Why IT Strategy Has Become A Concern

By Donna Warren


It is possible for a company to carry out their operations and realize their objectives without a clear IT strategy. In fact, many companies, organization and businesses manage to do that. Nonetheless, the absence of a straightforward or easy to understand framework would means that investment choices about Information Technology have to be made in their own advantages.

Producing a success Information Technology plan should not be difficult at all. You can actually draft a plan that will not only work now but also be useful in the times to come. There are several steps involved in coming up with an effective Information Technology plan.

The very first step is planning and preparation because IT plan is a full project in its own right and you must approach it in respectful manner. More often that not you want your plan to cover all the activities you intend to undertake but if you for any reason you feel like excluding some areas, feel free to do so. A clear plan tries to identify a supervisor in the company who will sponsor the work and consider setting up a team of professionals to manage the project.

The third area focuses on the standard of the current technology, its support arrangement and the operation policies. It would be important to ask whether it is appropriate to purchase standard package programs or creating your own. Ask yourself about the level of Information Technology you would require for effective operation.

The second step is to understand the Information Technology needs of your organization. In other words, the plan you intend to draft should have a direct link to the aims, objectives and the visions of your organization. Take time to analyze the current Information Technology structure, assess its strength and points of weaknesses, the advantages it has brought to the company and demerits too if any.

With a proper plan in place, it becomes quite simple to determine whether a company will need to put in place, a support system that runs on a twenty-four how basis, seven days a week all year round. Get to know the actual nature of the support system you intend to outsource to the third party out there. A great plan clearly describes the nature of resources and skill level required for company development.

A great plan can bring many benefits to a business, company or an organization. The good thing is that Information Technology matched with your needs will be supportive enough to give strength to your activities. This means it will be easy for you to achieve your aims and realize your goals with easy.

The last step in coming up with a successful IT strategy is putting the decisions made into real actions. Make sure that the documented plan is in line with the needs, the objectives and the aims of the organization else, it may be rendered useless. It should be for the benefit of the whole organization, no matter who is involved.




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HOWTO Setting up a Penetration environment with VirtualBox

*** CAUTION : This tutorial is written for Penetration Test only. Otherwise, you may be arrested if you attack/intrude any other network/computer without authorization. ***



Software :

Back|Track 4 R1

Ubuntu 10.10 Desktop

VirtualBox 3.2.10 r66523



Hardware :

Lenovo ThinkPad X200 with 4GB RAM and 80GB SSD



Lenovo ThinkPad X200 is installed Ubuntu 10.10 Desktop edition. On which, installs VirtualBox.



Go to the Oracle VM VirtualBox site to download the VirtualBox :

http://dlc.sun.com/virtualbox/vboxdownload.html#linux



(A) Create Back|Track virtual machine :



Select at least 8GB virtual hard drive place and 512MB RAM for the Back|Track. The first network adapter is set to "NAT" while the second is set to "Host-Only".



Boot up Back|Track from the VirtualBox and click on "install.sh" to install Back|Track.



Login for further setting. The username is "root" and the password is "toor".



Step 1 :



After the installation, you may execute the following command to fix the screen size to 800x600.



fix-splash800



Then, change the password of the root when necessary. Otherwise, the username is "root" while the password is "toor".



Execute the following command to make Back|Track to start network interface and X.org when bootup each time.



kate /root/.bash_profile



Append the following lines :



start-network

startx




Step 2 :



To install VirtualBox Additions when necessary via "Konqueror" -- "Storage Media" -- "media:/hdc".



bash VBoxLinuxAdditions-x86.run



Step 3 :



apt-get -y update

apt-get -y upgrade




Step 4 :



Go to "Menu" -- "BackTrack" -- "Penetration" -- "Fast Track". Select "Fast-Track Interactive" and choose "1".



Step 4a :



Go to "Menu" -- "BackTrack" -- "Penetration" -- "ExploitDB". Select "Update Exploitdb".



Step 4b :



Go to "Menu" -- "BackTrack" -- "Penetration" -- "Social Engineering Toolkit". Select "S.E.T-Update".



Step 5 :



At the terminal, execute the following command :



airodump-ng-oui-update



Step 6 :



Go to "Menu" -- "BackTrack" -- "Vulnerability Identification" -- "OpenVAS" -- "OpenVAS NVT Sync".



Step 7 :



Update the Add-ons of Firefox.



Step 8 :



apt-get -y install crark

apt-get -y install wbox

apt-get -y install vlc




Step 9 :



Update the Framework. However, it will take several hours.



cd /pentest/exploits/framework3/

svn up




Step 10 :



Reboot the system.



(B) Create Metasploitable virtual machine (Optional)



Go to the following link to download the "Metasploitable" which is an Ubuntu 8.04 server with some flaws.



http://blog.metasploit.com/2010/05/introducing-metasploitable.html



Set the downloaded Metasploitable as virtual hard drive at VirtualBox. The network adapter is set to "Host-Only". The virtual hard disk space is at least 8GB and 512MB RAM for the Metasploitable.



(C) The final



Now, the IP address of eth0 of Metasploitable is similar to 192.168.56.101. The IP address of eth0 and eth1 of Back|Track are similar to 10.0.2.15 and 192.168.56.102 respectively.



You may require to execute the following command at Back|Track in order to see the two network interfaces and their IPs.



/etc/init.d/networking restart



Back|Track can access (or ping) Metasploitable via IP address. Back|Track can surf the internet but Metasploitable cannot.



At last, your penetration environment is set up.



(D) Free Tutorials



(1) Metaploit Unleashed

(2) Fast-Track

(3) Social-Engineer Tootkit

(4) Got Milk?

(5) How to Metasploit Beginner to Advanced (Video)



(E) Non-free Training



Offensive Security



(F) Resources



(1) Exploits Database

(2) Metaploit Blog

(3) Offensive security Blog

(4) Yet another Back|Track in Gnome

(5) Metasploit



Thats all! See you.
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