Strategic Information Systems of Commonwealth Bank of Australia

This report discusses the strategic information systems of Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA), including their objectives, critical success factors, and new improved system. It also analyzes the present system of CBA and identifies specific control weaknesses. The report suggests the use of biometric systems and integration of PLS with HLS systems for improved security. Desklib provides solved assignments, essays, and dissertations for students.

Running head: STRATEGIC INFORMATION SYSTEMS OF COMMONWEALTH BANK OF AUSTRALIA
Strategic Information Systems of Commonwealth Bank of Australia
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author’s note

1STRATEGIC INFORMATION SYSTEMS OF COMMONWEALTH BANK OF AUSTRALIA
Table of Contents
1. Introduction..................................................................................................................................2
1.1 A Brief Introduction of Commonwealth Bank of Australia..................................................2
1.2 Primary Objectives and Critical Success Factors of CBA.....................................................2
1.3 Helpful Information for achieving the Objectives.................................................................3
1.4 Mission Statement for the Business.......................................................................................4
2. Organizational Chart of Commonwealth Bank of Australia.......................................................4
3. Brief Analysis of Commonwealth Bank of Australia..................................................................5
3.1 The Present System of Commonwealth Bank of Australia...................................................5
3.2 Identification of Specific Control Weaknesses within Commonwealth Bank of Australia. .6
4. New Improved System for the Commonwealth Bank of Australia.............................................8
4.1 Primary Features of New Improved System..........................................................................8
4.2 Relevance of the New Advanced IT Technologies.............................................................10
5. Other Necessary Requirements..................................................................................................11
5.1 Technological Platforms for the System..............................................................................11
5.2 Potential Security Risks for the Banking Sector of CBA....................................................12
5.3 Accounting Controls over the New Banking System..........................................................13
6. Conclusion.................................................................................................................................14
7. References..................................................................................................................................15

2STRATEGIC INFORMATION SYSTEMS OF COMMONWEALTH BANK OF AUSTRALIA
1. Introduction
1.1 A Brief Introduction of Commonwealth Bank of Australia
The use of Information Technology (IT) has formed a major part and focus within any
kind of organisation. The report is able to focus primarily on the various forms of changes that
are taking place on a daily basis within the IT sector. With the rise of technological aspects, there
have been several kind of reforms that have been taking place in the Commonwealth Bank of
Australia (CBA). The CBA is regarded as one of the large retail sector within the banking sector
and is primarily based in Australia. The CBA is the dominating banking sector and has a huge
base of customers (Weill and Woerner 2013). They provide various kinds of facilities such as
retail based deposits and various kinds of loans. The CBA has also made their immense presence
in various kinds of segments based within the area of the retail market.
1.2 Primary Objectives and Critical Success Factors of CBA
With the large forms of innovation that are taking place in the banking sector in day-to-
day life, there have been several forms of innovation of methods and strategies that have been
adopted by the CBA banking sector. The CBA has various kinds of stories of success in the
recent past history. Hence they have continued to improve their success paths and has brought
much innovations within the sector (Lovelock and Patterson 2015). The CBA is hence
considered as one of the largest storehouses of finance within the banking sector. They have
hence been accepted by the people who take the full form of advantage of the organisation.
Some of the primary objectives of CBA are:
1. Retaining of their lower structures of cost

3STRATEGIC INFORMATION SYSTEMS OF COMMONWEALTH BANK OF AUSTRALIA
2. Expanding the share of the customers within the market and would have high form of
leadership.
3. Implementing best forms of management practices among the people.
4. Providing the best form of financial services, which would help in meeting the high
expectation of customers.
The critical factors for CBA includes:
1. Provide a high level of training of the employees of the organisation and provide the
various forms of outcomes based on the sales structure of the organisation.
2. Maintain a clear expectation and thus be able to take various kinds of effective
measures based on the issues that have been faced by the organisation.
3. Provide different kinds of rewards and recognition, which would be highly linked with
the provided outcomes and services that would be based on sales (Osei-Kyei and Chan 2015).
4. There should be a passionate effort on the quality of leadership within the international
market.
1.3 Helpful Information for achieving the Objectives
The CBA would have the basic form of need for maintaining a high competitive gain
within the market. This would be extremely meaningful for maintain the huge base of customers
and thus be able to gain a competitive advantage within the market. Use of internet connected
products and mobile devices have shown a major growth of the business. There is a high level of
pressure in the highly competitive market. There have been different kinds of strategic advantage

