Final Project Report Template - Franklin University



Final Project Report

for

Media Tracking System

Version 2.0 approved

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Table of Contents

Table of Contents i

Revision History iii

Group Members iii

1. Final Project Summary i

1.1. Content Summary i

1.2. Lessons Learned ii

1.3. Learning Outcomes Summary ii

1.3.1 Communications iii

1.3.2 Critical Thinking v

1.3.3 Network Design v

1.3.4 Management Information Systems v

1.3.5 Systems Administration and Scripting vi

1.3.6 Security vi

1.3.7 Employability vi

2. Future directions vii

3. Annotated Bibliography viii

4. Appendix A: Vision and Scope viii

5. Appendix B: Status Report 1 15

6. Appendix D: Presentation Slides 27

7. Appendix E: Other Deliverables/Artifacts 27

Revision History

|Name |Date |Reason For Changes |Version |

|Kenneth Wright |07/01/2010 |Initial Draft |1.0 |

|Kenneth Wright, et al |07/15/2010 |With contributions and edits from all team members, we |1.5 |

| | |refined the document | |

|Kenneth Wright, et al |07/23/2010 |Style, editing, additional information from all team |1.6 |

| | |members | |

|Kenneth Wright, et al |07/30/2010 |Final editing and proofreading |2.0 |

Group Members

|Name |Role |Responsibilities |

|Kenneth Wright |Project Manager & |Oversee project activities, supervise solution integration into existing |

| |Infrastructure SME |infrastructure |

|Joe Hettinger |Database & Hardware SME |Install & design database, supervise server hardware implementations |

|Greg Robison |Interface & Encryption SME |Build user interface and make recommendations for secure network traffic |

| | |transmission |

Final Project Summary

T2 Technologies is the go to source for small and intermediate size business looking for progressive and cost effective IT solutions.

Recently Nationwide Children’s Hospital contracted T2 to create a cost effective media management system to organize, track and manage their large inventory of backup tapes, CD/DVD and other media that is stored and their main data center and at their offsite storage facility. This system is designed to better manage and track the media as well as provide regulatory compliance for data safety in accordance with federal HIPPA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) and PCI (Payment card industry) laws and guidelines.

1 Content Summary

Scope

This engagement provides for an electronic database with a standard GUI interface to inventory and track portable media. The engagement also includes a web interface for offsite employee usage. This web interface will have limited function and only be for inventorying or transport of media.

Schedule

This engagement began on April 26, 2010 and will continue through August, 2010 with the implementation of the system and first two weeks of inventorying the customer’s tape inventory.

Costs

Hardware costs include the PC to interface with the database, the scanner and other peripheral hardware required at both the customer site as well as the offsite facility.

All additional costs have been development, software and programming time.

Risks

As outlined in the scope document, the risks are as follows

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Communications Strategy

The team utilized several communication methods to collaborate with each other; including email, instant web meeting technology, voice calls and voicemail. The team also used both email as well as Microsoft OneNote to keep notes on meetings, and other conversations.

We utilized regular meetings with both the customer as well as the business practitioner to solicit feedback for improvements and changes.

1 Lessons Learned

Our primary lesson learned was to dig deeper into the actual use of the final product. Who would use it, what would be their workflow. After careful consideration, we determined that the web portion of the system should have been added to a future enhancement since the employees at the offsite storage would not be granted access to Nationwide Children’s network.

A redesign of the screens would have been unnecessary for this project, had the design team gone to the customer sites prior to designing the management screens and done a workflow study. This resulted in changes to the primary management interface to allow for easier workflow when creating and sending daily cases of media to the offsite storage facility.

2 Learning Outcomes Summary

The learning outcomes were met by a variety of ways the following is a summary for each section and then following the summary is the detail for each section.

1.3.1 Communications outcomes are met through email, WebEx meetings, and phone calls are documented in the Communications Log in Appendix E. Additionally, ideas develop into working components, and the flow of ideas can be seen in the transition from Appendix A to Appendix B.

