E-Business Challenges

Definition of Internet Commerce

2010-08-30T22:37:00.001-07:00

Definition of Internet Commerce
The internet is redefining relations between businesses and consumers enabling companies to sell their products and services around the globe on an unprecedented scale.

Shoppers can buy online at their convenience at any time and from anywhere.

It is necessary to distinguish terms e-commerce, e-business and internet commerce at the very start of the discussion.

There is a range of definitions for e-commerce relative to its perspective, may it be communications, business process, service or in the context of on-line business.

E-commerce can be defined as “the buying and selling of information, products and services via computer networks”.

While e-commerce encompass business activities that is conducted electronically, such as using the world wide web, the multimedia interactive component of the internet, telephone lines, leased lines and wireless, e-business can be understood as a superior set which extends the understanding of e-commerce to reflect the vision of the organization.

The goods or services are ordered over the internet, but the payment or ultimate delivery of the good or service may be conducted on or off line.

Internet or the information superhighway, has been well understood as the enabler or the enabling technology.

Subsequently, internet commerce refers to the marketing, selling and buying of products and services on the internet.
Definition of Internet Commerce

Misappropriation or Theft of Information

2010-07-23T21:24:00.000-07:00

Misappropriation or Theft of Information
The protection of economically valuable data or information, whether proprietary or not, from competitors or potential misuse is an important aspect of the growth and market power of modern companies.

A range of civil an criminal law remedies are available in national legislation to safeguard such information.

The more well known type of loss of information is through plain theft by an insider or a hacker. In the context of internet, there are programs that are capable of retrieving information from a computer, without the user’s knowledge ands ending it to a hacker’s own site.

Any encrypted protective device will be broken by the hacker first before files are stolen. Such programs obviously pose a serious risk of loss of valuable data or information.

Other forms of loss of information are disclosure, whether deliberately or not, by employees or contractual parties or through lapse or oversight of the company.

The disgruntled employee or ne who is offered bribes for passing on secrets is very much the typical miscreant.

Not unexpectedly, although any information of a confidential nature is protected from theft or unauthorized disclosure under laws of one kind of another, the specific laws in each nation differ widely.

Besides the legal redress available under trade secret law, law of confidentiality or other IP laws that pertain to propriety information, there are a range of other laws.

The main legal instrument increasingly being adopted by nations is computer misuse or crime law.
Misappropriation or Theft of Information

Trends in E-Business

2010-06-10T03:44:00.000-07:00

Trends in E-Business
While there are many technical and business trends hare are few important ones.

E-business is crucial to business success
It is being proved in industry after industry that you must do e-business in order to be profitable, grow and even survives. E-business had proved to be more long lasting than the fad of reengineering, for example.

Technology focus is on e-business
If your consider the activities of the hardware, software and network vendors, they are directed toward providing the tools for e-business.

To them E-business is a natural extension of their products and services. In addition, new technology offers greater support for wireless and land based communications and networking – keys to the capability to do e-business.

E-business produces cumulative effects
E-business is long lasting. As you implement e-business, the nature of your relationship with customers, suppliers, and employees changes.

New dynamic forces are set loose that are not as not easily controlled and dealt with as compared to those of the standard internal business.

Dependency on business departments continues, but there is a greater dependence on IT resources.

E-business implementation results in many successes and failures
The literature abounds with examples of both success and failure. Failure tends to be more obvious and dramatic with e-business because is more visible externally.
Trends in E-Business

The Trend of Internet Commerce

2010-05-01T07:11:00.000-07:00

The Trend of Internet Commerce
Internet and its inherent possibility to be exploited as a commercial ought to be taken into consideration very seriously by business organizations.

Indeed, most companies plan to engage the Internet technology in their business, although their approaches and levels of implementations vary in degree.

Some companies only embraces e-commerce in business-to-business activities, by passing all paper-based transactions.

Others which concern with business-to-customer Internet commerce dealings establish their presence on the Intrenet – by having as simple corporate homepage to inform the prospective customers about the business or by having a web store, which includes e-mail and purchase order forms for the customers to interact with customer services or product sales department.

