Page 468 - Fundamentals of Management Myths Debunked (2017)_Flat

CaSe aPPliCation 1 CHAPTER 14 • Foundations of Control 467
#

Top Secret

risons are easier to enter than Visa’s top-secret castle moat, which was also designed as protection. There
Operations Center East (OCE), its biggest, newest are also hundreds of security cameras and a superb security
56
“Pand most advanced U.S. data center.” And Rick team of former military personnel. If you’re lucky enough to
Knight, senior vice president at Visa and formerly the head be invited as a guest to OCE (which few people are), you’ll
of global operations and engineering, is responsible for its have your photo taken and right index fingerprint encoded
security and functioning. Why all the precautions? Because on a badge. Then you’re locked into a “mantrap portal”
Visa acknowledges that (1) hackers are increasingly savvy, where you put your badge on a reader that makes sure you
(2) data is an increasingly desirable black-market commodity, are you, and then put it on another reader with your finger
and (3) the best way to keep on a fingerprint detector. If
itself safe is with an informa- you make it through, you’re
tion network in a fortress that Prisons are easier to enter than clear to enter the network op-

instantly responds to threats. Visa’s OCE! erations center. With a wall
In a year’s time, Visa pro- of screens in front of them,
cesses more than 91.6 billion each employee sits at a desk
retail electronic payments from around the globe. And every with four monitors. In a room behind the main center, three
day, Visa’s system connects up to 2.2 billion debit and credit top-notch security experts keep an eye on things. Knight says
cards, millions of acceptance locations, 2.1 million ATMs, and that “about 60 incidents a day warrant attention.”
57
14,400 financial institutions. Visa, which completes an an- Although hackers are a primary concern, OCE also wor-
nual “stress test” of its system in preparation for the holiday ries about network capacity. Right now, maximum capacity is
season, recently processed a peak volume of 56,000 messages currently at 56,000 transactions per second. If the network goes
58
per second. (Do some math on that and be amazed!) So what over that capacity, the network wouldn’t just stop processing
seems to us a simple swipe of a card or keying in our card one message, it would stop processing all of them. OCE is de-
numbers on an online transaction actually triggers a robust set scribed as a “Tier-4” center, which is a certification from a data
of activities including the basic sales transaction processing, center organization. To achieve that certification, every (and
risk management, and information-based services. That’s why yes, we mean every) mainframe, air conditioner, and battery
OCE’s workers have two jobs: “Keep hackers out and keep has a backup.
the network up, no matter what.” And that’s why Visa doesn’t
reveal the location of OCE—on the eastern seaboard is as spe- Discussion Questions
cific as the description gets. 14-14 Is Visa being overly cautious? Why or why not?
Beneath the road leading to the OCE, hydraulic posts
can rise up fast enough to stop a car going 50 miles per 14-15 Why is this level of managerial controls necessary?
14-16 Which controls would be more important to Visa: feedfor-
hour. And a car won’t be able to go that fast or it will miss ward, concurrent, or feedback? Explain.
a “vicious hairpin turn” and drive off into a drainage pond. 14-17 What other managerial controls might be useful to the
Back in medieval days, that would have been known as the company?