4STRATEGIC INFORMATION SYSTEMS OF COMMONWEALTH BANK OF AUSTRALIA
within the market. These kind of initiatives would be helpful for ensuring the maintenance of
quality and hence gain the advantage of the low cost structure (Murray et al. 2014).
1.4 Mission Statement for the Business
The mission statement based on the client business is – To provide high kind of services
for the customer, which would help in meeting the business requirements.
2. Organizational Chart of Commonwealth Bank of Australia
(Fig 1: Organizational Chart of Commonwealth Bank of Australia)
(Fig 2: Data Flow Diagram of Commonwealth Bank of Australia)

5STRATEGIC INFORMATION SYSTEMS OF COMMONWEALTH BANK OF AUSTRALIA
3. Brief Analysis of Commonwealth Bank of Australia
3.1 The Present System of Commonwealth Bank of Australia
The Commonwealth Bank of Australia is a public sector bank, which is primarily situated
in Australia. It is thus listed as one of the top quality banks by the Australian Securities
Exchange. CBA is one of the multinational bank based in Australia. The bank offers sever
services based within the financial sector and helps in assisting the business owners and other
clients (Tonts, Martinus and Plummer 2013). The banking structure of CBA is formed in a
vertical manner, which helps them within the operation of the network based structure. The
vision of the organization is to become one of the finest banking sectors within Australia and
thus maintain a fine strategic aspect within the business. The different kinds of strategies that
have been adopted by the banking sector is based on the improving the quality of banking
experience of the people and stakeholders.
The rise in the high form of technical aspects have majorly helped the CBA for the
purpose of integrating Information Systems within the various kinds of business processes of the
organization. With the various upcoming technologies within the sector, the bank has hence
improved their conditions within the various kinds of services within the sector. They have made
different kinds of technical changes within the use of computing systems and the use of systems
software by the employees (Schlagwein, Thorogood and Willcocks 2014.). These kind of
improved systems softwares and advanced functionalities within the banking website of CBA
would prove to be helpful for resolving the various kinds of issues of the customers. The use of
high form of technical systems is also a major critical aspect of the organization as the customers
would like to access the website of the bank from their personal mobile devices.

6STRATEGIC INFORMATION SYSTEMS OF COMMONWEALTH BANK OF AUSTRALIA
The general manager of CBA have hence declared the fact that the mobile banking
systems have been regarded as one of the secure form of systems within CBA. The CBA has
various kinds of secure methods within their website, which protects the security of the devices
and the accounts of the customer. The use of mobile banking systems would be helpful for
improving the conditions of the banking sector. The mobile devices have the inbuilt functionality
of SIM, which would be helpful for connecting with the database of the bank (Smith 2018). The
current systems of the mobile banking systems of the CBA would be helpful for securing the
customers from any form of hacking based systems. Banking systems are mainly prone to
various kinds of security attacks related to ransomware attacks, malware attacks and virus
systems, which are vulnerable for the banking systems. The high form of security systems within
the banking sector of CBA would help for availing the banking services in a highly secured
manner (Podger, Stanton and Whiteford 2014).
3.2 Identification of Specific Control Weaknesses within Commonwealth Bank of Australia
The rise of different kinds of systems based on mobile banking would be helpful for CBA
in order to maintain higher kinds of security aspects within the website of CBA. The website
should be able to meet the basic security standards that are previously set by the organisation.
The different banking systems of CBA and the various kinds of services that are provided by the
organisation help in maintaining the aspects of security within the organisation (Hasan and Xie
2013). The customers who would be availing the vast form of high technological systems of
banking systems would be heavily dependent on the mobility and the security aspects that have
been provided by the organisation. The use of the systems of mobile banking would help in
providing the vast form of services based on the transfer of money. The customers would also be
able to check their balance in their savings and current accounts, purchase items with the help of

