Ipremier

Case Study 2-2: iPremier

Summary

The iPremier is a web-based commerce company that founded in 1996 in seattle. The iPremier had outsourced management that cooperated with Qdata which offered technical architecture of the IT system and IT infrastructure. Therefore, iPremier didn’t pay attention on emergency procedures that caused the event on January 12, 2007- their firewall was hacked. During the attack, the CIO’s reaction to this was largely emotional, and he leapt to the conclusion that shutting the website down until the situation was resolved was not an option, despite advice to the contrary from the legal counsel. There was also minimal action taken post-crisis. The website was left up and running and the customers were none-the-wiser. The CIO ducked responsibility by having his subordinate try to deduce what went wrong, make recommendations, and state how the recommendations would impact customers. Deciding which action to take and how it will impact the business is the CIO’s responsibility.

1. How well did this company perform during the attack?

The company had many problems on their several service areas. For example, their technical architecture of the IT system was relying on the third party, Qdata, to operate their IT infrastructure. Otherwise, they didn’t know how to handle emergency procedures. These were reasons that made them couldn’t eliminate hackers imminently in their facility. Joanne and Leon Ledbetter did everything in their power to restore the website and protect the customer data, which even included running red lights. Training for an emergency would have proven useful.

However, they had good workers who tried to fix the attack. The CIO, Bob Turley, knew of the emergency protocol and out of date manuals, but never did anything to alleviate these problems. This put the company in a significant disadvantage, and created a bigger problem than what was necessary. Furthermore, after the attack, the company didn’t know the customer...