Campbell and Starr Super Breadmakers is an industrial bakery that employs 26 staff
and produces 20,000 loaves of bread per day. Their clients are dairies, specialty
bread shops and supermarkets in the local metropolitan area. They produce 4
standard loaves and 12 boutique varieties that make up their product range.

In addition to Mungo Campbell, the manager, the company employs the following staff.

• 15 bakers (14 + a shop floor manager)
• An accountant
• 3 accounts clerks who do Accounts Receivable, Accounts Payable and
Payroll
• Sales manager
• 1 salesman
• Receptionist / Telephonist / PA
• 1 Dispatch clerk
• 2 delivery drivers

The main applications they currently use to run their business are as follows

• MS Office suite
• MYOB
• A recipe Database built using SQL server
• People Manager payroll system
• Specialist oven timer/temperature control software for 3 ovens on 3 non
networked PCs. Time and Temp data is stored in the recipe DB

The network currently is a MS peer to peer network with several of the desktop
computers acting as servers. The computer network has grown to its present state
without any real planning. As services have been required they have just been
connected up and grafted on. Of late the network has begun to degrade and reliability
has become a problem.

People manager and MYOB are on a dedicated server in the office. The sales
manager has his own copy of MYOB to manage orders. He is not able to use the
office server copy because he can't get in. There is an access restriction problem with
the server that no one has yet been able to solve No one can access the orders file
until the sales manager comes in to work and powers up his PC. The office is locked
and only he and the manager have a key. As baking is done overnight the orders
must be printed and ready for the bakers by 9pm each evening

 

 


Recently the payroll program crashed and wiped out the current month's payroll file
and leave records. The accountant and payroll clerk spent 2 days re-calculating and
re-creating the file from paper records. They are still not sure they've got everything
correct. They suspect that one of the bakers has been paid for a 3 day leave without
pay. Fortunately the PAYE tax file seems to be unaffected and so they believe the
right amount of tax will be paid to the Inland Revenue this month.

Computers that control the bakery ovens themselves are not networked and data that
is required on that system from elsewhere is being transferred to and from via floppy
disk. Although these computers are not actually stored in the bake house, they are in
an area where bakers have regular access. Floppy disks are frequently being
corrupted as the area is dusty and the disks are sometimes handled by bakers who
are themselves covered in flour dust.

They recently acquired an Internet connection at the suggestion of one of their
customers would like to be able to place his bread order online. They acquired an
email server to accept orders and communicate with suppliers and clients. They also
have a somewhat amateurish web site, created by the Boss' son who did a course in
dreamweaver at night school. A web server was (incorrectly) installed on the email
server box to host this site. These services were grafted on

Four weeks ago two problems arose that have prompted some action to sort out the
networking mess.

1) The manager discovered the receptionist has been surfing the Internet during work
time instead of taking care of her other duties. The manager was unaware that
any staff had access to the outside world. As far as he knew all that was available
was email to himself, the sales team, the accountant and the receptionist. He
thought the "e" program was the company's own site.

2) Script kiddie hackers had managed to gain access to the web server via the
unprotected network and attacked the company web server. It was pure luck that
the hackers did not explore further but contented themselves with defacing the
company's website. The manager was horrified to discover that not only did his
staff have unrestricted access to the Internet but that the Internet had unrestricted
access to his company network. The Internet connection was shutdown

Much panic and many management team meetings followed while they decided what
to do about the state of the company network. Finally they decided that fixing the old
network will be too difficult and that they need a properly designed and implemented
network plan. For that they have called in the experts. You are part of the team that
has been hired to solve the networking problems(s) for Campbell and Starr.