7STRATEGIC INFORMATION SYSTEMS OF COMMONWEALTH BANK OF AUSTRALIA
the internet banking methods and perform other kinds of banking based functions (Brown and
Davis 2015). There are also some kinds of situations in which the banking customers would not
wish to avail the banking services due to a short level of trust on the banking organization.
With the rise of high form of technological advancements within the sector, there have
been several forms of reports based on the cases of hacking and forgery, which leads to various
forms of vulnerability within the banking systems and services. With these kinds of arising
reports, this has been the leading factor of lowering of trust within the banking systems. The
cases of theft of banking services that are offered by CBA provide inconvenience on the user
based part (Hooper, Martini and Choo 2013). The various kinds of mechanisms based on security
aspects that are mainly been adopted by the organization help in securing the data of the clients
and employees within the banking environment. This form of systems of security should be the
utmost priority of the organization. As the organization has a huge base of customers, hence they
should provide higher forms of security mechanisms and encryption systems for the banking
services.
There are other kinds of weakness that have majorly been viewed by the banking systems
of CBA. The banking systems of CBA primarily outsource the various kinds of services based on
the architecture of third party organisation. The CBA also holds the responsibility of performing
and maintain secure kinds of transactions within the management systems of the organisation.
The different kinds of methods that have been adopted by the internal systems of the
organisation help in the mitigation of various kinds of issues related to the authentication
purposes. Trust is a major form of issue that is mainly breached within during cases of
exploitation by various forms of attacks. Some of the main issues that are faced by the
organisation based on the security aspects include the issues based on providing of services by

8STRATEGIC INFORMATION SYSTEMS OF COMMONWEALTH BANK OF AUSTRALIA
the third party services (Gitman, Juchau and Flanagan 2015). These include the control over the
security of the network, standardization of interoperability, controls over parental methods of
payment, liability, prevention of frauds based on authentication methods, privacy of the
employees and customers and permissions based on payment methods.
4. New Improved System for the Commonwealth Bank of Australia
4.1 Primary Features of New Improved System
The systems of mobile banking within CBA are considered to be highly secured within
the sector of banking. The technologies based on mobile banking are rising at a huge pace
besides the several kinds of banking based services. The rise of mobile banking technologies
have shown tremendous forms of improvements within the higher banking services (Brotchie et
al. 2017). These systems of banking have showed severe form of threats within CBA. There are
various forms of improved features within the systems of mobile banking, which mainly focus
on the use of biometric systems, high level of integration of PLS with HLS standards and thus
the upgrade of the mainframe systems based on a UNIX platform and DB2.
The use of biometric systems is a high form of method based on the security of the
mobile devices. The CBA would be able to adopt extreme form of levels of trust based on the
mobile based transactional systems. The biometric systems would be helpful for the purpose of
identification of the physical behavior of individual (Smith 2013). The biometric details are
unique for every individual and hence the detection of frauds based on these systems would be
very much helpful with the huge cases of forgery within the banking systems. As each person
have their own personal unique identity, hence the detection of frauds based on the systems
would be highly useful. The use of the mechanism of biometric based security would be helpful
for improving the systems within the banking sector. There are various kinds of mechanisms

