Executive Summary
The given essay includes the general information about the internet based financial news and investment information website, MarketWatch.com. The information found comprises of general information about business profile of the company and scale of its operations (global). This section also informs about the information about the patron group and gamut of services provided by the company to its customers. Then there is information regarding the key personnel in the company including newsroom team, information technology team, and financial advisory team. Following this segment will be the information technology related information like basic network information, server information, internet domains, registry date details, etc. Finally, there will be specific insight on the information security measures adopted by the company for its online client service details.
Target Company
The target for this information gathering oriented project is MarketWatch.com, an internet based financial news and investment information based website. This website is chosen for the purpose of extracting general information about its global operations in field of financial information and general investment details. The information technology based facts for this company is readily available and its expertise is delivering exquisite information to online visitors.
Business type
MarketWatch.com is an online business website which provides a gamut of live update based financial information which covers global business news, analytical insights over various financial changes in the market, live feed based stock market information, blogged information from industry experts, and expert opinion regarding various investment schemes (Company Info 1). The key feature of MarketWatch is a dedicated team of journalists who keep providing an update of the most striking news trends and information from the stock markets. Apart from the above-stated information the website provides a unique customized information to its specific user based login services which provide insights on stock investment information (Company Info 1). This company is a well known internet resource famous for being a leading pacesetter in the segment of updating live business news, providing specific insight on personal finance, reflexive stock market information, and exclusive real-time commentary from market watch experts, panel discussions webinars, and ease of investment based tools and stock index data. There are videos running on the website embedded with live video feed from stock market shicking and breaking news information from journalists.
Global business operations and Group information
The company was founded in 1997, California by Larry Cramer and was operating under the CBS news group till 2005. Dow Jones & Co. acquired over it in January 2005. As of now the parent network for MarketWatch is a subsidiary of The Wall Street digital network. The other companies from this group are Wall Street Journal, Barrons.com, Allthings.com, and Virtual stock exchange.com (Company Info 1). This company is a publishing of Dow Jones & Co. which has a reach of almost all of key nations in United States, Europe, and Asia. MarketWatch.com has visitor strength of almost 16 million visitors (Company Info 1). There are specific subscription based products offered to the customers and investment guideline which is named the Huber Financial Digest (Company Info 1). There are other subscription based services like ETF trader and the retirement weekly. In addition to these online operations, there is an essential business diversification in the name of MarketWatch radio which gives live update of financial news and stock market information to various radio stations, refreshing information in every 30 minutes span.
Key personnel
The human resource behind the operations of MarketWatch stands as the prime contributor to its excellence in the immensely diversified internet based services. The main segment of teams includes editorial operations team, technical expert team, and the empanelled columnists. The editorial team, headed by the editor in chief, is the key team which ensures that there is an immaculate representation of financial information on the website and specific analytical insight posted for the various investment related information. Then there is technical analytics team which ensures a proper technical support to the various online services like news flash, stock market live feed, webinars, breaking news videos, expert blog hyperlinks access, investment opinion insights links, sponsored links, specific user based login access, etc.
Organizational structure for Information Technology services
Apart from the routine technical operations, there are specific technology experts who perform the roles of columnist and reporters for providing most prompt information on the website. Finally, there is a team of reporters and columnist who have expertise in their respective domains like stock market, investment news, technology, personal finance, politics in finance, retirement finance, United States equities, healthcare finance, corporate news, etc. Some of the key management leaders in MarketWatch are as follows:
The editorial team is headed by Jeremy Olshan who has been tremendously experienced in the field of finance industry based editing for personal finance at smartfinance.com. His vision behind the MarketWatch operations is to provide a one stop solution for all the sorts of financed industry information and investment guidance.Information Technology services related news and information update are managed by Jennifer Booton who is based at NewYork and she ensured prompt coverage and representation of market update, technical changes from public and private companies.Technical analysis column is headed by Michael Ashbaug, who undergoes all the technical analytics for all the MarketWatch operations and he is also the editor for MarketWatch’s technical newsletter, “The technical indicator”.