Thus, it can be expected that the number of transactions made on the Internet would increase rapidly, especially with the evolvement of various enabling technologist to support Internet commerce.

Moreover, the infrastructure of the information superhighway enables the trading of a group of commodity readily, for instance in transactions that only involve exchanging documents or data and transferring knowledge.

Despite the potential growth in the use of the Internet as a powerful information-trading place Internet commerce has also becoming very popular for the other type of commodity: the physical goods.

The fact is that we do not live out of knowledge and information alone and therefore, it is not surprising that the Internet would be exploited as the trading place for physical goods.

Consequently, a primary element in the value chain which makes Internet commerce feasible is the logistics support. In fact restructuring of logistics supports to deliver the product t the customers is a field of opportunity upon realizing the e-commerce significance.
The Trend of Internet Commerce

Risks of E-Business

2010-04-13T06:42:00.001-07:00

Risks of E-Business
Some survey indicate that half of all e-business implementations either fail or are only partially successful. Therefore, we need to give attention to risks.

Some examples of specific risk:
Loss of customer
If you drive customers to the web, they may find a better site and leave.

Customer dissatisfaction
Customers may not receive acceptable service through the web and the normal business.

Supplier dissatisfaction
Suppliers get involved with you in e-business and find the experience to less satisfactory than that was planned.

Reduced productivity
Due to a faulty implementation of e-business productivity is actually reduced.

Employee morale decline
Employees see e-business as a threat even after implementation.

Decline of IT level of support and service
With e-business implemented IT resources may be stretched too thin. IT then may not ne able to respond to the business in a timely way.

Management depression
E-business fails to deliver to the standards of the overly high management expectations set at the beginning.
Risks of E-Business

Product Development for E-business

2010-03-23T03:59:00.000-07:00

Product Development for E-business
E-business sometimes resembles product development. Because the products are new, each new manager considers the work to be nonrecurring.

Each products then tends to have a unique product management plan based on the style of the manager.

Manager feel autonomous since they are each being held accountable managing the work across the product development projects is a challenge, because the projects are developed individually.

How to treat nonrecurring work? The firsts step is to break it into components. Once divided into units some tasks will reassemble and become recurring.

This narrows the field of nonrecurring work.

For nonrecurring task such as the product design, aspects of the design still follow a pattern.

At the core of the firm’s project is the standardization. Nonrecurring work can be placed into a recurring structure since it is only the content and the detail that is nonrecurring.

Durations, dependencies and other tasks remain as usual.
Product Development for E-business

Online Liability

2010-03-16T03:58:00.001-07:00

Online Liability
In spite of the myth of ‘the World Wide Web’ – in other words, an electronic frontier where no laws apply - unwittingly spread about the internet, on-line commercial transactions do not operate in the void.

The internet is merely an additional avenue of communication, trade and general interaction within and among groups of nations, businesses and individuals which are interconnected.

Consequently, the protection of legal interests recognized in realspace can only be regarded as extended to the internet as well as unless the latter makes such protection less effective or totally obsolete.

Moreover, liabilities arising from tampering or infringement of those legal interests protected in realspace will be dealt with under the existing laws in so far as they remain applicable.

Thus the protection on the internet of legal interests such as intellectual property, privacy and information is an important aspect of e-commerce. Any violation of these interests will be source of liability for wrongdoers.
Online Liability

What is E-business

2010-02-24T21:16:00.000-08:00

What is E-business
E-business can be defined as the use of automation and communications to carry out business transactions without manual or labor intensive.

E-commerce consisted of the transactions that support e-business.

Customer and supplier information
E-business can give you billions of bytes of information on how people navigate your website. This is nice in academic books, but it is not the real world.

If your gather these data, you have to ask if it is worth it. How will you analyze it? What decision will you base on all of these raw data?

Experience shows that it is best to gather sales, workflow and other tangible information.

This can help you determine where you can further improve your processes.

Business transactions
It is here that e-business makes the difference. Organization rise and fall depending on the performance of key transactions.

Here is also where many e-business efforts fail. They do not address existing transactions, but instead focus on just the e-business. How well you do in e-business depends on how you deal with both regular and e-business transactions.