1.3.2 Critical Thinking outcomes are seen by the team’s approach to solving the management of portable media through email communications in the Communications Log and the project white papers in Appendix E.

1.3.3 Network Design outcomes were met as demonstrated through diagrams and with a VPN to access the network in section 13.2 of Status Report 1 in Appendix B.

1.3.4 Management Information Systems outcomes are document in email communications in the Communications Log in Appendix E and Section 8 of Status Report 1 in Appendix B where the business practitioner provided feedback to the team.

1.3.5 Systems Administration and Scripting are documented throughout Status Report 1 in Appendix B. One example of Systems Administration is the backup plan in section 13.2 of Status Report 1.

1.3.6 Security is documented and acknowledges that vulnerabilities may be introduced when adding a new server and describes the encryption used for the wireless network in section 7 of Status Report 1 in Appendix B and in further detail in 1.3.6 of this section.

1.3.7 Employability is documented in section 3 of the Vision and Scope in Appendix A. configuration files, diagrams, security plans, etc., that you have included in the Appendices to this document.

3 Communications

All members of the team have responded, contributed, and interacted well with each other throughout the capstone project. Assignments have been completed in a timely manner with few grammatical errors, using correct terminology, and in an organized easy to read fashion in the correct APA format. Specifically, the weekly deliverables demanded enough work that teammates would have to quickly divide the work, complete tasks, and submit the work back to the group for review. Submitting tasks back to the group gave teammates an opportunity review the work and provide appropriate feedback.

The Franklin Live and WebEx meetings were focused on the project deliverables and provided opportunities for brainstorming, planning, and feedback on submitted tasks. All participants were prepared for the meetings with ideas or questions that were pertinent to the project.

During the meetings and through email, there were times that teammates would challenge each other on the direction or selected method for completing a particular task. These ‘challenges’ often would provide unique insight to the problem and demonstrated the synthesis and understanding of the topic leading to an enhanced solution to the problem at hand.

4 Critical Thinking

The team members did an outstanding job in the analysis of the management problem with portable media at Nationwide Children’s Hospital. The team’s approach to solving the management of portable media was based on the following ideals and methods.

• Build a product that considers alternative future uses that is reliable.

• Completely define the problem.

• Decide the fastest and most cost effective way to solve the problem.

• Use the Software Development Life Cycle using the Waterfall Methodology.

• Develop with trouble shooting tools or methods that will aid in trouble shooting problems.

One example of the foreword thinking was the suggestion of a team member to add several fields to the database that would aid in troubleshooting problems. The trouble shooting fields added were for date and time stamps, the user who created the record, and the user who modified the recorded. Some developers would not add these fields to conserve disk space, reduce development time, and to speed up the application. However, the number of tables and the expected size of the database will not consume too many resources or noticeably affect the speed of the application. Additionally, it is easier to add the fields during initial development than it is to go back and add fields after the product has been released.

5 Network Design

This project did not require the team to design a network because Nationwide Children’s Hospital already had an established network. The project involved one server to be added to a network consisting of over 350 servers and over a thousand workstations. However, the Nationwide Children’s Hospital network administrator provided the team with an overview of the network that described the physical layout and how the DNS, DHCP, and VPN were setup. Using the overview of the network, the team reviewed what was required to connect to the portable media management server both internally and externally. The following are the networking components that were used and reviewed to ensure the team could access the necessary resources.

• How to determine if name resolution is working or not.

• The use of ping, arp, and netstat in the command prompt for trouble shooting.

• Remotely logging into computers with the use of Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP).

• Accessing network resources using a Virtual Private Network.

• Mapping network drives.

6 Management Information Systems

The portable media management system developed for NCH will control media inventory, the process for tracking media sent to offsite storage facilities, and IT analysts request for restore jobs. The system will track when media is destroyed and reports will identify the media can be destroyed according to retention policies. Additionally the system is compliant with HIPAA and other privacy statutes.

