E-Commerce Security Issues

E-commerce systems are based upon internet use, which provides open and easy communications on a global basis. However, because the Internet is unregulated, unmanaged and uncontrolled, it poses a wide range of risks and threats to the systems operating on it. The use of internet means that your internal IT and e-commerce systems are potenially accessible by anyone irrespective of their location.

Some of the more common threats that hackers pose to ecommerce systems include:

1. Carrying out denial-of-service (DoS) attacks that stop access to authorised users of a website, so that the site is forced to offer a reduced level of service or, in some cases, ceases operation completely

2. Gaining access to sensitive data such as price lists, catalogues and valuable intellectual property, and altering, destroying or copying it

3. Altering your website, thereby damaging your image or directing your customers to another site

4. Gaining access to financial information about your business or your customers, with a view to perpetrating fraud

5. Using viruses to corrupt your business data

(source: businesslink.gov.uk)

Personally, I fail to recognize this issue when I'm infront of the computer. Since I have limited background on a computer and most of the time I spent infront of the computer is offline so I usually don't think about security. Now that we have mentioned this issue, I remembered the time when I was still new in computers, some of my friends have access to multiple credit card informations. At that time, they used some to order stuff in the net. Back then, knowing that people are capable of doing that, I tend to discourage people around me (including myself) from ever getting a credit card. At present, this is still a major issue in the cyberworld. I look at this issue has no particular end. Why? Because I believe that, with a brand new technology, security will always be strenghthened and it can also be vice versa. The same new technology can be used to strenghten the penetration of this security. For me, security always begins and ends with us.