HC1041 T1 2019 Report: IT Impact on Media Business, Facebook

This report investigates the impact of Information Technology (IT) on the media business, focusing on Facebook as a prominent case study. The analysis begins with an introduction to the importance of IT in the digital media landscape, followed by an examination of a significant Facebook data breach. The report details the nature of the breach, including the number of affected users and the type of information compromised. It then explores the critical need for IT within Facebook, covering various applications in business operations such as data security, content creation, and user monitoring. Furthermore, the report outlines the benefits of IT for Facebook, including technological innovation and business model sustainability, while also addressing the associated IT risks, such as data theft and the spread of misinformation. The report concludes by highlighting how IT can be used for the maintenance and monitoring of Facebook's media business, emphasizing the importance of security measures for a sustainable future. The report utilizes various references to support its findings and analysis.

Running Head: IT Write Up
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IT for Media Business
IT Impact on Media Business: Facebook
(Student details :)
5/29/2019

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Contents
Information Technology for Media Business............................................................................2
Introduction................................................................................................................................2
IT Impact on Media Business....................................................................................................3
Introduction to case................................................................................................................3
Need for IT for FB.................................................................................................................4
IT application into various business operations of FB...........................................................4
IT utilization by the Media business......................................................................................4
Benefits of IT for the Media business of FB..........................................................................5
IT Risks for the media business.............................................................................................5
IT usage for the maintenance or monitoring of the FB media business.................................5
Conclusion..................................................................................................................................6
References..................................................................................................................................6

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Information Technology for Media Business
Introduction
This report is based on finding IT (Information Technology) impacts on international
business. Every business of global business industry needs IT and at the same time risks are
associated with the IT use in any business. For assessing the impacts of IT on business, this
paper has selected media industry. To do so, a recent information security (IS) breach of
Facebook (FB) has been selected in order to analyze the data breach case. Thus, through
analyzing the recent IS breach of FB, need of IT for the Media Company Facebook will be
highlighted (Guynn, 2018).
In general, IT is the base of every media business growth which is functioning in this digital
era (Vacca, 2012). It can be explained as without the use of IT techniques no operations of
the online media industry can be executed. In this way, with conducting research on FB data
breach example this report is going to analyze the good and bad impacts of IT on the media
industry.
Source: (ABC News, 2018)

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IT Impact on Media Business
Introduction to case
As per the recent news published in (ABC News, 2018), cyber attackers breached data from
29 million Facebook users’ accounts utilizing an automated program which switched from
one FB friend to the next, which has been revealed by the social media giant FB recently.
There are some key points of the selected IS breach case as follows:
 FB reported that the users whose data was hacked were from a fairly broad number of
nations
 The 2018 cyber-attack of FB started at a small scale and then got spread from "friends
of friends"
 Later then, FB has created a website for checking if one’s account has been breached
or not (ABC News, 2018).
Initially, it was reported that 50 million profiles have been breached by hackers. Post detailed
analysis was done by the investigators who reviewed the activity on accounts which may
have been impacted then it was found that less than 29 million accounts were affected
(Australian Government, 2018). In addition to that FB sent messages and notifications to all
of the affected users for telling them what type of data and info had been accessed during the
IS attack. Third party apps which use a FB login and FB apps such as Instagram and
Whatsapp were totally unaffected by the IS breach (ABC News, 2018). FB said that hackers
stole FB profile details like employers, birth dates, education history, types of devices used
by users, religious preference, pages allowed as well as recent searches along with the
location check-ins through 14 million users’ FB profile. Apart from this, for the rest 15
million users out of 29 million breached users’ profile, only name, and contact details were
stolen (ABC News, 2018). In this context, the FB vulnerability which has been exploited by
the hackers existed from July 2017 to November 2018. In this way, the FB data breach has
left its users more vulnerable for being targeted any future phishing attack. In this context,
financial analysts and cybersecurity experts suggested that the IS breach attack could deepen
users’ discomfort over posting to a service whose security, privacy and moderation practices
have been into doubt through a series of data breach scandals (The AME group, 2018).

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Need for IT for FB
 To function effectively at massive scale, FB needs IT tools like they have decided to
build their own technology for offering more secured social media platform.
 For building innovative and new products FB being a giant media industry need IT
 For collaborating with global people in order to find media industry solutions while
considering all societal problems, FB needs IT largely
 For a targeted data collection at a big level, media platforms like FB need IT
 For false amplification FB need IT
 For having advanced security of their users’ online accounts, Facebook requires IT
(Guynn, 2018).
IT application into various business operations of FB
 Information technology applications into various business operations of the media
industry are as follows:
 To prevent, detect and recover any data theft IT is applied to every media firm
 For any account takeover or spear phishing, IT is applied into FB business operations
 For content creation business operations like seeding of stories to press, fake accounts
detection and meme, as well as any story generation, advanced IT techniques are
applicable (The Guardian, 2018).
 Monitoring and surveillance require IT applications in any media industry.
IT utilization by the Media business
 Media businesses like FB use IT to study and monitor the efforts of those people who
attempt to negatively influence the discourse on FB or any other social media
platform.
 Media firms’ use IT for bringing innovation in the fields like account access as well
as account integrity (Australian Government, 2018).
 It is utilized by several media giants for identifying fake accounts as well as
expanding users’ privacy and security settings and alternatives
 To participate in multi-stakeholder attempts for notifying and educating at-risk users
so that they can keep their personal data safe, FB utilizes and continues to use IT
(Berger, 2018).
 In addition to that, for connecting people all over the world, FB utilizes IT