The system will eliminate illegible paper logs and speed up processing with a barcode scanner to track the media identification number. The look up process will be much faster, a built in query will identify the location of the media with the media identification number for the last back up of a server instead of thumbing through a paper log. The HIPAA compliant system will avoid inadvertent or miss placed portable media, eliminating or reducing the possibility for fines associated with HIPAA compliance violations.

The business practitioner that advised our team was helpful in pointing out a few errors in our initial plans along with good standard procedures for database development. One suggestion was to include the table name or abbreviation into each field name and not to abbreviate the field name if it is not clearly understood by a new user. The reason for using this procedure is that the database becomes self-documenting, which is helpful for new personnel who need to develop, modify, or maintain the system.

7 Systems Administration and Scripting

The additional systems administration and scripting associated with the new portable backup media tracking system at the Nationwide Children’s Hospital comes with minimal overhead. The database runs on a laptop computer in Access 2007 and DotNetFramework 2.0. The computer will be joined to the domain for security and integration as well as receive regular updates from the WSUS server and a managed anti-virus application. Operating System and software upgrades will be applied as needed, ensuring that sufficient testing is done before hand to reduce any bugs that could interrupt service on the production network.

The wireless hand scanners running Microsoft Windows CE 6.0 will be configured to receive important operating and software upgrades as well. Additional they will used on a rotational schedule that ensures that they will regularly be returned to administrators so that regular inspections for updates and compatibility can be conducted.

8 Security

Anytime a new server or device is introduced to a network it represents a new potential vulnerability and access point for malicious activity if not properly safe guarded against threats. The new management system for portable backup media that will be implemented at the Nationwide Children’s Hospital by Team 2 consists of several components that have been thoroughly researched to determine the most effective methods for establishing a strong security posture. Although the system is protected by the existing security controls on the Nationwide Children’s Hospital network, it introduces several new features and capabilities that warrant additional security implementations. To start, the new servers will have security patches and software updates applied in accordance with the Nationwide Children’s Hospital current policies. Anti-virus software will be installed and maintained in the same fashion making the new servers security compliant to the Nationwide Children’s Hospital information assurance standards.

The new management system for potable backup media also makes use of several different web interfaces that will be protected using Transport Layer Security (TLS) and user authentication by username and password. Firewalls will be configured to only allow requests for the web interface to be permitted from the internal network to help prevent its exploitability from external threats. The mobile scanners used for the system introduce a new operating system to the network, Microsoft Windows CE 6.0 that will also require monitoring for security patches and software updates as well. They will be placed on a rotational use system that will ensure that administrators will have procession of them on a regular basis to keep them current. Communication between the handheld scanners and the servers will be protected with TLS, and the wireless traffic from the scanner to the wireless access points will be protected with WPA2 using the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES).

Although the actual backup systems are not part of the new implementation, they are an integral part of the overall system. Team 2 has made that recommendation that all backup data be encrypted using a data at rest encryption solution such as the Simpana plug in for Commvault or OpenSSL, a free open source backup encryption software application for Windows and Unix servers.

9 Employability

The scope of this project to develop a portable backup media tracking system for the Nationwide Children’s Hospital was designed to meet several initial strict requirements. The system had to be developed at minimal cost, development staff consisted of in house personal, required a simple to navigate web interface and be robust enough to provide the tracking requirements of portable backup media.

The selection of software and hardware products was carefully chosen to conform to the necessary design requirements. Access 2007 was selected as low cost database solution that could run on minimal hardware, in this case a laptop computer. Access 2007 is also a robust enough application that could be used to run custom a database with report generating capabilities and provide remote data input through web forms via multiple sources. The hand scanners with wireless networking capability provide the necessary portability scan, track, indentify and report portable media at multiple locations simultaneously. The database and web interfaces were developed with in-house staff, providing future support for database changes, upgrades or the addition of new features or capabilities should the need arise.

