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E Commerce Assign

The document discusses e-commerce and some of its threats. It defines e-commerce as the buying and selling of goods and services over the Internet. It describes how e-commerce uses technologies like mobile commerce and online payment processing. It then discusses some common security threats to e-commerce like credit card fraud, electronic payment fraud, and data theft. Specific threats discussed include phishing, skimming, eavesdropping, and theft of payment details at point-of-sale terminals.

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Margo Shaez
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71 views4 pages

E Commerce Assign

The document discusses e-commerce and some of its threats. It defines e-commerce as the buying and selling of goods and services over the Internet. It describes how e-commerce uses technologies like mobile commerce and online payment processing. It then discusses some common security threats to e-commerce like credit card fraud, electronic payment fraud, and data theft. Specific threats discussed include phishing, skimming, eavesdropping, and theft of payment details at point-of-sale terminals.

Uploaded by

Margo Shaez
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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What is E-commerce?

The term e-commerce was introduced in the 1960s, E-commerce has become one of the most
popular methods of making money online and an attractive opportunity for investors. For
those interested in buying an e-commerce business, this article serves to provide an
introduction to e-commerce, covering the reasons for its popularity, the main distribution
models and a comparison of the major e-commerce
platforms available.

E-Commerce refers to the activity of buying and


selling things over the internet. Simply, it refers to the
commercial transactions which are conducted online.
E-commerce can be drawn on many technologies
such as mobile commerce, Internet marketing, online
transaction processing, electronic funds transfer,
supply chain management, electronic data interchange
(EDI), inventory management systems, and
automated data collection systems.

‘E-commerce’ and ‘online shopping’ are often used interchangeably but at its core e-
commerce is much broader than this – it embodies a concept for doing business online,
incorporating a multitude of different services e.g. making online payments, booking flights
etc. Basically e-commerce is considered to be the activity of selling and purchasing products
using a website, or online platform.

E-commerce has experienced rapid growth since its humble beginnings. The power of e-
commerce should not be underestimated as it continues to pervade everyday life and present
significant opportunity for small, medium and large businesses and online investors. You
don’t need to look far to see the potential of e-commerce businesses. Amazon, for example,
which set the standard for customer-orientated websites as well as a lean supply chain. 

THREATS TO E-COMMERCE
E-commerce threat is occurring by using the internet for unfair
means with the intention of stealing, fraud and security breach.
There are various types of e-commerce threats. Some are accidental,
some are purposeful, and some of them are due to human error. The
most common security threats are

 An electronic payments system

 E-cash, data misuse

 Credit/debit card frauds, etc.


Electronic payments system:
The electronic payment systems have a very important role in e-commerce. E-commerce
organizations use electronic payment systems that refer to paperless monetary transactions. It
revolutionized the business processing by reducing paperwork, transaction costs, and labour
cost. E-commerce processing is user-friendly and less time consuming than manual
processing. Electronic commerce helps a business organization expand its market reach
expansion. There is a certain risk with the electronic payments system.

Some of them are:

The Risk of Fraud

An electronic payment system has a huge risk of fraud. The computing devices use an
identity of the person for authorizing a payment such as passwords and security questions.
These authentications are not full proof in determining the identity of a person. If the
password and the answers to the security questions are matched, the system doesn't care who
is on the other side. If someone has access to our password or the answers to our security
question, he will gain access to our money and can steal it from us.

The Risk of Tax Evasion

The Internal Revenue Service law requires that every business declare their financial
transactions and provide paper records so that tax compliance can be verified. The problem
with electronic systems is that they don't provide cleanly into this paradigm. It makes the
process of tax collection very frustrating for the Internal Revenue Service. It is at the
business's choice to disclose payments received or made via electronic payment systems. The
IRS has no way to know that it is telling the truth or
not that makes it easy to evade taxation.

The Risk of Payment Conflicts

1
In electronic payment systems, the payments are handled by an automated electronic system,
not by humans. The system is prone to errors when it handles large amounts of payments on a
frequent basis with more than one recipients involved. It is essential to continually check our
pay slip after every pay period ends in order to ensure everything makes sense. If it is a
failure to do this, may result in conflicts of payment caused by technical glitches and
anomalies.

E-cash

E-cash is a paperless cash system which facilitates the transfer of


funds anonymously. E-cash is free to the user while the sellers
have paid a fee for this. The e-cash fund can be either stored on a
card itself or in an account which is associated with the card.
The most common examples of e-cash system are transit card,
PayPal, Google Pay etc.

E-cash has four major components-

1. Issuers - They can be banks or a non-bank institution.


2. Customers - They are the users who spend the e-cash.
3. Merchants or Traders - They are the vendors who receive e-cash.
4. Regulators - They are related to authorities or state tax agencies.

In e-cash, we stored financial information on the computer, electronic device or on the


internet which is vulnerable to the hackers. Some of the major threats related to e-cash system
are;

 Backdoors Attacks

It is a type of attacks which gives an attacker to unauthorized access to a system. It works in


the background and hides itself from the user that makes it difficult to detect and remove.

 Denial of service attacks

A denial-of-service attack (DoS attack) is a security attack


in which the attacker takes action that prevents the
legitimate (correct) users from accessing the electronic
devices. It makes a network resource unavailable to its
intended users by temporarily disrupting services of a host
connected to the Internet.

 Direct Access Attacks

Direct access attack is an attack in which an intruder gains physical access to the computer to
perform an unauthorized activity. These types of software loaded with worms and download
a huge amount of sensitive data from the target victims.

2
 Eavesdropping

This is an unauthorized way of listening to private communication over the network. It does
not interfere with the normal operations of the targeting system so that the sender and the
recipient of the messages are not aware that their conversation is tracking.

Credit/Debit card fraud

Some of the important threats associated with the debit/credit card are-

ATM (Automated Teller Machine)-

It is the favourite place of the fraudster from there they


can steal our card details. Some of the important
techniques which the criminals opt for getting hold of
our card information is:

 Skimming-

It is the process of attaching a data-skimming device in


the card reader of the ATM. When the customer swipes their card in the ATM card reader,
the information is copied from the magnetic strip to the device.

 Phishing

Phishing is an activity in which an intruder obtained the sensitive information of a user such
as password, usernames, and credit card details, often for malicious reasons, etc.

 Online Transaction

Some important ways to steal our confidential information during an online transaction are-

 By downloading software which scans our keystroke and steals our password and card
details.
 By redirecting a customer to a fake website which looks like original and steals our sensitive
information.
 By using public Wi-Fi

 POS Theft

It is commonly done at merchant stores at the time of POS transaction. In this, the
salesperson takes the customer card for processing payment and illegally copies the card
details for later use.

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