1 and GS15. In order to be promoted to a superior rank, an officer must serve a year in the previous grade. Further, each grade of the system comprises about ten steps based on the service tenure of an employee. As each step rises to the next step it pays a higher salary. In the event that one individual takes after this procedure it could take around 18 years to move from step 1 to 10. The compensation however overlaps each stage. The highest pay at GS10 for instance exceeds the lowest pay at GS11. But the system has laws to ensure that each promotions ends into a higher pay and no promotion results in a lower pay (Kessler, 2016, p. 190-212).

So, a FBI agent in all grades can help each other and in particular their senior officers in controlling the FBI. Each FBI agent has the responsibility to control the office as per their own duties’ range of activities and in this nature help the FBI director and the next junior officers in their work.

References

Gillen, D., & Hazledine, T. (2015). The economics and geography of regional airline services in six countries. Journal of Transport Geography, 46, 129-136.

Cameron, E., & Green, M. (2015). Making sense of change management: A complete guide to the models, tools and techniques of organizational change. Kogan Page Publishers, p. 121-145.

Karimi-Alaghehband, F., & Rivard, S. (2014). Air Canada: flying high with information technology. International Journal of Case Studies in Management, p. 12.

Kessler, R. (2016). The bureau: the secret history of the FBI. St. Martin's Paperbacks, p. 190-212.

Neuendorf, K. A. (2016). The content analysis guidebook. Sage, p. 27-34.

Elliff, J. T. (2015). The reform of FBI intelligence operations. Princeton University Press, p. 110.

Whitman, M., & Mattord, H. (2013). Management of information security. Nelson Education, p. 98.