The final portable backup media tracking system produced by this project successfully meets all the pre-determined design requirements and operational criteria. The makes use of all possible network infrastructure in place, an requires minimal additional components to purchased and no outside contracting to complete the software development.

Future directions

The portable backup media tracking system produced from this project was intended to be a low cost solution developed by in house staff at the Nationwide Children’s Hospital. As long as the organization maintains staff with the appropriate skill sets, the product can continue to be updated with new capabilities and features added as needed for automation tasks of this business process.

Should the Nationwide Children’s Hospital require upgrading to a more robust database server in the future such as Microsoft SQL, the Access 2007 data can be upsized and migrated to the new database server. Such an upgrade would require an additional investment in hardware, but the current solution provides a foundation that would make the transition fairly seamless for administrators.

For T2 Consulting, this database is a launching point to remove the branding, convert to a SQL database with a full web front end to create a commercially marketable product.

Annotated Bibliography

An article that compares different Web development platforms

.Net Comparison Chart. (2004, February 5). Retrieved June 26, 2010, from :

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128 Barcode. Adams 1.

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2 Dimensional Barcode. (n.d.). Retrieved June 25, 2010, from Downloadsofts:

A Web page that displays the specifications of Access 2007

Access 2007 Specifications. (n.d.). Retrieved July 2, 2010, from office.:

Image of standard barcode

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Article regarding the different varieties of bar codes and their applications

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Matrix of barcodes with their associated features and applications

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Full description of the symbology of bar codes

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Article of the history and use of barcode technologies

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This book explains technologies and technical terms

Bowman, P. H. (2006). IT Made E-Z. In P. H. Bowman, & L. Long (Ed.), IT Made E-Z (p. 49). IT Made E-Z, Inc.

A dynamic website allowing users to search for browser usage based on input date

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This site describes the software development life cycle and several methodologies

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Dignan, Larry. (2006). VA: Veteran’s Data Swiped. Retrieved on 1 July, 2010 from

Article about the process of tape and media tracking

Ferrill, P. (2006, April 7). Tape Tracking. Processor , pp. 1-2.

Article on managing back up process properly to avoid database corruption and loss risk

Huber, N. (2004 , October 26). Poor back-up management can create database risk. Retrieved May 1, 2010, from Computer Weekly:

Article on a new system for tracking portable media

Lo Jack for Back Up Tapes. (n.d.). Retrieved April 27, 2010, from Enterprise Storage Forum:

Article regarding the viability of tape media for back up

McCall, Jay. “Tape Is Still A Vital Part Of Data Management.” Business Solutions, v. 19 issue 9, 2004, p. 90-92.

This site contains information on Microsoft Office products

Microsoft Products. (2010). Retrieved July 2, 2010, from :

Technical article describes and why it is browser-neutral

(2003). What is TLS/SSL? . retrieved on 29 June 2010 from

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Article compares PHP to other languages

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Article compares several different browsers and explains why the browser market is changing

Polishchuk, P. (2010, June 23). A collection of alternative Web browsers trying to hold their own. Retrieved June 25, 2010, from :

Article compares .Net to Java with a perspective of what sill set an software companies application developers have

Silwa, C. (2002, May 20). .Net vs. Java: Five Factors to Consider. Retrieved June 30, 2010, from :

Interesting encryption article

SSL/TLS handshake sequence. (2010). Retrieved 29 June 2010 from

Tape Management software solution

Tape Management Software Solution. (n.d.). Retrieved April 27, 2010, from B&L Associates:

Tape tracking system product offering

Tape Tracking System. (n.d.). Retrieved May 1, 2010, from Thomas Net:

Article regarding encrypting backup tape and other media for data security

Thompson, Kerry. (2007). Backup Encryption. Retrieved on 1 July, 2010 from

Encryption article for wireless technology

Wi- (2006). WPA2™ Security Now Mandatory for Wi-Fi CERTIFIED™ Products. Retrieved on 30 June 2010 from

Article on data encryption

Wilkins, David. (n.d.). Data Encryption. Retrieved on 29 June 2010 from

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