INTERNET

INTRODUCTION – INTERNET

The Internet has replaced many traditional forms of business communication, using websites or digital media to distribute and share information. This has reduced costs, eliminated waste and improved customer service, compared to paper-based information. Email, instant messaging and social networks provide high-speed, highly-accessible communications tools, speeding up processes that are time-critical. Collaboration over the Internet increases productivity, improves decision making and reduces travel costs.

Global Internet access makes it easy for organizations to do business anywhere in the world without investing in a local physical presence. Using e-commerce facilities, organizations can sell their products globally, taking payment electronically and offering customers the convenience of digital delivery for suitable products or services. Organizations can also provide support to local customers or partners.

  Intranet

An intranet is an internal network that only authorized users, typically employees, access. It uses Internet technology and offers similar business benefits. Organizations use intranets to distribute or share information, deploy business applications, support collaboration and project management, simplify internal communications and streamline business processes. Statistics from Intranet Insider World Tour Live 2009 show the potential for significant cost savings. For example, the retailer IKEA reported paper cost savings of $192,000 while the introduction of self-service human resources services saved the company $219,000.

  The international consultancy firm Deloitte reported that their investment in a global intranet — D Street — had delivered a wide range of business benefits. The intranet, which utilizes social networking techniques, has built a strong sense of community. The firm stressed the improvements in knowledge sharing and preservation that underpin productivity and innovation in their service delivery. They also believed that the quality of information and collaboration facilities on the intranet helped them to recruit, assimilate and retain talented people. These factors combined to help build and maintain a position of market leadership.

An intranet is a computer network that uses Internet Protocol technology to securely share any part of an organization’s information or network operating system within that organization. The term is used in contrast to internet, a network between organizations, and instead refers to a network within an organization. Sometimes the term refers only to the organization’s internal website, but may be a more extensive part of the organization’s information technology infrastructure. It may host multiple private websites and constitute an important component and focal point of internal communication and collaboration. Any of the well known Internet protocols may be found in an intranet, such as HTTP (web services), SMTP (e-mail), and FTP (file transfer protocol). Internet technologies are often deployed to provide modern interfaces to legacy information systems hosting corporate data.

  The Purpose of an Intranet

An intranet is much different from an extranet and the Internet. It is a private network for a small collection of users like employees which have been granted permission by their organization to access the Web, email, and other information services found on the Internet. An intranet is intended for small-scale operations, but it has proven useful for collaboration and sharing resources like computer data, network applications and sharing information among employees. There are other intranet benefits as well, such as saving a business time and money when using one.

*For those people who are still uncertain why an intranet is important to business, check out this article, “The Purpose of an Intranet.”

According to Oracle, an “Intranet is a network that is “owned” by a single organization that controls its security policies and network management.” [1] In short, it fulfills data and information management requirements. It is deployed for internal users and not external users who are on the outside of the private network, like business partners or other businesses. However, such users can be granted use of an intranet if an organization permits it.

Often, for security reasons, an organization will deploy a demilitarized zone, or DMZ, which is a computer or small subnetwork to protect internal, private networks from being accessed by external users (see image). In addition, an organization may segregate the applications in the intranet, which are on internal severs, from other network systems through the use of firewalls to increase internal security. Firewalls are useful in an intranet for filtering traffic and to effectively manage and control network traffic, but as with any network system (like an extranet), an intranet creates risks and has intranet security issues (as shown in the next sections of the article).

 10 Common Intranet Security Issues

Here is a list of 10 intranet security issues and what a user and organization do to resolve them:

1. Network security threats. Internal and external threats are common. Some are deliberate threats while others are not. It’s best to use a firewall and some sort of security software like McAfee Network Threat Response.

2. Security breaches. There are times when an intranet will encounter suspicious traffic, such as spam, phishing, spyware, adware and malware, so deploying an effective email filter (and firewall) can help block the suspicious traffic from entering the network.

3. Network attacks. There have been several cases reported of an intranet being attacked. A network-based intrusion prevention system (IPS) or an intrusion detection prevention system (IDPS) can offer great protection. They also can be deployed for monitoring network traffic and detecting and preventing well-known threats and attacks.

4. Unauthorized access. This happens much too often when an internal or external user (not authorized) gains access to data and corporate information stored on an intranet. It may be wise to use some type of authentication like passwords, smart cards, or biometrics; in addition, to deploying a bastion host before a user has access to the intranet.

5. Misuse of user privileges. Too often are users gaining unauthorized access to systems from the Intranet. Businesses may want to use some type of intranet monitoring software to see what their employees are doing on the intranet or on their own PCs.

6. Violations of security policies. At times, users will make illegal attempt to penetrate the network without clearance and permission. Internal users must understand what happens when someone violates the policy in attempt to protect internal IT systems on the intranet.

7. Malicious content. Intranet users are vulnerable to malicious content (viruses, worms, and Trojan Horses) that attach themselves on emails. Businesses and users alike must remember to always maintain and update their security software on every PC and server on an intranet to ensure protection.

8. Usability problems. There are users who still improperly use the intranet. They do not know how to search, retrieve, send or share data and information; often, doing more harm than good on the private network. Some users may need formal training.

9. Weak passwords. Users tend to use weak passwords, write down passwords, never change them, or forget them. Network administrators must encourage users to overcome these issues and have them use hard-to-guess passwords, as well as not to share them, or write them down.

10. Lack of encryption. Many times unsecured “confidential” data is shown to unauthorized users because they do not use encryption. Using SSL digital certificates can help secure the Intranet.

