E-Commerce is the process through which goods or services are purchased from a transactional website (the online provider of the goods or services).
The website takes the personal details and payment details of the customer and uses them to provide a pre-paid product or service from the company to the customer. They are also used for security, financial and advertising purposes.
When shopping online, you are more susceptible to threats than you are when you are shopping in person; this is because you have to give your personal details via the internet. If you are purchasing something in a shop using a credit/ debit card you do not need to give any details, you simply enter your pin/ sign. However, when using e-commerce you have to give your name, address, email address, phone number and payment details. This is not a problem when using a reliable website and computer; however it is not always easy to tell which websites are reliable due to the increasing number of people who use the internet for fraud. Also, a website may be reliable but your computer may not be as there are many threats to data security for e-customers:
· Computer virus’ are a piece of a code that is secretly put into a system, usually in hidden programs or documents and when opened corrupts or destroys data.
· Hackers are people who are highly skilled in computing and use these skills to gain unauthorized access to systems with poor intentions.
· Spy ware is software which secretly gathers information from your computer whilst they use the internet. It is often installed without the user’s knowledge or permission through a free download. It performs actions such as creating pop-ups, hi-jacks web pages and redirects browsing results.
Hardware failure can lead to many problems. If a computer breaks, then there must be a great amount of trust between a company and the repairers, as skilled employees of the repair company could read all the information on the hard drive. When bringing employees in to an establishment to work with computers they could store files on a memory device without you knowing, possibly even customer’s credit card details, therefore it is very important to use reliable companies. Also, if a firewall breaks down then trafficking can flow through and cause hackers to access your computers.
Dishonest employees are a large threat to companies. If an employee is skilled enough they may be able to access important files within the company and use them with malicious intentions.