E-commerce security

The past few years have seen the explosive growth of the Internet and of all kinds of Internet services, taking the Internet out of the academic community and firmly into the realm of commerce. To summarise the task of e-commerce security, its primary purpose is not to protect the messages exchanged during business transactions, but to protect the parties involved in those transactions. To be precise, security measures are there to limit the negative impact of engaging in commercial transactions over some electronic medium. Many commercial transactions have impact outside the e-world, and thus e-commerce security also needs to extend its basis beyond technical measures. The author concludes with a comment that has been well used by security professionals in the past: ´security is a people problem´. Education about information security in general and about e-commerce in particular for all parties involved has to be a core part of any strategy to improve e-commerce security.