Apple Inc. Background and Market Research

Introduction Apple Inc. was established on April 1, 1976 by Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, and Ronald Wayne (Mary Bellis, n.d). Apple Inc. which is an American multination corporation that design and sells mobile phone, computer software, tablet and personal computer. Apple well known hardware product are the Macintosh, iPod, iPad and the iPhone while its software are the OS X and iOS operating system. Today, Apple Inc is the second-best global brand base on Interbrand statistic (Interbrand, 2012). The company have an estimated value worth of US$626 billion as of September 2012 which is larger than Google and Microsoft even when combined (Adam Satariano, 2012).
System Risk that affect Apple Inc Future Risk is the potential harm that may occur from some current process or from some future event (SANS Institude, 2007). In the perspective of an IT security, risk is the harm to a process that is related information resulting from some purposeful or accidental event that negatively impacts the process or the related information. There are a lot of information system risks that are out there that my affect the future of Apple Inc. Such system risk could be seen below. * Acts of Nature Act of nature can be referred to natural disaster such as Tsunami, Earthquake and Typhoon. Act of nature could affect Apple in many ways. For example, if a disaster happen in one of Apple main server, large information stored in the server will be lost if there is no backup done for the day. Many companies have schedule for backup as doing a backup can slow down the performance of the server. Disaster will cause Apple to lose not only important information but also suffer huge losses because they are not able to do any transaction for the day. The company may also need to replace the server and fix the damage done to the building if they have their own structure. Therefore, Apple needs to have multiple servers as a backup that is located in different country so that when one is down there are others server to backup it up. Apple have setup a data centre in a rural town called Prineville in Oregon which is also the same place with Facebook Data centre (Rich Miller, 2012). The reason Apple choose Prineville is because of its of the town;s ideal environment for using fresh air to cool server which helps Apple to save cost on electricity. “It’s an ideal location for evaporative cooling,” said Jay Park, Facebook’s Director of Datacenter Engineering. Jay Park also said that the temperature in Prineville had not exceeded 105 degrees for the last 50 years which is a suitable place to setup a data centre . * System Vulnerabilities
System Vulnerabilities is a flaw in a system that could cause the system to be open for an attack from hackers (SANS Institude, 2007). System vulnerabilities are serious system risk that could compromise the whole system if not careful. System vulnerabilities will affect the future of Apple if the company do not take any counter measure to prevent this from happening. This is because the vulnerability put the system in high risk of getting attack by viruses that could compromise the whole system and also steal information. For example, the Flashback Trojan uses one of the exploit in the system had infected over 600000 Mac users (Kyle Wagner, 2012).
System Vulnerabilities also helps Apple in the future when developing new devices or software as it makes the system more secured and previous mistake does not happen again. Vulnerability which is patched will strengthen the system from the same attack and also strengthen the security of the system.

Importance of Information Security towards Apple Inc
Security is a matter that cannot be taken likely. For a company like Apple, security plays an important role for the company that highly depends on information system. Below we could see the importance of security towards Apple. * Protecting Information
Apple iTune have 250 million iTunes account registered (Mig Siegler, 2011). Big number comes in big responsibility. Security will allow Apple to protect their customer information by encrypting them so that whenever someone breaches into the system and copied the database that contain information of their customer, the intruder will not be able to see the content. It is Apple job to protect their customer information from falling into the wrong hands. * Prevent information Breaches
Security will help Apple to prevent information breaches into Apple server. Breaches can cause Apple to suffer huge losses because a breach usually entails huge financial penalties, expensive law suits and worst of all the loss of reputation and business. Information breaches is dangerous to Apple when it comes to a new device such as the iPhone because if the competitor such as Samsung or HTC get hold of the information, they may come out with a phone that is able to counter the iPhone and thus affecting the market sales of the phone.
This is why security plays an important role in Apple Inc. Losing trust from their customer is the hardest thing to get back as there are many alternative around. Apple may have tons of cash but they cannot buy back trust. Weak security will only cause the Apple not to be able to compete with other company.
Importance of Disaster Recovery plan towards Apple Inc Disaster Recovery plan is a documented procedure in order to recover and protect the IT infrastructure in a business in an event of a disaster (Chad Bahan, 2003). Apple cannot predict the disaster that is going to happen to the company. It is important for Apple to stay prepared when a disaster strike one of their server. The reason could be seen from below. * Prevent Data Lost
Apple has a huge database of information that is important such as iTunes account, sales report and etc that they cannot afford to lose. Having a recovery plan will help Apple to prevent data lost in the time of a disaster. Being able to recover back the data will allow Apple to get back to business faster as time is money. * Remain Accessible if main server is down
Apple iTune and App Store are services that cannot afford to go onto downtime because they will lose sales when people cannot access the online store. Apple disaster recovery plan will allow Apple to continue running its online business by using multiple server in different country to host iTune and App store so even when a disaster hits one of the server, the service is still usable as it will reroute to another server located someplace else.
Accessibility is important to Apple as downtime will cause their customer to move to another place to buy songs because there are other sites that provide the same server such as Google Play.
Reference
Interbrand.com (2012) Interbrand - Best Global Brands 2012 - 2012 Report (Brand View). [online] Available at: http://www.interbrand.com/en/best-global-brands/2012/Best-Global-Brands-2012-Brand-View.aspx [Accessed: 9 Oct 2012].
Kyle Wagner. (2012) Mac Flashback Trojan: Find Out If You're One of the 600,000 Infected. [online] Available at: http://gizmodo.com/5899352/mac-flashback-trojan-find-out-if-youre-one-of-the-600000-infected [Accessed: 9 Oct 2012].
Bellis, M. (n.p.) The History of Apple Computers. [online] Available at: http://inventors.about.com/od/cstartinventions/a/Apple_Computers.htm [Accessed: 09 Oct 2012].
SANS Institude. (2007) An Introduction to Information System Risk Management. [e-book] SANS Institude. p.1-3 Available through: http://www.sans.org/ http://www.sans.org/reading_room/whitepapers/auditing/introduction-information-system-risk-management_1204 [Accessed: 09 October 2012].
Bahan, C. (2003) The Disaster Recovery Plan. [e-book] SANS Institute. p.3-6 Available through: SANS Institute http://www.sans.org/reading_room/whitepapers/recovery/disaster-recovery-plan_1164 [Accessed: 9 October 2012].
Bloomberg.com (2012) Apple Reaches Record and $600 Billion Value on IPad Rumor - Bloomberg. [online] Available at: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-08-17/apple-rises-to-intraday-record-on-ipad-mini-research-note.html [Accessed: 09 Oct 2012].
Techcrunch.com (2011) Apple Now Has 200 Million iTunes Accounts, Biggest Credit Card Hub On Web | TechCrunch. [online] Available at: http://techcrunch.com/2011/03/02/apple-200-million-itunes-accounts/ [Accessed: 10 Oct 2012] Rich Miller (2012) Apple Confirms Plans for Oregon Data Center » Data Center Knowledge. [online] Available at: http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2012/02/21/apple-confirms-plans-for-oregon-data-center/ [Accessed: 11 Oct 2012].