E-commerce Security Problems

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No doubt E-commerce is an ever growing industry, yet, there are some concerns over some security issues which may hinder its escalation to a certain extent. We will look into some of the major factors which are acting as obstacles to the development of e-commerce.

One such factor is the attack of recent viruses, resume and KAK viruses against Microsoft Outlook. This has proved that expediency permits the rapid propagation of viruses throughout internet. This problem is further fuelled by tales of e-commerce sites and consumer data privacy sites being attacked by hackers. In most business institutions, increasing security weaknesses is easily visible by stories of hackers stipulating a ransom for not printing customer credit card information. However, consumer privacy still remains as one of the top security concerns in the industry substituting even the fraud and theft fears. Still, we could tackle these threatening issues if we follow the four simple objectives which are privacy, veracity, authentication, non-repudiation.

Privacy can be tackled by encryption. A public key encrypts a message and a private key decrypts a message in PKI (public key infrastructure).Since only the sender has the exact key, it helps in proving the identity of the sender.

However, one of the common threats that hackers produce is making use of viruses to damage business data. Then, to cease access to some authorized users of a website and to compel the site to produce a downgrade service, hackers carry out denial-out-service (DOS) attacks. Sensitive data such as price lists, catalogues and valuable intellectual property are at the risk of getting accessed by the wrong hands and getting altered and destroyed. This is one of the insecurities of e-commerce. Another risk is modifying our website and corrupting our image, thus directing our own customers to another site.

Also, with a view to propagate fraud, one might try to gain access to our business or financial information which should be kept very much under the wraps. Else, it would certainly lead to crime.

Moreover, all these risks will have a great impact on businesses running through e-commerce. It could lead to criminal charges if you come across as in breach of the Data Protection or Computer Misuse Act, or any other e-commerce regulation. Market share can be in great loss if a customer loses well - established trust on you. As a consequence of fraud or litigation, financial loss is of course without doubt bound to occur. This financial loss will subsequently give birth to unwelcome publicity and stuff.

However, it's necessary to tackle security problems. One way is by giving a username and password combination before surfing on any site. Also, an authentication token is required which is known to the user. A personal identification no is one such step which meets the need for authentication. Through the operation of an entity's unique signing key, a digital certificate can be bought into action. Network restrictions should be made to curb access to other computer networks and systems.

So there are good numbers of ways from which we can prevent security problems. So like everything else in life, one should always be careful with e-commerce too because nothing in life is about a hundred percent guarantee.

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Article Source: ArticlesBase.com