Information technology
Information technology (IT) is obviously a main ingredient in e-business. However, IT supports and enables e-business.

When you implement e-business, you ill enhance your IT infrastructure, but you are not going to replace it.

Even with a startup you will be able to afford only some key components. Moreover, of someone obsesses over IT, e-business is diverted. Important areas such as marketing and logistics are neglected.
What is E-business

Milestone of E-business

2010-02-06T06:21:00.000-08:00

Milestone of E-business
Resource management involves all E-business management activities, including the following:
• Planning when resources are needed

• Putting resources together for tasks

• Setting up resource to do work.

• Directing the performance of there resources

• Reviewing the work and performance of the team

• Resolving resource questions.

• Planning and staging when resources are no longer needed

• Releasing the resource

• Extracting lessons learned from the previous activities.

The overall goal is to help to achieve the following:
• Get the most o the E-business resources

• Minimize the use of resources so as not to be an excessive burden on the line organizations

• Minimize the time required by each other resource for their work in E-business

Milestone of E-business

E-Commerce Success Factors

2010-01-17T03:21:00.000-08:00

E-Commerce Success Factors
Advertising and Incentives
Some Web stores may advertise in traditional media, but most advertise on the Web which targeted and personalized banner ads and other Web page and E-mail promotions. Most B2C sites also offer shoppers incentives to buy and return.

Typically, this means coupons, discounts, special offers and vouchers for other Web services, sometimes with other E-tailers at across linked websites.

Many Webs stores also increase their market reach by being part of Web banner adverting exchange with thousand of other Web retailers.

Personal attention
Personalizing your shopping experience encourages you to buy and make return visits. Thus E-commerce software can automatically record details of your visits and build user profile of you and other Web shoppers. Many sites also encourage you to register with them and fill out a personal interest profile.

Then when ever you return, you are welcomed by name or with a personal Web page greeted with special offers and guided to those parts of the sites that you are most interested in. This one to one marketing and relationship building power as one of the major advantages of personalized Web retailing.

Community Relationship
Giving online customers with special interest a a feeling of belonging to a unique group of like-minded individuals helps build customer loyalty and value.

Thus, website relationship and affinity marketing programs build and promote virtual communities of customers, suppliers, company representative, and others via a variety of Web base collaboration tools.

Examples include discussion forums or newsgroup, chat rooms, message board systems and cross-links or related website communities.

Security and Reliability
As a customer of a successful Web store you must feel confident that your credit card personal information and details of your transactions are are secure from unauthorized use.

You must also feel that you are dealing with a trustworthy business, whose products and other websites information you can trust to be as advertise.

Having your order filled and shipped as you requested, in the time frame promised and with good customer support are other measures of an E-tailer’s reliability.
E-Commerce Success Factors

Intellectual Property

2009-12-30T17:51:00.000-08:00

Intellectual Property
The well known laws of intellectual properties (patents, copyright, trademarks and industrial design) and other allied rights in the form or substance of information (confidentiality) face a measure of shake-up resulting from advance of information technology.

The principal impact on all types of intellectual property (IP), particularly on those relating to forms and texture (copyright, trademarks and industrial designs) originates from the ‘dematerialization’ of information or ‘decoupling’ from the material substructure that the information used to subsist or to be deposited in.

Although the protection granted under intellectual property has always been distinctly earmark for the information or ‘expression’ rather than the material medium embodying such information or used for the expression, the possibility offered by information technology to de-link completely the information from the material background, indeed to make electronic impulses the new of expression, has thrown some long standing conceptions into chaos.

The proliferation of the new medium of creativity, namely the use of digitization, has thus reopened long solved issues of copyright requirement of subsistence, originality and fixation.

Even while these issues are being tackled, the capability provided by digitization and the communication technologies, including the Internet, to transmit data and information to virtually any spot on the globe and transform them into anything at all has shaken up the protection and enforcement mechanisms develop over the centuries.

Where earlier work in the ordinary that is non-electronic, media becomes digitized, the possibility of manipulating the latter and transferring it into something similar rips apart the protection given under law to specific forms.

