Analyzing the Role and Impact of IT in British Airways

This report examines the critical role of Information Technology (IT) in the business operations of British Airways (BA). It explores how IT is integral to BA's various processes, including online booking, aircraft management, and internal systems, emphasizing the importance of IT for business survival and expansion. The report highlights the advantages of IT, such as enhanced customer service and streamlined payment methods, while also addressing the risks, particularly data security and privacy concerns, exemplified by the 2018 data breach. It provides insights into how BA can maintain and monitor its IT infrastructure through cybersecurity measures, international standards, and business intelligence to mitigate potential risks and ensure data security. The report concludes by emphasizing the necessity of cybersecurity to provide data privacy and security to all the processes.

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Role of IT in Business
Report
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Role of IT in Business 1
Table of Contents
Introduction.................................................................................................................................. 2
The impact of IT on that business................................................................................................2
1) Does BA business need IT?.................................................................................................2
2) Why IT is important for business survival?...........................................................................3
3) What is required to apply IT into BA business?....................................................................3
4) How does BA business use IT?...........................................................................................4
5) What benefits and advantages does IT bring to BA business?............................................4
6) What type of risks does IT bring to BA business?................................................................5
7) How can your chosen business maintain and monitor IT?...................................................5
Conclusion................................................................................................................................... 5
References.................................................................................................................................. 7

Role of IT in Business 2
Introduction
Information Technology (IT) is playing a huge role in the success and growth of the
business of an organization. There are many different things in the market, which
makes a huge impact on the business of an organization. Information Technology is
part of most of the businesses in the present era.
From the last two decades, most of the companies use IT in their business to increase
performance and manage business processes in a better way. Organizations have
many business processes and the IT can manage most of the processes in a proper
way.
This report will take a real-life example to explain the role of IT in business and its
impacts on the business. There are many benefits of IT in business. In addition, IT
provides better managerial skills to the organization.
British Airways (BA) is the most popular airline service in the UK and all around the
world. In the year 2018, it faced data breach of their customer’s data and their personal
information from the database of British Airways (Hron, 2018).
This report will provide many things about IT and its advantage to the business of an
organization. It will explain the risks of IT and data privacy concerns.
The impact of IT on that business
IT makes a huge impact on various business functions of an organization. There are
many technical and non- technical processes in the airline industry, which can be
handled by information systems and websites.
1) Does BA business need IT?
British Airways is highly required information technology to manage its numerous
business processes. The company has online bookings from their website and mobile
application. IT uses in most of the operations of British Airways, such as booking flights,
hotels, and cars. Those facilities cannot manage without IT. In addition, many internal
processes are based on the information systems, such as payment methods, aircraft
management, monitoring and controlling of aircraft and other processes. Aircraft are
based on information technology because they have embedded systems to operate
them properly.
The company faced data breach in September 2018 and it compromised with 380,000
payment cards data, which is not good for the company and customers (Katz, 2019).

Role of IT in Business 3
Source: (Seals, 2018)
There are many useful uses of IT in the airline industry. Airlines industry is costly and
timesaving transportation system. IT makes it more powerful and beneficial for
customers and companies. Online booking is useful to increase the number of
passengers, as compared to the offline booking of tickets.
2) Why IT is important for business survival?
British Airways is providing online facility to register users in their online booking portal
through the website or mobile application, which is connected with their databases. It
takes their personal information for bookings, such as passenger name, email id, phone
number, addresses, photo id number, and payment details.
IT provides new business platforms to expand their business at a high level. In the case
of international business, IT is highly required for the survival and management of
various processes. The airline's industry is based on the number of passengers.
3) What is required to apply IT into BA business?
In the present era, artificial intelligence is used in aircraft, such as Watson for weather
reports using the Internet of Things (IoT). This industry is totally based on IT, as most of
the business processes are managed using websites and mobile applications, which
are connected with services and cloud-based services (Benjamins, 2006).
The airline industry uses IT in different processes, such as planning, designing,
installation, training, and many others. IT is helpful for cost optimization and it reduces
cost from different cost-effective processes, such as offline booking, document
management, a collaboration between employees, and many others.

Role of IT in Business 4
Planning is easy with the help of artificial intelligence (AI). AI provides better data
analytics reports and the company can use those reports for decision-making. Machine
learning and deep learning are useful in designing process in the airline industry (Chen,
et al., 2012).
In this industry, most of the equipment based on the IT and other technologies, such as
weather forecasting system, data analysis, virtual reality, augmented reality, and many
others. Maximum equipment uses to operate aircraft as well as manage transportation
and other things. Aircraft are also used for cargo. it is managed by the help of inventory
management system ( Lopez, 2013).
4) How does BA business use IT?
Airline industry uses IT in both internal and external processes, such as online booking
for customers, passages list and management, and many others. employees use the
website and mobile applications to manage different works of the company. In the
present era, most of the things are cloud-based. Therefore, people can use information
technology from anywhere and anytime.
5) What benefits and advantages does IT bring to BA business?
British Airways uses its website to book flights, hotels, and cars. Customers can register
on their website and book any services as per their requirements. In this industry,
maximum revenue is generated from passenger and cargo services as well. Therefore,
it is necessary to manage all the service in a good manner so that customers satisfied
with their services.
IT provides flexibility in booking and many other services. Customers can change their
bookings with the help of websites without any issues. Payment services are more easy
and flexible using information technology. Customer can pay in different ways, such as
Google pay, PayPal, Monzo, and many others. Information technology provides green
computing, which reduces cost from different processes.
According to ( Ransbotham, et al., 2017), artificial intelligence is highly used to secure
information technology-based equipment’s and services and provide full data privacy
and security to the company.
6) What type of risks does IT bring to BA business?
Information technology is providing integrated software and applications to manage
different operations of the company. Data security and piracy are the most important
things for the company and customers. IT brings different security and privacy issues
because of cyber-attacks and cybercrimes (ACSC, 2017).
Information systems have many vulnerabilities, which is used by the attacker and make
different issues in the systems. An attacker can break the security and access the data
of customers and business information from databases (ACSC, 2019).
Therefore, it is necessary to secure data from cyber-attacks. Information systems are
connected from the internet and computer systems through the private and public