  Extranet

An extranet extends intranet facilities to locations outside the organization over secure network connections. An extranet can connect an organization with branches, remote workers, suppliers, distributors, business partners, key customers and other authorized users to create an extended enterprise. Extranets simplify the two-way flow of confidential information, enabling organizations to collect and share critical business data.

Extranets help to improve the efficiency of supply chain operations, building collaborative relationships and making the supply chain more responsive to changes in the marketplace. Organizations with a number of locations can use extranets to provide branches with the same business applications and data found at headquarters. This enables the organization to offer a consistent level of customer service throughout its network.

An extranetis a computer networkthat allows controlled access from the outside, for specific business or educational purposes. In a business-to-businesscontext, an extranet can be viewed as an extension of an organization’s intranet that is extended to users outside the organization, usually partners, vendors, and suppliers, in isolation from all other Internet users. In contrast, business-to-consumer(B2C) models involve known servers of one or more companies, communicating with previously unknown consumer users. An extranet is similar to a DMZ in that it provides access to needed services for channel partners, without granting access to an organization’s entire network.

Relationship to an intranet

An extranet could be understood as an intranet mapped onto the public Internet or some other transmission system not accessible to the general public, but managed by more than one company’s administrator(s). For example, military networks of different security levels may map onto a common military radio transmission system that never connects to the Internet. Any private network mapped onto a public one is a virtual private network (VPN), often using special security protocols.

For decades, institutions have been interconnecting to each other to create private networks for sharing information. One of the differences that characterizes an extranet, however, is that its interconnections are over a shared network rather than through dedicated physical lines. With respect to Internet Protocol networks, RFC 4364states “If all the sites in a VPN are owned by the same enterprise, the VPN is a corporate intranet. If the various sites in a VPN are owned by different enterprises, the VPN is an extranet. A site can be in more than one VPN; e.g., in an intranet and several extranets. We regard both intranets and extranets as VPNs. In general, when we use the term VPN we will not be distinguishing between intranets and extranets. Even if this argument is valid, the term “extranet” is still applied and can be used to eliminate the use of the above description.”[1]

In the quote above from RFC 4364, the term “site” refers to a distinct networked environment. Two sites connected to each other across the public Internet backbone comprise a VPN. The term “site” does not mean “website.” Thus, a small company in a single building can have an “intranet,” but to have a VPN, they would need to provide tunneled access to that network for geographically distributed employees.

Similarly, for smaller, geographically united organizations, “extranet” is a useful term to describe selective access to intranet systems granted to suppliers, customers, or other companies. Such access does not involve tunneling, but rather simply an authentication mechanism to a web server. In this sense, an “extranet” designates the “private part” of a website, where “registered users” can navigate, enabled by authentication mechanismson a “login page”.

An extranet requires network security. These can include firewalls, server management, the issuance and use of digital certificates or similar means of user authentication, encryption of messages, and the use of virtual private networks (VPNs) that tunnel through the public network.

Many technical specifications describe methods of implementing extranets, but often never explicitly define an extranet. RFC 3457 presents requirements for remote access to extranets. RFC 2709 discusses extranet implementation using IPsec and advanced network address translation (NAT).

During the late 1990s and early 2000s, several industries started to use the term ‘extranet’ to describe centralized repositories of shared data (and supporting applications) made accessible via the web only to authorized members of particular work groups – for example, geographically dispersed, multi-company project teams. Some applications are offered on a software as a service(SaaS) basis.

For example, in the construction industry, project teams may access a project extranet to share drawings, photographs and documents, and use online applications to mark-up and make comments and to manage and report on project-related communications. In 2003 in the United Kingdom, several of the leading vendors formed the Network for Construction Collaboration Technology Providers (NCCTP) to promote the technologies and to establish data exchange standards between the different data systems. The same type of construction-focused technologies have also been developed in the United States, Australia and mainland Europe.^[3]

With global Internet users estimated at 1,966,514,816 and some 77 percent of the U.S. population connected, Internet use is now part of the mainstream. In business, the Internet has become a widely-used tool offering public access to support communication, collaboration and commerce throughout the world. Internet technology is also used in closed networks to support intranets within an organization and extranets, which link an organization with its partners.

The following are example of organization using intranet and extranet network:

Internet service providers (ISP)

Telecommunication industries

Electronic library

Molt-national companies

Television| radio station

Photography studio

Security agency

Hotels

Medical laboratories

 

Advantages

• Exchange large volumes of data using Electronic Data Interchange (EDI)
• Share product catalogs exclusively with trade partners
• Collaborate with other companies on joint development efforts
• Jointly develop and use training programs with other companies
• Provide or access services provided by one company to a group of other companies, such as an online banking application managed by one company on behalf of affiliated banks

Disadvantages

• Extranets can be expensive to implement and maintain within an organization (e.g., hardware, software, employee training costs), if hosted internally rather than by an application service provider.
• Security of extranets can be a concern when hosting valuable or proprietary information.

 

REFFRENCE

Requirements for IPsec Remote Access Scenarios, RFC3457, S. Kelly & S. Ramamoorthi, January 2003

Wilkinson, Paul (2005). Construction Collaboration Technologies: The Extranet Evolution. Taylor & Francis. ISBN 0-415-35859-0.

Callaghan, J. (2002), Inside Intranets & Extranets: Knowledge Management and the Struggle for Power, Palgrave Macmillan, ISBN 0-333-98743-8

Stambro, Robert and Svartbo, Erik (2002), Extranet Use in Supply Chain Management, University of Technology

Wilkinson, Paul (2005). Collaboration Technologies: The Extranet Evolution. Taylor & Francis. ISBN 0-415-35859-0