E-Businesses Case

From an industry standpoint what e-businesses do would be irrelevant if there was no security. Without security, people would be afraid to shop online. And while security does exist today, in the form of secure servers and encryption, the level of protection provided is not enough to ease everyone's fears. More and more horror stories, especially ones concerning the theft of credit card numbers, are being circulated. Just recently, computer retailer Egghead admitted that their system had been hacked, compromising the information to 3.7 million of their customers, including credit card numbers [7]. Harry Widdifield, an operator of a website determined to combat stolen credit card numbers, lists over 50,000 stolen numbers in a searchable database. He estimates that the number of stolen cards range around 3 to 5 million [7]. Due to these and many other instances, people have been reluctant to give out their credit card numbers online. The industry has recognized this however, and is beginning to take steps to change this bad image. One new trend is the one-time use credit card number. Already offered by Discover and American Express, this new service gives customers a unique credit card number for each online store they purchase from [8]. This is a great idea in that even if the number were stolen, the thieves would not be able to use it anywhere else. Another variant of this one-time credit card is one in which the customer can set the limit. If you know that you are going to make a $10 purchase, you can set the limit to $10 - hence if thieves steal the number, they wouldn't be able to charge anything to it [8]. The only problem with these one-time cards right now is that it is somewhat of a hassle to obtain a new number for each purchase. That may be where the future is headed though - a card, or system which will allow these security measure to be implemented and used passively.