Threats on E-commerce

Today's threats to e-commerce systems include:

• Physical threats - threats posed to the IT infrastructure by, for example, fire or flood.
• Data threats - threats posed to software, files, databases, etc by viruses, Trojans and so forth. For more information on data threats and how to avoid them, see our guide on securing your e-commerce systems.
• Errors by people - eg employees clicking on links within messages received on social networking websites that are found to be malicious or the accidental deletion of data by an employee.
• Hoaxes - eg warnings about non-existent viruses circulated by email. Although these are relatively harmless in themselves, they can spread rapidly and cause as many problems as a genuine virus by clogging up email systems.
• Technical failure - eg software bugs.
• Infrastructure failures - eg server crashes.
• Credit card and payment fraud.
• Malicious attacks from inside or outside your business.
• Hacker threats should your computers become part of a larger group of infected, remote-controlled computers known as a botnet. Read the page on risks from viruses, Trojans, worms and botnets in our guide on securing your e-commerce systems.
  • Risk to corporate information and intellectual property from internal staff and trading partners. It is difficult to control how sensitive information will be handled by third parties or contract workers. Few organisations have systems in place to ensure common standards in vetting staff and security between trading partners.
  • Hacker exploitation of errors in software application design, technical implementation or systems operation. In addition, vulnerabilities are widely published for anyone to read or experiment with.
  • Website defacement - where the corporate image or web messages are changed - and virus attacks can lead to commercial embarrassment and damage to a business' corporate image.
  • Denial-of-service attacks - which use a flood of false messages to crash or slow down a business' systems - can have a devastating impact on communications and e-commerce activity. There are increasing opportunities for individuals to mount such an attack with a low risk of traceability. Hackers are increasingly using botnets - a group of computers infected with malicious software and controlled remotely - to cause these attacks.

E-commerce and E-business

The field of e-commerce and e-business has been constantly increasing and gaining new ground since 1996, when the two words were 'coined' by the press. A lot has happened since, and today, large e-commerce sites such Amazon.com and eBay are doing many billions of dollars in sales every year, 24 hours a day. That's on top of the many tens, probably hundreds of billions of sales conducted on B2B exchanges and portals. In this segment of Business 5.0 you will learn a lot more about what makes electronic commerce thrive and how to 'keep your wheels turning fast' in this complex industry.
Amazon has always been a company to watch closely, due to its pioneering success in the tough field of ecommerce, and the way it is progressing in Web services and application development. But now, the company is transforming itself from an online store to a high-tech firm, and is making big waves in the high-technology community. At its nine massive distribution centers from Fernley, Nev., to Bar Hersfeld, Germany, workers scurry around the clock to fill up to 1.7 million orders a day -- picking and packing merchandise, routing it onto conveyors, and shipping the boxes to every corner of the world. Like any retail warehouse running manpower and machinery at full holiday throttle, it's an impressive display. But utterly misleading. The kind of work that will truly determine Amazon's fate is happening in places like the tiny, darkened meeting room at its Seattle headquarters where, one recent afternoon, five intent faces gazed at a projection screen. Jeffrey A. Wilke, a compact, intense senior vice-president who runs Amazon's worldwide operations and customer service, and an engineering team were trying out a "beta" or test version of new software they wrote. When the buying automation program is ready for prime time in mid-2004, Amazon's merchandise buyers will be able to chuck reams of spreadsheets for graphics-rich applications that crunch data for them, so they can more quickly and accurately forecast product demand, find the best suppliers, and more.

