The growth of IT—the various appliances and devices for creating, storing, exchanging, and using information in diverse modes, including visual images, voice, multimedia, and business data—has changed the very structure of business organizations. Its adoption provides new modes of communication, including portable offices using mobile messaging capabilities, resulting in the geographic separation of the workplace from headquarters for many employees. With access to the Internet, company activities may be geographically scattered but still remain coordinated through a networked system that provides better service for customers. Networks and technology are also leading to leaner companies with fewer employees and simpler structures. Because networks enable firms to maintain information linkages among employees and customers, more work and customer satisfaction can be accomplished with fewer people. IT also contributes to greater flexibility in serving customers and enables closer coordination with suppliers. Company activities may be geographically scattered but remain coordinated through a network system that provides better service for customers. Many businesses coordinate activities from one centralized location, but their deliveries flow from several remote locations, often at lower cost. IT’s global reach facilitates project collaboration with remote business partners and the formation of new market relationships around the globe. Just as electronic collaboration has changed the way employees interact with each other, IT networks have created new manufacturing flexibility for mass customization, and Internet access has brought new opportunities for small businesses.

The Internet and the World Wide Web serve computers with information and provide communication flows among networks around the world. For many businesses, the Internet has replaced the telephone, fax machine, and standard mail as the primary communications tool. To support internal communications, many companies maintain internal websites—intranets—accessible only to employees. Some firms give limited network access to outsiders via extranets allowing access to private information among businesses, customers, and suppliers for better planning and coordination of their activities. Electronic conferencing allows simultaneous communication globally among groups from various locations, saving travel time, time for information exchanges, and expenses. VSAT satellite networks provide private remote communications for voice, video, and data transmissions.

Computer networks, including wide area networks and local area networks, enable the sharing of information, hardware, software, and other resources over wired or wireless connections. Wi-Fi provides wireless Internet connections through laptops or other devices at “hotspots” or local access points. All computer networks or systems need hardware, the physical components such as keyboards, monitors, and printers. In addition, all systems require software, programs that tell the computer how to function. Application software includes programs to meet specific user needs, such as groupware with voice and video connections for remote collaboration.

An information system (IS) uses IT resources that enable users to create, process, and transmit information for use in decision making. An IS often includes data warehousing, a vast collection, storage, and retrieval system, that provides the data resources needed for creating information. The IS also includes data-mining capabilities, the application of technologies for searching, sifting, and reorganizing data, to uncover useful information for planning new products, setting prices, and identifying trends.

The IS is often a set of several systems that share information while serving different levels of an organization, different departments, or different operations. Knowledge information systems support knowledge workers—engineers, scientists, and other specialists—by providing resources to create, store, use, and transmit new knowledge they use for specialty applications. Knowledge systems include computer-aided design (CAD), software systems that receive engineering data and convert them into three-dimensional displays, for rapid development of new products. Computer-aided manufacturing (CAM) uses computers to design and control the equipment needed in a manufacturing process. Management information systems (MIS) support managers by providing reports, schedules, plans, and budgets that can then be used for making decisions at all levels, ranging from detailed daily activities to long-range business strategies. The many uses of information systems include experimenting with decision support systems (DSS), interactive systems that create business models and test them with different data to see how the models respond under diverse business conditions, to test the effectiveness of potential decisions.

IT has attracted abusers that do mischief, with severity ranging from mere nuisance to outright destruction, costing companies millions. Everything from Facebook postings to Bluetooth usage to private computer systems is subject to break-ins and destruction. Hackers break into computers, steal personal information and company secrets, tamper with data, and launch attacks on other computers. Wireless moochers use victims’ networks for illegal activities, exposing the host to criminal prosecution. Once inside a computer network, hackers are able to commit identity theft, the unauthorized stealing of personal information to get loans, credit cards, or other monetary benefits by impersonating the victim. Even the ease of information sharing on the Internet poses a threat. It has proven costly for companies who are having a difficult time protecting their intellectual property, such as software products, movies, and music. Hackers break into company networks to steal anything of commercial value, including trade secrets, new inventions, and other valuable information that is protected by patent, copyright, or trademark. Another IT risk facing businesses is system shutdown and destruction of software, hardware, or data files by viruses, worms, and Trojan horses that can shut down a computer system or otherwise disrupt IT operations by contaminating and destroying software, hardware, or data files. After invading a victim’s computer, spyware gathers inside information and transmits it to outside spies. Masquerading as a friendly file available as a giveaway or shared among individual users on PCs and mobile devices, spyware is downloaded by unsuspecting users. Once installed, it monitors the host’s electronic activities, gathers personal information, and transmits stolen information to an outside system. Spam, junk e-mail sent to a mailing list or news group, is costly in terms of lost time and productivity by overloading the network’s capacity with massive mailings of unwanted messages.

Most systems guard against unauthorized access by requiring users to have protected passwords. In addition, many firms rely on firewalls, security systems with special software or hardware devices that intercept would-be intruders, so that only messages that meet the conditions of the company’s security policy are permitted to flow through the network. Firms can protect against identity theft by using assistance from advisory sources, such as the Identity Theft Resource Center, and by implementing the identity-theft protection provisions of the federal FACTA rule for maintaining and destroying personal information records. To combat infectious intrusions by viruses, worms, and Trojan horses, anti-virus software products search incoming e-mail and data files for “signatures” of known viruses and virus-like characteristics. Contaminated files are discarded or placed in quarantine for safekeeping. Additional intrusion protection is available by installing anti-spyware and spam filtering software. Encryption adds security by encoding, scrambling messages so they look like garbled nonsense to anyone who doesn’t possess the key, so that the message can be read only by intended recipients. The federal CAN-SPAM Act requires the Federal Trade Commission to shield the public from falsified header information, sexually explicit e-mails that are not so labeled, Internet spoofing (using trickery to make a message appear as if it came from a trusted source), and hijacking of computers through worms or Trojan horses. Although it cannot be prevented entirely, spam is abated by many Internet service providers (ISPs) that ban the spamming of ISP subscribers.