PLCOM Services 

Internet Service Functionality

1.Interactivity
2.Information Confidentiality
3.Extranet Server Services

1) Interactivity

Electronic Mailing Lists

Electronic mailing lists facillitate communication for specific individuals as a single message can then be copied and sent to the group as a whole. Mailing lists are flexible and can be configured to suit a variety of needs:

  • Multi-member conferencing or workgroups. (A private list can be created for the exchange of information between various board members.)
  • One-way broadcast of information to a select audience. (Corporate memos can be sent to all staff.)
  • Automatic subscription by the public to information publications from company or organization. (Internet users can subscribe to a list that distributes the publication.)

General Information Email Attendant

This is an electronic mail version of a FAXback service. A user can send an Email to the attendant -- software on a dedicated Internet Services server -- and the attendant would find the required document and relay it back to the stakeholder. The complexity of such a tool can range from being very simple generic software to sophisticated customized versions.

Electronic Forms

Electronic Forms are the most basic form of information exchange on the World Wide Web. An electronic form consists of a hypertext page sent to the user's desktop computer with all the fields that the user should fill in, and a piece of software that runs on the server tot collect the data typed into the electronic form.

Electronic forms back-end software on the server can be as simple as a program which will re-format the information and send the information in an Email message. This type of simple electronic form is used very often as a method of gathering feedback from users about some aspect of a WEB site.

Electronic form back-end software can be very complex involving information searches, mathematical calculations, graphics rendering, database transactions and many other types of services. Almost any operation that a computer is capable of performing can be implemented within an electronic forms back-end software tool.

2. Information Confidentiality

Your organization will need to transfer confidential documents between stakeholders. There are several possibilities to ensure that the documents are secure.

Email
An economical encryption-based email package is PGP (Pretty Good Privacy). This encryption method is based on public key technology. Users can encrypt information so that it can be read only by a specific recipient, as well as digitally sign information so that a remote user can verify the authenticity of the message. Unlike other privacy packages, PGP is available as both a commercially supported tool such as the PGP Plugin for Eudora Pro or Netscape or as a FreeWare utility available to individuals. With the wide availability of PGP across almost all platforms, a high degree of inter-operability between your organization and others outside will be assured.

Web
While a number of different encryption methods exist for WEB-based transactions, only SSL is available in the most popular desktop browsers: Netscape and Internet Explorer. SSL makes use of X.509 certificates to ensure the authenticity of a WEB site, and it encrypts all information going to or from the WEB site so that privacy exists between the server and client. A number of different WEB server packages include or have SSL options. Apache is currently the most popular WEB server package, partly due to its extremely high level of community support and configurability.

3) Internet Service Management

As your Internet Service Manager (ISM) PLCOM will ensure the confidentiality of your documents when they are being sent over the network to select stakeholders. PLCOM will provide you with a full cryptographic WEB server, allowing for protected information transfer and custom CGI's to be configured, updated, and managed by our staff. A Server will be dedicated for the sole use of your organization, meaning that it would not have software running that was written by other clients that could compromise privileged information. Only your company and PLCOM would have access to this information or be authorized to grant access and transfer privileges to other stakeholders as required.

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