Managing E-Business Security Challenges

Qais Saif Qassim

In today’s information and communication world, personal and commercial data has
emerged as something that is valuable and needs to be taken care of and to be
protected. Besides ensuring the privacy and security of business, the protection and
integrity of commercial data is also important. Security is as much a social issue as a
practical or technical one. Some security problems are a direct result of business
hostilities. Information that is valuable to a business may also be valuable to
competitors or disgruntled employees. The removal or sabotage of that information
may also be valuable to a competitor. More serious security issues include the use of
company resources for illegal activities.

Companies with permanent Internet connections are particularly vulnerable to these

kinds of activities. Without adequate security, computer-literate users may find it
easy to create non-existent user accounts, which can be used to abet illegal activities
with relative impunity. Then there is threat of hacking attacks from outside. Hackers
may decide to joyride into a commercial system just to prove they can. Less often,
they will target a company or organization if the organization has annoyed them in
the same way. In either case, solid security is essential. More worrying, hackers can
use a company's computers as a warehouse for illegal information and make it look
as if the company, not the hacker, is responsible for the appearance of the
information. Computer-savvy employees may sometimes be able to intercept private
email and disgruntled ex-employees may hold a company hostage, threatening to
destroy all their records if their demands are not met.

E-business depends on providing customers, partners, and employees with access to

information, in a way that is controlled and secure. Technology must provide security
to meet the challenges encountered by e-businesses. Virtually all software and
hardware vendors claim to build secure products, but what assurance does an e-
business have of a product’s security? E-businesses want a clear answer to the
conflicting security claims they hear from vendors. How can you be confident about
the security built into a product? Independent security evaluations against
internationally-established security criteria provide assurance of vendors’ security
claims. This paper illustrates the challenges of the electronic commercial business
system, and puts forward a framework to secure such systems.