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 Apart from this, for supporting civil society programs all around the media literacy,
Facebook is utilizing the information technology largely (Gatzlaff & McCullough,
2010).
Benefits of IT for the Media business of FB
There are numerous benefits of IT for the media business of Facebook as follows:
 With the help of advanced IT tactics, media business can introduce techno-
innovations for their users (Vacca, 2012).
 Social media will always be in fashion because global people need to be inter-
connected for various essential reasons
 With the use of IT, Facebook can create a sustainable business model in order to
survive in the future media industry (Picanso, 2010).
 IT enables the media industry to grow and evolve in a better form
IT Risks for the media business
IT risks associated with media business are as follows:
 As the whole data is stored online servers which is also cloud-based hence data stolen
risk is high for all media business
 IT effectively inter-connects people of the whole world, thus any fake news got
spread very easily with the use of IT by the media industry (Liu et al., 2018).
 IT enables identity theft and data leakage as discussed above, hence media companies
reputation is a huge risk
 Fake apps as well as malicious links annoy users and impact their interests while
using FB or any other media for communication
 User and company profile hacking make attackers stealing the company’s data and
confidential info at huge level hence media business suffers from security and privacy
risks (Gatzlaff & McCullough, 2010).
IT usage for the maintenance or monitoring of the FB media business
IT can be utilized for the maintenance or monitoring of FB’s media business as follows:
 Through identifying fake apps by the FB server, the media platform can prevent their
installation onto their users’ devices for providing safe surfing (Cai et al., 2018).

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 Effective monitoring allows FB to find applications in the social media market which
steals confidential info of social media users. Facebook can help their users by
blocking those apps from their own page in order to prevent cybercriminals for
making cybercrimes at an adverse level.
 There is much useful media monitoring software like MediaScouting Print which
allows such media firms to monitor and maintain their media business by knowing
competition as well as measuring PR and marketing effectiveness worldwide (Bogle,
2018).
Conclusion
In whole, this report has successfully demonstrated the IT impacts on business with the help
of a recent IS breach case of Facebook in 2018. While assessing the impacts of information
technologies on the media industry, this report has specifically focused on the media giant FB
for understanding and evaluating the IT impacts on media business worldwide. In addition to
that, benefits and risks of IT utilization by the media companies have been explored with the
help of an example of FB Company. While evaluating the impacts of advanced IT on the
media business, it has been found that IT will always be needed for the whole global media
industry however preventions, monitoring, surveillance as well as security measures require
to be adopted largely by any media firm like FB so as to ensure a sustainable business future.
References
ABC News, 2018. Facebook cyber attack sees data stolen from 29 million accounts in its
largest ever data theft. [Online] Available at:
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-10-13/facebook-hack-saw-data-stolen-from-29-million-
accounts/10373030 [Accessed 28 May 2019].
Australian Government, 2018. Notifiable Data Breaches scheme. [Online] Available at:
https://www.oaic.gov.au/privacy-law/privacy-act/notifiable-data-breaches-scheme [Accessed
16 October 2018].
Berger, A., 2018. Media and communication research methods: An introduction to
qualitative and quantitative approaches. UK: Sage Publications.

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Bogle, , 2018. Data breaches: If a company has lost your personal info, they now have to tell
you. [Online] Available at: https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2018-02-22/-companies-
must-inform-consumers-of-data-breaches/9462170 [Accessed 16 October 2018].
Cai, Z., He, Z., Guan, X. & Li, Y., 2018. Collective data-sanitization for preventing sensitive
information inference attacks in social networks. IEEE Transactions on Dependable and
Secure Computing, 15(4), pp.577-90.
Gatzlaff, K. & McCullough, K., 2010. The effect of data breaches on shareholder wealth.
Risk management and Insurance Review, 13(1), pp.61-83.
Guynn, J., 2018. Facebook hack update: Nearly 30 million users' data stolen. How to find out
if you're one of them. [Online] Available at:
https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2018/10/12/facebook-hack-update-30-million-users-
personal-information-stolen/1614394002/ [Accessed 28 May 2019].
Liu, L., Han, M., Wang, Y. & Zhou, Y., 2018. Understanding data breach: a visualization
aspect. International Conference on Wireless Algorithms systems and applications, pp.883-
92.
Picanso, K.E., 2010. Protecting information security under a uniform data breach notification
law. Fordham L., (Rev.), p.355.
The AME group, 2018. Data Security Breach: 5 Consequences for Your Business. [Online]
Available at: https://www.theamegroup.com/security-breach/ [Accessed 16 October 2018].
The Guardian, 2018. Facebook fined for data breaches in Cambridge Analytica scandal.
[Online] Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/jul/11/facebook-fined-
for-data-breaches-in-cambridge-analytica-scandal.
Vacca, J., 2012. Computer and information security handbook. London: Newnes.