While the translation or adaptation of nay work is covered under the copyright belonging to the original author, the complete transformation possible through digitization confounds the application of those legal principles.

Obviously, prohibiting any tampering with the digitals format will not work nor make sense as the consequence would be to grant unlimited monopoly rights over bits and bytes which are the common stock available in any digital medium.
Intellectual Property

Computer Matching

2009-11-06T18:04:00.001-08:00

Computer Matching
Computer profiling and mistakes in the computer matching of personal data are other controversial threats to privacy.

Individuals have been mistakenly arrested and jailed and people have been denied credit because their physical profiles or personal data have been used by profiling software to match them incorrectly or improperly with wrong individuals.

Another threat is the unauthorized matching of computerized information about extracted from databases of sales transaction processing systems, and sold to information brokers or other companies.

A more recent threat is the unauthorized matching and sale of information about you collected from Internet websites and newsgroup you visit.

You are then subjected to a barrage of unsolicited promotional material and sales contacts as well as having your privacy violated.
Computer Matching

The Benefits of a Collaborative Approach

2009-10-16T23:31:00.000-07:00

The Benefits of a Collaborative Approach

Greater involvement means more commitment and understanding of E-Business.
People working together and sharing information tend to trust each other more.
Involvement and shared knowledge produces better quality work.
There is back-up within the team and among the project leaders.
Working on issues together helps to build skills of the people in E-business.
E-Business work is more likely to end successfully on time and within budget.
A ready forum is available in which to gather lessons learned on E-Business.
Better communication allows for earlier warning of problems.

Collaboration does involve some additional startup work to get team members up to speed.

Project members have to be trained in some of the project management methods.
More project leader time is spent in managing the coordination.

However, these are offset by the benefits.
The Benefits of a Collaborative Approach

Identification and Authentication of the Parties

2009-09-16T23:33:00.000-07:00

Identification and Authentication of the Parties
One of the major problems that contracting on the Net faces is the difficulty of establishing the identity of the party who is on the other side of the transaction.

The exchange of valuables which is at the heart of contract law losses meaning if the parties exchanging them do not exactly know that there is somebody at the other side who is what she claims to be.

This is not necessarily because of any need to know the other person’s particulars or in view of future business prospects, but to be sure that if anything goes wrong the party claiming redress knows how to get to or communicate with that other party.

In contract law terms, the innocent party should have sufficient information about the party in default or alleged breach of the contract so as to pursue her claims against that party successfully.

The problem of not being able to establish the identity of a person transacting on the Net readily is made worse by the use of ‘remailers’ nor ‘anonymizers.’

These are software programs which can cloak the identity of a contracting party by either removing or replacing the actual address from which a party is sending messages so that it becomes impossible to trace that party.

From a practical angle, where such software is used the party that pays for goods in the Net but does not received the goods will not be able to establish of the seller is real or a phantom or whether she is residing at the specified origin of the electronic communication of acceptance or notice of delivery.

Another way on which a party may be prevented from establishing the identity of the other side is “spoofing,” that is use by the latter party of identity or account of another person to masquerade as that other person.

This is done not only by faking the identity of another party, but also by altering or falsifying e-mails so that the identity of a non-transacting party is assumed.

There are several spy programs that monitor the keystrokes of people to imitate their identity and misrepresent them.

It is therefore vital for contracting parties to know, and have confidence that the other parity is genuine and fits the description that she has supplied about herself during the transaction.

The common use of passwords as a means of identity authentication has been found to be deficient, open as it is to deliberate or inadvertent disclosure, backing or some other means of intervention or eavesdropping.

Among the more reliable emerging forms of authentication of parties employing electronics means of transactions is the use of digital signature technology.

Biometric techniques (such as fingerprinting, handwriting or voice recognition, retinal, or hand geometry scanning) are still in a process of development or immensely expensive to adopt at the moment.
Identification and Authentication of the Parties

E-Business is Magic

2009-08-28T21:20:00.000-07:00

E-Business is Magic
By magic we mean that e-business has pervasive and long lasting positive effects. Here are some margin elements of e-business:

E-business tends to be self enforcing. If you screw up, either customers or suppliers will start screaming. You will have to act. How many methods and processes do you know with this characteristic? Not many.