E-commerce solutions in Nepal

Some of the e-commerce solutions and design from Nepal are given as follows:

• Extremely customizable Online Product Catalog and Shopping Cart - make the design of your store unique to deliver a strong marketing message!
• Full access to codes, templates and database - custom tailor your store to your unique business needs, do it yourself or let us to it for you.
• Multiple News lists - stay in touch with your customers and business partners and gain trust of your prospects
• Membership systems - increase customers' loyalty by offering members only categories, pricing and discounts.
• Wholesale management systems - enjoy multiple B2B tools to grow your business!
• Premium eCommerce Hosting with 100% uptime - your peace of mind!
• Web Based Control panel - No software to install;
• Unlimited Email POP3 accounts;
• Spam and Anti-virus email scanning;
• Access to WebMail to manage your emails on the road;
• Extra MySQL databases to install other applications (Online Forum, Blogging software and etc.);
• Full access to all the store codes and databases;
• FTP access for store customizations, additional software installation and uploading images;
• Your own dedicated IP address;
• Your own SSL certificate;
• You can manage several sites/stores under the same account;
• Nightly remote backups, database checks and optimizations;
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Internet and E-commerce business in Nepal

Nepal is a country Internet and e-commerce of which we are to examine today. The country is officially known as the Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal, representing according to 2010 estimation the world's most recent nation to become a republic. This landlocked country is bordered to the north by the People's Republic of China, and to the south, east, and west by the Republic of India. Nepal represents 93rd largest country by land mass and the 41st most populous country, with the population of approximately 30 million.
Being one of the poorest and least developed countries in the world, Nepal has a very small telecommunication sector. However, national ICT market has been growing significantly over the recent yearsIn terms of a variable political climate, Nepal has been striving towards a more liberalized telecom market. About 200 operators had been authorized to provide a wide range of telecom services, including Nepal Telecom, United Telecom and Nepal Pvt.

World of E-commerce

E-commerce today is a shape-shifter whose mission is various and evolving, one moment as small and personal as finding a local restaurant, the next as big and corporate as locating a pasta wholesaler for your chain of noodle shops. Thanks to new technologies and rapidly increasing Web access, e-commerce is beginning to pick up speed.Last year, very few European retailers were taking orders on the Web, but this year has seen phenomenal growth. One reason is simply that more potential consumers are connected to the Web. On-line access almost doubled in Europe this year. Within five years the Euro e-penetration rate will be more than 50 percent.Almost a fifth (18 percent) of companies have launched a product that is only available on the Internet. In addition, nearly three quarters of respondents have, in the last three years, launched a new product or an existing one, using e-commerce technologies.Senior directors with responsibilities for e-commerce in 357 European companies were questioned about their use of e-commerce.

History of E-commerce

E-Commerce applications have said to have begun in the early 1970s with such innovations as electronic transfer of funds (ETF). However, it is believed that the applications were limited to large corporations and a few daring small businesses. Then came the electronic data interchange (EDI), which added other kinds of transaction processing and extended participation to all industries. In the mid- 1980s a deferent type of electronic commerce technology spread among consumers in on line services that provide a new way of social interaction
In early 1990s the World Wide Web came with a new method of E-Commerce by providing an easy-to-use technology solution to the information publishing and dissemination. The applications rapidly expanded in the 1990s since the commercialization of the Internet and the introduction of the web.

Types and scope of E-commerce

E-commerce can be divided into tow categories, which are business to business b2b and business to customer b2c. While b2b E-Commerce focuses on component-based integration of existing services into business processes of virtual enterprises and data exchange, b2c E–Commerce mostly addresses correctness issues with respect to the interactions of the various participants (Schuldt, Popovici et al., 2000).
There are four main areas in which companies conduct E-commerce (Loshin and
Vacca, 2004) these areas are :
• Direct marketing, selling, and service.
• Online banking and billing.
• Secure distribution of information.
• Value chain trading and corporate purchasing
The field of E-Commerce is very broad. There are many applications of E-Commerce such as home banking, shopping in electronic malls, buying stocks, finding a job, conducting an auction, collaborating electronically with business partners around the globe, and providing customer service. The implementation of various E-Commerce applications depends on four major support categories such as people, public policy, and marketing/advertising and supply chain logistics. In addition there has to be an Infrastructure support. The E-Commerce management within each organization co-ordinates the applications and infrastructure. In order to explain the relationships I have explained below the applications in the case of B2C E-Commerce.