The iPremier Company (A): Denial of Service Attack
The iPremier Company was founded in 1996 and had evolved into one of thefew success stories of web-based commerce. It also sells luxury, rare, and vintage goods on the web. In the treacherous business-to-business segment, iPremier was one of a few survivors.
Although the company was a really successful company in business field, during the 75 minute attack, iPremier performed very ineffectively and acted negatively, which would tell customers that it is lack of ability to solve the problem. When picking up the phone to know the website is locked up, Turley, the CIO of the iPremier Company, did not have the plan and strategy to solve the problem. He just waited for the outsourced company, Qdata, giving the solution. What is worse, the company could not make sure if the credit cards and customer data are safe. All the managers in the company just waited until the attack stopped.
Of course the company’s operating procedures were deficient. Actually, there was totally no procedure for solving the attacks according to the case. The staffs, including the CIO and the technology team, could not come up with a complete strategy before the attack happening. When the company’s website was attacked, there was no plan to solve the problem. The CIO even did not sure about what the threat is. If the attack happened in the work time instead of early morning, the company would lose not only the information of the customers and the profits, but also the reputation from the customers.
The iPremier Company should make sure that there is the security system to make sure that when facing attacks, the company can stop it as soon as possible. The employees, especially the technology team, should take the responsibilities of protecting the information of the customers. Also not just the IT department, they have to connect the public relation department to explain what happened to the press and the customers.