Done right, e-business forces a company to look within its soul and really determine what its business goals are. E-business success depends on the support of many different employees. Thus, a critical success factor is collaboration among many employees.

E-business continues to change the organization and business processes after it goes live. Why? Because the employees, customers and suppliers begin to have a role in business direction.

E-business provides the basis for measurement internally and externally.

E-business is positive and fun. E-business is not downsizing or reengineering, which tend to be depressing because they result in layoff. The good people leave and the gnomes and trolls stay. Instead, e-business implementation can get people excited. Roles change, but you probably won’t lose good people.

Perhaps the greatest magic of all is that when you implement e-business, you have the opportunity to improve the lives of employees and service level to customers and to strength relationship with suppliers.

In short there are few things like e-business that have come along in the past 40 years in computer and communications. E-business is really the next step step in evolution of the application beyond online systems.
E-Business is Magic

Key Ingredients for Collaborative E-Business Management

2009-08-07T22:50:00.000-07:00

Key Ingredients for Collaborative E-Business Management
Each person on the team is responsible for indentifying detailed tasks, updating tasks, addressing issuers associated with their tasks, and participating in joint project work.

An E-business effort is so large that even several leaders cannot do all of this work following traditional methods. They would be absorbed in administration.

A substantial percentage of the E-business has to be assigned to more than one person.

In some cases, 30 to 40 percent of the tasks are joint among two or three people.

Joint assignments are important in E-business because of the size of the tasks, the benefit of different perspectives and the benefit of a backup.

The E-business leaders share information except the really apolitical elements with the teams. This sharing gets the team more involved in E-business.

The E-business leaders share information amongst themselves. This includes schedules, issues, and lessons learned. They share the same information with line managers in departments which are the home do team members.

E-business leaders work together and with line managers in assigning people and other resources tasks on a routine basis (typically week) – obviously critical in E-business.
Key Ingredients for Collaborative E-Business Management

Law vs Electronic Commerce

2009-07-06T21:30:00.000-07:00

Law vs Electronic Commerce
A great deal of uncertainty surrounds the impact of the continuing growth of electronic commerce (e-commerce) on existing law.

While commercial law has evolved over the centuries in response to the development of trade in goods and services, within or across nations, the emergence of an electronic medium (‘cyberspace’) as an additional avenue for trade has pushed to the fore many questions: whether and how an adaption of existing law would possible, appropriate or sufficient to catch up with the problems thrown up by the new medium.

For one thing, the nature and effects of transactions that would ordinarily have been taken for granted had they occurred on non-electronic media confound established notions of commercial law.

Secondly, the unpredictability of the ultimate consequence of such transactions to the respective trading partners, who would be more likely to come from different jurisdictions, prompts scrutiny of preexisting, widely accepted formulations in domestic trade law, custom and treat among nations.

A major feature of the emergent situation that the impact of e-commerce on the law has not been across the board, simply because e-commerce has not been developing evenly.

Most transactions ton date relate to the purchase of computer hardware or software or the supply of information of various types; plain news, financial data, entertainment, education, travel, advertisement, health and DIY tips.

These item have one characteristic, namely the buyers’ lack of interest in, or disregard of, any need to have to conduct checking r inspection prior to purchase, or at any rate, before delivery.

In light of the general uncertainty surrounding the status of the online buyer and seller, the relevant law and of how it might be applied on behalf of a buyer claiming redress, the purchase of “safe” items acquires as precautionary significance.

In other words, the very nature of the involved in the transactions seems to rule out any fundamental failure that cold surface at a later stage and necessitate the intervention of the law to resolve the consequence of that failure.

Obviously, once money has passed form buyer to the seller, the path to recovery of that money, let alone further damages as would be expected under normal contract law, could be too complicated for the buyer to understand or pursue.

