Jurassic Park Controll Analysis

Case Analysis: Jurassic Park

Introduction

Jurassic Park is a marvel of human innovation that will captivate the imaginations of people for decades to come. We all know what happened that fateful evening when there was a total system meltdown. It is important that we address the issues that led to the breakdown and ensure that the proper corrective and preventative measures are implemented to ensure something like this never happens again. This report details the areas of concern, from most important to least. Recommendations are then made to address these issues, the possibility and plausibility of government regulation over this industry is examined, and concluding remarks are provided.

Control Issues with Jurassic Park

The primary issue in this case is the power that was held by the head computer programmer, Dennis Nedry (recently deceased). Nedry had access to every aspect of the project, which allowed him to shut down entire sections of the security fences, break into a secured lab, and steal DNA samples of various species of dinosaurs. These events were catastrophic, directly causing the deaths of lawyer Donald Gennaro, head technician Ray Arnold, game warden Robert Muldoon, and Nedry himself. By providing Nedry with this amount of power, owner John Hammond allowed the entire project to be susceptible to both fraud and human error. With the click of a few buttons, Nedry was able to deactivate the park’s security measures and electric fences. Unable to find Nedry’s command for the computer, Hammond was forced to proceed with a total shutdown of the park’s systems, and rely on blind faith to justify that these systems would start back up once rebooted.

On top of InGen’s over-reliance on one computer programmer, there was also too much reliance on one computer system and power grid to run the operation. The fact that Hammond was able to shut down the park’s entire system with the flip of a switch on a wall displays exactly how poor the controls...