Internet Information
The email based domain server for Dow Jones (parent company to MarketWatch) is which is associated with almost 2791 other domains. The registration is done under the name of Dow Jones & Company Ltd. The registrar for the online operations belongs to CSC corporate domains. The domain licence was taken on 31st July 1997 and the expiry date is 30th July 2018 (Whois Record 1). The business currently operates on four main servers namely NS-1291.AWSDNS-33.ORG which has around 151 domains, NS-1588.AWSDNS-06.CO.UK which has 121 domains, NS-450.AWSDNS-56.COM which has 4834 domains, and NS-705.AWSDNS-24.NET which has around 6360 domains (Whois Record 1). There have been around 127 changes on the 15 different discreet IP addresses for MarketWatch in last 12 years (Whois Record 1). The server type is Microsoft-IIS/7.5. The referral URL to access the registrar website for this company is http://www.cscglobal.com/global/web/csc/digital-brand-services.html.
Server Network Information
The details of the four main server networks for MarketWatch are as follows:
NS-1291. AWSDNS-33. ORG
The IP address for this server is 205.251.197.11 and its location is at Mount Pearl, NL, and California. Other domains using this server are registered to CSC corporate domains, GoDaddy.com, ENOM.Inc, etc.
NS-1588.AWSDNS-06.CO.UK
The IP address for this server is 205.251.198.52 and its location is at Saint John’s, NL, and California. Other domains using this server are registered to Register.com, GoDaddy.com, ENOM.Inc, etc.
NS-450.AWSDNS-56.COM
The IP address for this server is 205.251.193.194 and its location is at California. Other domains using this server are registered to GoDaddy.com, TUCOWS.com, etc.
NS-705.AWSDNS-24.NET
The IP address for this server is 205.251.194.193 and its location is at California. Other domains using this server are registered to CSC corporate domains, GoDaddy.com, ENOM.Inc, etc.
Additional information on IT data security measures in MarketWatch.com
There are a certain set of user information which I required by domain access for the services of this company and there are certain information which are default stored with the site view from a visitor. This information comprises of the unstated user access details like his/her computer system details, device identification strings, and used browser information. Other key information derived from a user visit include the user’s IP address, his browser type, and details of his other prime software or operating hardware information. The parent server from Dow Jones & co. and linked web hosting service providers specifically use internet cookies and other similar net browsing history based tracking features (for example, server browser, cookies, display information in pixels, beacons, and flash player information which includes cookies). These internet history trackers are generally recorded during the visits of a browser when he surfs through any of the Dow Jones & Co. owned online Service (Privacy Policy Sections 1). This information is used by the third parties who commercially support the Dow Jones & Company’s Online Services via return favour in form of serving advertisements and adjunct user access services.
The data used by gathering browsing trackers from the visitors help in improving the overall quality of the offered products and web based services. This practice aids in giving a more customized/ personalized experience for a visitor in terms of changing the content, offered products and specific offers which might add to the customer satisfaction and consequently give a competitive edge to MarketWatch in terms of service quality (Privacy Policy Sections 1). The IT based data security at the Dow Jones & co. owned business is developed by a combination of various administrative, security related technical features, and physically ensured measures to defend the sanctity of Personal Information of visitors so as to protect its illegal possession and unauthorized use (Privacy Policy Sections 1). This is an information security based measure adopted against loss, stealing and preventing unauthorized use, like hacking or modified usage of critical internet user information.
Conclusion and summary
We have seen that the operations of Market Watch are entirely based on information technology oriented services. The main business function comprises if using internet based platform for delivering update information on financial markets and to give specific insights on investment details for stock market. MarketWatch uses the excellence of its internet based operations to maximize the web-based experience for those visitors who seek update information on visitors. The website uses the information from the visitors like browsing history, cookies, IP address so as to customize the offered products and services to meet the customization requirement of the offered services for maximizing the customer experience. MarketWatch uses the key visitor information for its competitive edge across its market competition but it also employs enough security measures to prevent any breach of such critical information leading to unauthorized usage like hacking, phishing, etc. Thus, we can conclude that hacking into the secured servers might be extremely difficult for MarketWatch.
Appendices
Works Cited
Company Info. " About MarketWatch".2015.Web. Feb 16. 2016.
Privacy Policy Sections. "The Dow Jones Privacy Policy" 2016. Web. Feb 16. 2016.
Whois Record. "Marketwatch.com".2016. Web. Feb 16. 2016.