What makes the flight of an on-line buyer who seeks redress intractable is that solutions to online legal disputes are only just evolving in bits and pieces. New rules have begun to emerge in the form of statuary reforms in single jurisdiction or through case decisions on disputes arising from on-line transaction.
Law vs Electronic Commerce

Business Oriented of E-Business

2009-06-20T06:50:00.000-07:00

Business Oriented of E-Business
E-business does involve implementing new systems and technology, which is a minor but important part of the puzzle.

E-business impacts the technology, processes, organization, and management of the organization. These statements have strong implications for carrying out a successful e-business effort.

* Politics is an important part of e-business implementation. You cannot ignore it or sweep it under the rug. It is there because e-business has such far-ranging impacts. E-business alters the power structure of departments and the entire organization.

* The culture of the society, organization and environment is an important factor in e-business because you are dealing with customers, suppliers and employees.

* Information technology (IT) has a major role that goes beyond systems work. Information technology is the only group that spans the organization and addresses the technology. Information technology must have a central role in e-business implementation.
Business Oriented of E-Business

E-Commerce Trends

2009-05-11T17:31:00.000-07:00

E-Commerce Trends
B2C E-commerce moves from simple Web store fronts to interactive marketing capabilities that provide a personalized shopping experience for customers and then toward a totally integrated Web store that support a variety of customer shopping experience.

B2C E-commerce also moving toward a self-service model where customers configure and customize the products and services they wish to buy aided by configuration software and online customer support as needed.

B2B E-commerce participants moved quickly from self-service on the Web to configuration and customization capabilities and extranets connecting trading partners.

As B2C, E-commerce moves toward full-service and wide-selection retail Web portal, B2B is also trending toward the use of E-commerce portals that provide catalog, exchange and auction markets for business customers within or cross industries.

Both of these trends are enabled by E-business capabilities like customer relationship management and supply chain management, which are the hall marks of the customer-focused and internet-worked supply chains of the successful E-business enterprise.
E-Commerce Trends

Direct Attack by Terrorist

2009-05-07T07:38:00.000-07:00

Direct Attack by Terrorist
A direct attack would take the form of hacking into a computer system and rewriting or stealing information.

Some examples have that hackers operate for political purposes, as shown by the Portuguese hacker group called PHAIT (Portuguese Hackers Against Indonesian Tyranny).

They have rewritten Indonesian government and commercial Web site in order to protest about East Timor situation.

Anti-fur hackers have also attacked fur company Web sites in order to get their message to the general public.

Another method of hacking is more concerned with attacking computer files and destroying modifying or extracting data.

These types of hacking attacks may be less apparent to organizations, as they may not realize they have been a victim.

Cyber terrorists would use hacking as an extensive part of their ‘attack strategy’ against electronic commerce.

By hacking Web sites, cyber terrorists will gain a global audience for their political message and they will also be able to discredit the security of the companies using the on-line service.

It should also be remembered that hackers are available for hire on the open market and therefore their services can be easily acquired.

By actually hacking the data contained within the system, sales can be disrupted, or data altered.

This would help to harm the organization’s effectiveness or allow frauds to take place.

Cyber-terrorist attacks on commercial sites could easily damage users’ belief in secure transactions.

Overnight, the newly developed electronic commerce marketplace could disappear.
Direct Attack by Terrorist

Privacy on the Internet

2009-04-21T21:53:00.000-07:00

Privacy on the Internet
The internet is the notorious for giving its users a feeling of anonymity, when in actuality, they are highly visibly and open to violation of their privacy.

Most of the internet and its World Wide Web, E-mail, chat, and newsgroup are still a wide open, unsecured electronic frontier with no tough rules on what information is personal and private.

Information about internet users is captured legitimately and automatically each time you visit a website or newsgroup and recorded as a “cookie file” on your hard disk.

Then the website owners, or online auditing services, may sell the information from cookie files and other records of your internet use to third parties.

To make matter worse, much of the net and web are easy targets for the interception or theft by hackers of private information furnished to websites by internet users.

Of course, users can protect their privacy in several ways.

For example, sensitive E-mail can be protected by encryption, if both E-mail parties use compatible encryption software built into their E-mail programs.

Newsgroup posting can be made privately by sending them through anonymous remailers that protect user identity when added comments to a discussion.

