Conducting research and recommending appropriate steps

 

The Erehwon guest house currently consists of seven rooms, but Mike has expansion plans and expects to be able to purchase a second guest house in the next few months. He then plans to buy further properties to expand to a chain of 20 guest houses (approximately 200 bedrooms) within the next 4 years. You should take that into account when answering this part.

Eventually, the website (a web application) will consist of the promotional pages you would expect for an organisation of this size, together with applications to:

• capture customer details
• allow booking records to be maintained
• allow customers to check room availability and book online
• allow customers to post reviews.

Mike wants to protect his investment by selecting a solution based on web technologies that will better withstand the test of time.

For this part of your report, you will first need to conduct some research using the module materials as jumping off points. You may find the following sections of Part 1 of the Block 2 module materials to be particularly helpful in shaping your research:

Section 3 Architecture

Section 5 Network and distributed architectures

Section 6 Realising an architecture

Section 8 Reflecting on architecture.

We want you to identify the requirements (current and future) plus four further aspects that need to be considered during this selection process.

For each aspect, discuss what needs to be considered to ensure that Mike's investment is protected over the next 4-6 years.

Then, give your recommendations for a web technology solution that will satisfy all of these aspects.

For each recommendation, describe how it helps to future-proof the solution and justify your answers with specific technological reasons related to the scenario.

 

(b) Discuss existing security features and describe possible enhancements

 

The second topic concerns security. Mike has read a lot about cyber-attacks and needs advice on the security of the website . For this question, you should exclude the fact that the TT284 web server requires an Open University login, and assume the web application is open to all visitors.

First, he wants an explanation of which aspects of the existing code are helping to keeping it secure.

Choose three aspects of the current code to write about, and in your report describe each of these aspects and explain how it improves security, and reduces the risks to Mike's business of not including each of them.

Mike then wants you to advise on how to improve security of this website even further.

Think of two possible ways to further improve security of the application (at least one of which should be based on information you have found outside of the module materials), and in your report describe each of these enhancements, and explain the risks to Mike's business of not implementing them. These enhancements could be further developments of the aspects stated above or completely new. In this section, you may also consider any security measures which could be applied to the hosting platform.

 

include references