9STRATEGIC INFORMATION SYSTEMS OF COMMONWEALTH BANK OF AUSTRALIA
based on biometric recognition and authentication of devices. The biological features of a person
vary from one person to another. Hence the biometric ways of authentication of the user would
be described as the most vital form of security measures. Some of the other kinds of features that
have been majorly been included within the banking systems of CBA include fingerprint
recognition, voice recognition and facial recognition (Moscardo et al. 2013). The different kinds
of research within the field of biometric based recognition are being widely developed by the
security aspects of the banking sector. New kinds of sensors are being developed by the experts
who are responsible for designing the security services.
With the integration of PLS with the HLS systems, it would be highly effective for
implementing the security perspectives within the banking sector. The user interface based
within the website of CBA would be mainly operated based on a no-supportable platform. In the
banking systems of CBA, the bank would have to enter the intrinsic form of details based on the
different forms of applications based on the internet systems (Wu-Bin et al. 2014). The banks
would have to optimize the functionality level and thus they would have to improve the
functionality of different parts within the system. These high form of functionalities would be
helpful for reducing the incurred costs and hence these kinds of systems should be integrated
within the banking features of CBA. With these forms of high forms of functionality integration
within the website systems of CBA, they would be able to excel in the field of customer service
and thus put satisfaction for the users. The high infrastructure of IT systems within CBA have a
major history of success. Hence the improved versions of implementation of IT systems that are
newly developed should be provided by the users in order to increase the effectiveness of
customer services (Erickson and Warren 2013). The implementation of high IT supported
systems would be helpful for managing the improvement of decisions, funding of new systems,

10STRATEGIC INFORMATION SYSTEMS OF COMMONWEALTH BANK OF AUSTRALIA
inventing greater form of products, which would be highly useful for gaining high rates of
approval.
The CBA has a high form of IT based infrastructure and they are implementing new
kinds of IT based systems. They have partnered with high IT software based companies who are
responsible for dealing with the security aspects and maintenance of the websites. The IT
business partners help in upgrading the older and existing infrastructure systems of the
organisation. The previous versions of the IT systems based within CBA were much based on the
older versions of Windows Operating Systems (Gurran and Phibbs 2013). They should be highly
updated on a UNIX and DB2 systems. Although the updating of the existing systems to the new
structure would lead to improved form of functionalities, yet these might lead to the various
kinds of vulnerabilities within the systems. Hence the systems should be highly protected with
various forms of antivirus softwares and latest form of security patches within the existing
systems. The CBA should rethink the infrastructure of their existing systems, which would help
in increasing the level of efficiency of security within the systems. The CBA should implement
better automation systems within the organisation. This would be useful for the purpose of
increasing the levels of security, keeping monitor over the existing infrastructure systems and
thus be enable to increase the higher levels of speeds for the benefit of performing business
transactions.
4.2 Relevance of the New Advanced IT Technologies
The high IT implementation of software systems could be easily classified based on the
Electronic Data Interchange (EDI). The EDI systems based on electronic interchange of
information would be based on information, which would be available in relation within the
organization of business (Mossialos et al. 2016). The IT systems help in the processing of vital

11STRATEGIC INFORMATION SYSTEMS OF COMMONWEALTH BANK OF AUSTRALIA
information based within a standardized format. The use of EDI within the banking services of
CBA would prove to be extremely helpful for reducing the immense forms of risks within the
system. The CBA stores extremely valuable information that are in relation with the private and
confidential information of the clients and the customers. The EDI systems would help the
services of banking to be improved on a new format. These EDI systems would help the banking
services to avoid the loss of data from the organizations if the sector faces problems during the
transit of information. The EDI systems could easily track the different kinds of transactions that
are performed on a huge basis. Hence these transactions would be tracked on a real-time basis
and any kinds of arising disputes and fraud cases would be reported to the “smart” systems that
would be installed within the banking systems (Moradi-Motlagh and Babacan 2015).
The latest forms of designs of the EDI systems within the banking systems of CBA
would be helpful for supporting the efficiency of the banking sector. The workflow of the system
would also get improved with the implementation of the EDI system. This would help in
streamlining of the processes of workflow that would relate to processing of documents,
reduction of errors and saving of huge amount of time. They would also improve for the bringing
of accuracy of documents and enable faster business processes related to business transactions
(Jain, Keneley and Thomson 2015). The implementation of EDI systems would also be a cost
effective measure for the organization. Hence, with the implementation of EDI systems would
prove to be a very useful decision for the organization.
5. Other Necessary Requirements
5.1 Technological Platforms for the System
The mobile banking services are a much vital part of the organisation. These are a form
of services that are provided by any form of financial institution or the sector of banking. The use