Internet service provider can be asked not to sell name and personal information of the user to mailing list providers and other marketers.

Finally, user can decline to reveal personal data and interests on online service and website user profiles to limit user exposure to electronic snooping.
Privacy on the Internet

Managing E-Business Challenges

2009-03-11T18:36:00.000-07:00

Managing E-Business Challenges
A major challenge facing organizations is how to manage E-Business and other projects involving multiple organizations, both internally and externally.

This is often made more complex of the team members are distributed geographically and belong to a variety of different companies.

A typical E-Business effort might involve over ten internal departments, three to four consulting firms, and suppliers. Traditional project management methods were not designed for this situation. Most projects were managed as centralized, traditional projects – certainly not the case for E-business.

Some additional factors that pertain to E-Business are:

The systems have to be able to be interfaced so that on-line E-Business transactions are supported. This has a major impact on the IT resources related to programming.
Technology has to be enhanced and standardized – an effort that affects the support and operations side of IT.
Organization and process changes have to be implemented across departments in a coordinated manner.
Different consultants who may be competitors have to work to support E-Business.
Supplier coordination to streamline the supply chain with E-Business requires extensive coordination.

The complexity need for commitment and involvement, and scope of E-business efforts make them candidates for collaborative work and scheduling.

More specific challenges are:

The culture and interests differ among team members and companies.

Many individuals assigned to the project have normal, nonproject duties that they cannot give up for E-business; dividing their time between E-Business and their other work is a major challenges.

Different companies may employ a variety of IT methods and tools that do not easily support integration, which leads to incompatibilities.

E-Business subprojects have hidden dependencies that are revealed only later in the work at critical times.

The goals of E-Business may seem very general and may not relevant to many of the team members.

At the heart of these issue is the fact that the E-Business leaders do not have total authority over members of the project team.

E-Business project leaders do not generally allocate the money or the people. They are organizers, directors and coordinators-like directors for movies.
Managing E-Business Challenges

Important Privacy Issues

2009-02-11T16:53:00.000-08:00

Important Privacy Issues
In business and government, many important issues are being debated, as Internet technologies accelerate the ubiquity of global telecommunications connection in business and society.

Accessing individuals’ private E-mail conversations and computer records and collecting and sharing information about individuals gained from their visits to Internet websites and newsgroups (violation of privacy).

Always knowing where a person is, especially as mobile and paging services become more closely associated with people rather than places (computer monitoring).

Using customer information gained from many sources to market additional business services (computer matching).

Collecting telephone numbers, E-mail address, credit numbers, and other personal information to build individual customer profiles (unauthorized personal files).

Important Privacy Issues

Computer Attack

2009-01-20T00:44:00.000-08:00

Denial of Service Attacks
A denial of service attack results when access to computer or network resource is intentionally blocked or degraded as a result of malicious action taken by another user.

These attacks do not necessarily damage data directly or permanently (although they could), but they intentionally compromise the availability of the resources.

These types of attacks tend to affect the availability of computer systems for legitimate usage. These forms of attacks can include e-mail bomb attacks, sending thousands of e-mails to a particular computer system until that system crash, the software required to carry out denial of service attacks in widely available on the internet.

Another commonly used denial of service attack is the Ping O’ Death. The Ping O’ Death can crash or reboot a computer by sending a ‘ping’ message of greater than 65,536 bytes the default size is 64 bytes. Router updates have nearly eliminated these problems.

Denial of service attacks could be very effective against an Internet based company, since they rely on on-line connectivity. These sorts of attacks could easily disrupt electronic commerce on-line mechanisms.

Direct Attack
A direct attack would take the form of hacking into computer system and rewriting or stealing information. Some recent examples have that hackers operate for political purposes.

Another method of hacking is more concerned with attacking computers files and destroying, modifying or extracting data. These types of hacking attacks may be less apparent to organizations, as they may not realize they have a victim.

Cyber terrorists would use hacking as an extensive part of their ‘attack strategy’ against electronic commerce. By hacking Web sites, cyber terrorists will gain a global audience for their political message and they will also be able to discredit the security of the companies using the on-line service.

