Electronic Commerce Semester 1 Term 1 Lecture 14

Firewalls & Transaction Security While corporate presence on the Internet has soared, many companies are simply providing information about themselves and have not yet begun to provide full scale transactions for buying and selling online This restraint is primarily the result of concern about network and transaction security Likewise, concern over transaction security has made many consumers averse to making payments over the Internet

Internet Security Terms Authentication: A way to verify that message senders are who they say they are Integrity: Ensuring that information will not be accidentally or maliciously altered or destroyed Reliability: Ensuring that systems will perform consistently and at an acceptable level of quality

Internet Security Terms (Continued) Encryption: A process of making information indecipherable except to those with a decoding key Firewall: A filter between a corporate network and the Internet that keeps the corporate network secure from intruders but allows authenticated corporate users uninhibited access to the Internet

Firewalls & Network Security Typically a firewall allows insiders to have full access to services on the outside while granting access from the outside on a selective basis, based on user names and passwords A firewall works by establishing a barrier between the corporate network (secure network) and the external Internet (untrusted network)

Transaction Security Transaction security has become a high profile concern because of the increasing number of merchants trying to spur commerce online Consumer confidence in the reliability and protection of business transactions against third-party threats must be enhanced before electronic commerce can succeed

Five Internet Security Requirements Privacy: the ability to control who sees (or cannot see) information and under what terms Authenticity: The ability to know the identities of communicating parties Integrity: The assurance that stored or transmitted information is unaltered Availability: The ability to know when information and communication services will (or will not be) available

Types of Online Transactions The type of transaction depends on the type of data (or content) being sent across the network The different categories of data are: –Public data –Copyright data –Confidential data –Secret data

Public Data This type of data has no security restrictions and may be read by anyone Such data should, however, be protected from unauthorised tampering or modification

Copyright Data This type of data is copyrighted but not secret The owner of the data is willing to provide it, but wishes to be paid for it In order to maximise revenue, security must be tight

Confidential Data This type of data contains content that is secret, but the existence of the data is not a secret Such data include bank account statements and personal files

Secret Data The very existence of this type of data is a secret and must be kept confidential at all times It is necessary to monitor and log all access and attempted access to secret data