iCan RES is a cloud-hosted application that provides traders access to trade kWh from eMesh collection sites. RES is a modern web architecture suited to hyper-scale based on production load. The application leverages the latest cloud security features and capabilities to sustain uptime and protection transactions and data.

Key business issues with RES:

Data Management:

Today reporting from RES is user-driven, where reports are created by both traders and iCan business teams. This has resulted in over 5,000 individual data extracts and/or reports being created. Data redundancy and common data models do not exist. The Elastic Data Tier is the source of truth, but business users have been taking a weekly snapshot to keep a history of transactions. The business teams know the term Data Warehouse, but they have no idea what it means or how to create one so they save all the history in Excel files. The executive team is wanting common reports against common data models to make quality data-driven decisions.

Security Management:

Trading users have Multi-Factor Authentication enabled. However, there is no Single Sign-on for iCan support teams. Security policies exist for Traders but not iCan employees. Any employee at iCan can log in to RES and create accounts and even worse they can create trades. In some cases, users share credentials for data extraction and have been set up as full system administrators with direct DB access. There are significant gaps in what iCan wants and what is being used to secure the platform, the traders, and the customers.

The executive team is expecting you to provide a direction to resolve these issues in the IT Strategy.

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Answer the Following Security/Policy Management Questions:

What are the primary concerns with RES security?

What improvements would you immediately make to employee access to RES?

What types of policies would you put in place to govern RES?

How would you make sure the RES remains a secure system?

What checks and balances would you put into place to verify who has access?

Answer the Following Data Management Questions:

What do you think is lacking in iCan data management?

Do you believe a data warehouse is necessary for iCan?

Would a common certified data set provide any efficiencies to business reporting?

Since RES is hosted in a cloud environment would you also suggest a cloud-hosted reporting system?

Is Data Literacy achievable for iCan business teams?

Use this Gartner article to understand what Data Literacy means.

A Data and Analytics Leaders Guide to Data Literacy, Kasey Panetta, Gartner, 2021