It should be remembered that hackers are available for hire on the open market and therefore their service can be easily acquired.

By actually hacking the data contained within the system, sales can be disrupted, or data altered. This would help to harm the organization’s effectiveness or allow fraud to take place.

Privacy Issues

2009-01-07T22:39:00.000-08:00

Privacy Issues
Information technology makes it technically and economically feasible to collect, store, integrate, interchange and retrieve data and information quickly and easily. This characteristic has an important beneficial effect on the efficiency and effectiveness of computer based information systems.

However, the power of information technology to store and retrieve information can have a negative effect on the right of privacy of every individual.

For example, confidential E-mail messages by employees are monitored by many companies. Personal information is being collected about individuals every time they visit a site on the World Wide Web.

Confidential information on individuals contained in centralized computer database by credit bureau, government agencies and private business firm has been stolen or misused, resulting in the invasion of privacy, fraud and other injustice.

The unauthorized use of such information has seriously damaged the privacy of individuals.

Errors in such databases could seriously hurt the credit standing or reputation of an individual.
Privacy Issues

Terrorist in the Internet

2008-12-19T20:27:00.000-08:00

Terrorist in the Internet
In the developed world, the influence of information systems can now be seen in most operational areas of business. A significant result of these advances is that organizations have become increasingly dependent upon the availability of systems and reliant upon the data they hold.

In recent years the internet has grown from a solely military/academic network to one that can be used by business or individual. In the years since the first WWW applications were developed, there has been an explosion in the global use of the internet. With this growth has come an increasing usage of the medium by criminal and terrorist groups.

The term terrorist or terrorism is a highly emotive term. Generally it is use t0 denote “revolutionists who seek to use terror systemically to further their views or to govern a particular area”. ‘Cyber-terrorism’ is a different form of terrorism since physical systematic terror does not usually occur (although it can if it causes disruption to a critical system), but a widespread destruction of information resources can. The problem of defining the term ‘terrorist’ relates to the fact that a terrorist group could easily be perceived as a resistance group carrying out lawful or morally legitimate actions.

Terrorist or resistance groups have difficulty in relaying their political messages to the general public without encountering censorship, they can now overcome this by using the Internet. Different terrorist groups or political parties use the Internet for a variety of different reasons:

Irish Republican Information Service is a service offering news articles relating to the troubles in Northern Ireland. Sinn Fein offer their own site containing of information about Sinn Fein, the armed struggle, policy documents………
Zapatista Movement. They have several sites, detailing their struggle against the Mexican authorities.
Third world terrorist/resistance groups have a cyber space presence.

Terrorist in the Internet

To Ensure Trust

2008-12-09T10:06:00.000-08:00

To Ensure Trust
The global economy is a digital economy, which depends on business fundamentals. At any given time, one of these fundamental is to establish trust. We have to make sure we are taking measures that infuse trust in our business partners, our employees, our consumers – and in the market.

Security and privacy are the enablers of trust in today’s economy. Effective security cannot be accomplished though technology alone: it is a process. Collaboration and business continuity issues have therefore especially relevant: mission critical business functions, technology and business risks as well as risk mitigation and recovery strategies have to be identified.

Digitization by electronically capturing and storing records and data in secure, remote locations, creating stable systems and putting business continuity plans in place. Business, as well as local, regional and national governments around the world need to increasingly turn to information technology – to digitization – to create more efficient and more secure processes to response to the new security challenges we are facing.

In addition, legal certainty is essential to establish trust. We must look to standardize out law and punishments for information technology crimes. Existing legislation needs to be reviewed to ensure that e-crimes can be prosecuted effectively. The current laws vary from country to country and the punishments often do not fit the crime.

It is essential that legal framework to combat cyber crime focus at international solutions that are balanced, flexible and meet broad international compatibility. Furthermore, if not carefully considered, new laws can also have unintended damaging effects and government solution should take into account the expertise and adequate involvement of industry. Action needs to be taken to both prevent criminal activity by enhancing security, but also to ensure that law enforcement authorities have the appropriate means to act if the prevention fails. However, the primary objective of computer and network security is to reduce risk, not to catch criminals.
To Ensure Trust