Role of IT in Business 5
network. In addition, it is necessary to manage all the issues through different channels.
The data breach is worst for an organization and makes many bad impacts on the
company (Scroxton, 2018).
Costumes also faced many issues when they cancel their credits cards and issues new
one. It makes an impact on the revenue of the company and it was worst for the
company from a profit point of view (irishexaminer.com, 2018).
7) How can your chosen business maintain and monitor IT?
British Airways can use cybersecurity to secure their data and business processes from
cyber-attacks (Senft & Gallegos, 2010). There are many frameworks, which provide
information security management systems, such as ISO/IEC 27001, COBIT, ITIL,
PRINCE2, and many others (Brook, 2018). According to (Bharadwaj, et al., 2013),
digital business strategies are used for business insights in the future.
The company has been handling their data breach issues in sometime when they know
about that data breach. Now they have implemented international standards for
securing their website and mobile applications from cyber-attacks (James, 2018).
Business intelligence will be used to maintaining different business functions and
monitor them properly to prevent their whole system from different types of risks (Zeng,
et al., 2012). In addition, BI provides many benefits to expand the business of the
company at various geographical locations (Isik, , et al., 2013).
Conclusion
In conclusion, British Airways faced a critical situation because of that data breach
incident. It damaged their image in the customer as well as in the market. The company
has remembrances money to the customers, which has been infected by that data
breach. It has changed its financial position in the stock market as well.
This report has described the impact of IT in the business of the company and its
benefits and risks. It has explained about the data breach and its reasons behind it. It
has provided guidelines for the company to monitor and maintain different business
functions.
Finally, it is concluded that the company must use cybersecurity techniques to provide
data security and privacy to all the processes. It will provide many benefits in the future,
such as huge profit, good image, scalability, and many others.

Role of IT in Business 6
References
Lopez, D., 2013. Data security. Data Science Journal, 10 08, 12(1), pp. 69-74.
Ransbotham, S., Kiron, D., Gerbert, P. & Reeves, M., 2017. Reshaping Business With Artificial
Intelligence. [Online]
Available at: https://sloanreview.mit.edu/projects/reshaping-business-with-artificial-intelligence/
ACSC, 2017. Australian Cyber Security Centre. [Online]
Available at: https://www.acsc.gov.au/publications/ACSC_Threat_Report_2017.pdf
[Accessed 12 December 2018].
ACSC, 2019. Australian Government Information Security Manual (ISM). [Online]
Available at: https://acsc.gov.au/infosec/ism/index.htm
[Accessed 4 April 2019].
Benjamins, . V., 2006. AI's Future: Innovating in Business and Society. IEEE Intelligent
Systems, 21(3), pp. 72-73.
Bharadwaj, A., El Sawy, O., Pavlou, P. & Venkatraman, . N., 2013. Digital business strategy:
toward a next generation of insights. Managemengt information system:mis quarterly, 37(2), pp.
471-662.
Brook, C., 2018. What is COBIT?. [Online]
Available at: https://digitalguardian.com/blog/what-cobit
[Accessed 28 May 2019].
Chen, H., Chiang, R. H. & Storey, V. C., 2012. Business intelligence and analytics: from big
data to big impact. MIS quarterly, pp. 1165-1188.
Hron, M., 2018. Top 10 Biggest Data Breaches in 2018. [Online]
Available at: https://blog.avast.com/biggest-data-breaches
irishexaminer.com, 2018. Anger as British Airways customers cancel credit cards after 380,000
payments hit in data breach. [Online]
Available at: https://www.irishexaminer.com/breakingnews/world/anger-as-british-airways-
customers-cancel-credit-cards-after-380000-payments-hit-in-data-breach-867413.html
Isik, , O., Jones, M. C. & Sidorova, A., 2013. Business intelligence success: The roles of BI
capabilities and decision environments. Information & Management, 50(1), pp. 13-23.
James, M., 2018. How Well did British Airways Handle Their Data Breach? A GDPR Case
Study. [Online]
Available at: https://www.globalsign.com/en/blog/how-well-did-british-airways-handle-their-data-
breach/
Katz, E., 2019. Data Breaches 2018: The 20 Biggest Breaches of the Year. [Online]
Available at: https://blog.dashlane.com/data-breaches-2018/
Scroxton, A., 2018. British Airways data breach worse than thought. [Online]
Available at: https://www.computerweekly.com/news/252451391/British-Airways-data-breach-
worse-than-thought

Role of IT in Business 7
Seals, T., 2018. British Airways Data Breach Takes Off Again with 185K More Victims. [Online]
Available at: https://threatpost.com/british-airways-data-breach-takes-off-again-with-185k-more-
victims/138600/
Senft, S. & Gallegos, F., 2010. Information Technology Control and Audit, Third Edition. 3rd ed.
New York: CRC Press.
Zeng, L., Li, L. & Duan, L., 2012. Business intelligence in enterprise computing environment.
Information Technology and Management, 13(4), pp. 297-310.