12STRATEGIC INFORMATION SYSTEMS OF COMMONWEALTH BANK OF AUSTRALIA
of mobile banking systems would help the organization for the conduction of various kinds of
financial based transactions with the help of their mobile device. The CBA also helps in
providing various kinds of services to their customers. The system is highly responsible for
bringing vast forms of efficiencies within the existing system (Newcombe 2016). The systems of
mobile banking helps in bringing of efficiency within the process of banking. There are different
technical platforms that help the mobile banking systems for performing the various tasks that
would be mainly required for the sector. There are different kinds of technical based platforms
such as HTML5, CSS and JavaScript that have been used majorly for the major purpose of
development. Hence, with the proper use of these technologies within the banking sector, it
would be extremely vital for improving the various forms of functionalities based on improving
the service provided to customers and develop better products (Singh and Ilavarasan 2016).
5.2 Potential Security Risks for the Banking Sector of CBA
The different forms of potential risks that could be majorly focused on the banking
systems of CBA are:
Man-in-the-Middle (MITM) Attacks – The attacks based on MITM are mainly faced
by the sector of banking. In these kinds of attacks, a fake kind of website is majorly created for
gaining the attention of the customers. As the customers would enter into the website, they
would be redirected for entering their credentials. Hence the attackers would get prone to severe
forms of vulnerabilities based on an untrusted source.
Phishing Attacks – With the rise in the storage of personal information of the customers,
there should be high form of security systems that should be installed within the systems. The
banking systems of CBA have majorly faced the problems based on phishing attacks and hence

13STRATEGIC INFORMATION SYSTEMS OF COMMONWEALTH BANK OF AUSTRALIA
should take necessary steps based on the detection of such kind of attacks (Hooper, Martini and
Choo 2013).
Trojan horse Attacks – These forms of attacks involves the invitation of a Trojan virus
onto the banking systems of the CBA. The Trojan attacks could be in the form of a key logger
program based on the targeted host computer. These kinds of attacks would generally get
initiated when the user would perform some form of interactions with the computing systems.
Whenever the user would perform log in operations within the banking sector, their details
would get captured within the particular operating session and hence this information would be
passed on to the attacker (Kshetri 2013).
The breach of personal data and information from the banking systems is also another
form of threat that is mainly faced by the systems of banking. Data breach could lead to
tremendous impacts for the organisation of banking. Hence they could lead to the information of
the user to be put at stake and could lead to the ruining of the data of the customers.
5.3 Accounting Controls over the New Banking System
There are various process of controls over the accounting services that could be hugely
followed for gaining control over the private data within the sector of banking. Some of the form
of controls that could be performed are:
Physical Audits – There should be rigorous audits over the internal processes of the
system. This would help in gaining control of the use of information within the sector (Lee, C.C.,
Hsieh and Yang 2014).
Approval Authority – There should be a committee within the organisation, which
should look over the intrinsic details of the organisation and thus would be able to guide the

14STRATEGIC INFORMATION SYSTEMS OF COMMONWEALTH BANK OF AUSTRALIA
functioning of the various processes within the organisation (Plumb, M., Kent, C. and Bishop, J.,
2013).
Access over Controls – Proper form of controls should be performed within the banking
systems such as use of passwords, lockouts, which would help in the accessing of the real
banking system. A high form of tracking should be implemented in order to serve any kind of
fraud activities within the system (Weill and Woerner 2015).
6. Conclusion
Based on the discussion from the report, it could be concluded that Information Systems
have become a vital part of each organisation. The various processes within the system would
tend to improve with the huge rise of technical aspects and the varying form of changes. IS helps
in the modification of various existing processes and also brings immense possibilities within the
sector of banking within CBA. Hence, it could be discussed that the impact of IS within the
systems should be improved and more focus should be put on improving the business systems at
CBA.

15STRATEGIC INFORMATION SYSTEMS OF COMMONWEALTH BANK OF AUSTRALIA
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