IT Risk Assessment Report

IT Risk Assessment

Executive Summary
Aztek is an Australia based company which offers services in the financial sector. The senior
executives and the IT department of the company are trying to develop new business model by
changing the IT infrastructure in the company. The selected change for the business is migrating
the present data and information to the external cloud services. The cloud services are advanced
system in which the company uploads its data and information on the internet by using the secure
system of interconnection.
Presently, the company is using the traditional model for data and information storage. The cloud
service helps the company and its customers to develop effective interactions and also it helps to
receive unique services. It brings many opportunities and helps the business to reduce cost. The
employees of the company will also need to spend less time in managing information. However,
there are some potential challenges which can effects business and its operations. The main
challenge for the company is to maintain IT security and data. On the cloud, there is sensitive
information about the company and if any hackers can steel data from cloud then it may create
many problems for the company.
Therefore, the company is adopting high security methodology such as firewalls; use
vulnerability scanner and intrusion detection system. Through which, the company can control
on the IT threats and develop security on the high level.

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION........................................................................................................... 4
MERITS OF THE EXTERNAL CLOUD SOLUTION..............................................................4
CLOUD COMPUTING IN FINANCIAL SECTOR AND OTHER REGULATIONS.........................6
EXTERNAL SYSTEM’S IMPACT ON PRESENT SECURITY POSTURE SYSTEM......................9
RISK OF USING THE EXTERNAL CLOUD SERVICES.......................................................11
DATA SECURITY THREATS FOR USING THE EXTERNAL CLOUD COMPUTING.................16
CONCLUSION............................................................................................................. 17
REFERENCES............................................................................................................ 19

Topic:
Migrating business-critical applications and their associated data sources to an external Cloud
hosting solution
INTRODUCTION
Information technology has become an integrated part of each business. By adopting the IT
technology, business can improve their customer’s services and the present business conditions.
Through using the IT technologies, the business can easily overcome many other issues such as
geographical limitation and the limited number of customers and high prices services. In this,
the cloud hosting solution is one of the major emerging technologies in the IT. It refers to the
upload the data from the manual format to the internet (Taylor, Haggerty, Gresty and Lamb,
2011). The use of the cloud services has increased in many industries such as finance, sports and
many others. Aztek is an Australia based finance services provide company, which is moving to
the adoption of external cloud services. Through this, the company can offer services to the 24/7
hours to customers and also they can access data from anywhere. In the present report, analysis is
made on different aspects of the cloud computing (Ward and Sipior, 2010). It includes the merits
of the cloud computing, cloud computing in financial sector and other regulations which create
impact on the business. At last, it provides risks which are associated with cloud computing.
MERITS OF THE EXTERNAL CLOUD SOLUTION
Aztek is an Australia based company which offers different types of the financial services to its
customers. The company is expanding its business services and using Information Technology
(IT) for it. The company is presently trying to migrate with the business-critical applications and

data resources into the cloud hosting solution (Almorsy, Grundy and Müller, 2016.). Through the
external cloud services, they can easily transfer data to the cloud. This cloud is remotely handled
by the other person. Following are the merits of the present project:
Fewer capital expenses
The most significant cloud computing benefit is in terms of IT cost savings. The cloud solution
helps the company to maintain the cost and charged to the minimum operations costs without
matter of the size of the project. The lack of on-premises infrastructure also removes the
associated operational costs in the form of power, air conditioning and administration costs
(Bisong and Rahman, 2011). For the Aztek Company, it brings many opportunities and helps the
business to maintain costs and through this, the companies also do not worry about the security
of the cloud services.
Reliability
The external cloud services are much better than in-house services. In the external services, the
company can easily store the data and other sensitive information about their company. It offers
services 24/7 hours and organization can benefit from a massive pool of redundant IT resources.
If any server fails to work then the company can easily transfer all data and the information to
any other available server (Bruneo, 2014). Along with this, the company can also increase or
decrease the scale of business operations according to its requirements.
Management of use of resources
Through the cloud services, the company can efficiently use its resources. With the help of
present cloud services, the business can efficiently use its projects and reduce the operational

costs incurred. The employees of the company need to spend less time on information managing
and they can use their time in more useful activities (Buyya, Broberg and Goscinski, 2010).
Another benefit of the company for resources is that it helps the company to enjoy the scalability
of economics. The cloud services have less energy consumption and required less physical
resources in order to maintain the services.
High level of storage capacity and flexibility
The external cloud services can offer high level of storage services to their customers. With the
cloud, the company can easily store any type of the data without any limitation. Along with this
the company also receives a high level of the flexibility. The cloud services offered to the
company test and develop cloud services effectively (Dinh, Lee, Niyato and Wang, 2013). If one
cloud is not working properly then the company can switch to another cloud. Along with this,
Aztek can also able to access the own file through the internet anywhere.
CLOUD COMPUTING IN FINANCIAL SECTOR AND OTHER REGULATIONS
The external cloud services in the financial services help to the company to manage their
activities and operations costs effectively. The financial sector is also now engaged with the
internet services. There are many organizations like Aztek which are using cloud services to
efficiently use their resources. The main role of cloud services in the financial services to offers
the financial services and also helps the company to maintain its internet services (Furht, 2010).
Through the external cloud services, the business can offer a large number of services and they
can also provides high level of the security to store personal information of customers.
However, there are many types of the rules and the regulation which are needed to be
maintained. The Australian government develops some laws and regulation through which they