Security and privacy issues in E commerce

For effective study on security and privacy issues, data was collected from various participants. Analysis of the results held that the privacy and security issues impedes the E-commerce as the online IT users fails to purchase via the Internet. For the success of the organizations, the resources and efforts needs to be expanded with the aim of addressing the concerns of the IT users. Introduction The modern world is characterized by online IT users which threatens and problematizes the E-commerce consumers. The low cost of the social platform devices and higher accessibility of internet are the key influencing factors to the increased utilization of internet. Kokolakis has acknowledged that the existing policies and guidelines makes majority of the consumers feel insecure with respect to the online security and privacy (127). The security and privacy concerns are not only on the value of the goods and services but also on the trust in the information society.

Every now and then, news are aired about security and privacy matters of the IT users. The validity of the many articles and journals found on the web concerning the IT users have been questioned by the researchers with the focus of confirming or discarding privacy and security as the major E-commerce concern (Vakeel et al. Considering the rapid development and the use of technology, the concerns and needs of an online IT user needs to be answered. In the past years a lot has been written, reported, studied and concluded about the privacy issues facing the online IT users and subsequently E-commerce. The consumer reluctance on E-commerce has been studied by Dupree et al. with conclusion being that the barrier to shopping is relatively high (5230). Experts such as director of the Online Privacy Alliance (OPA) wants every online business transaction to be backed up by privacy policy.

This according to the research by Cambridge-based Forrester will greatly raise the E-commerce sales if the companies will willingly establish trust with the online consumers (Dupree et al. Secondly, he stated that purchasers are concerned regarding the peril of secondary usage –their personal data reuse for unconnected devotions unwillingly. This comprises distribution to third parties. It as well contains the combination of a customers’ transaction information as well as other personal data to generate the profile. Accessing personal information was limited to the public in the past but recently such information is available to the public just by the click of the mouse. During the past years, behavioral advertising took root with profiles of interest and activities being built upon the consumers’ behavior. According to the studies by Chen, Christopher and Traci, security alludes to the provision of access control, confidentiality, authentication, privacy, integrity, effectiveness and availability (295).

The surveys conducted and compiled by various scholars shows increasing concerns on security which is estimated to be a global issue. The feasibility of E-commerce is compromised by the customers’ lack of confidence in the system’s ability to protect confidential data such as the sensitivity of credit card information. The reports by Vakeel et al. indicates that 63% of online users unwillingly provides their personal details due to the lack of trust and confidence in sites (295). million respectively (296). Therefore, scholars are concerned with prioritizing security with the aim of keeping the web server’s archives recently ordered behind the firewall instead of the front-end web servers. Further, suggestions are made by the analysts on the need for specializing the sensitive servers by removing all the inessential services and applications. Out of the surveys conducted by various specialists in the field of online marketing, high security issues are caused by imperfection of the E-commerce laws, regulations, technological systems and internet.

Online users see security as the major issue whether in terms of locking the computer or conducting business through the internet. A questionnaire of 29 items was created and sent to 250 online Information Technology operators in a noteworthy city in the Southeastern United States (Hirschprung et al. The used items were obtained from the safety and privacy issues, news as well as other works. The investigation’s survey tool was tried on certain skilled online clients who were additionally conversant with evaluation about matters on security and protection concerns. Grounded on the comments obtained from the pretest, adjustments were placed to the instrument prior to issuing them to the partakers. The motive behind every items on the instrument of survey was to provide the online Information Technology operators the chance to express their views and opinions concerning their concerns and perception when utilizing online Information Technology.

The following apprehensions regarding the use of the Internet and e-mail were categorized in order of significance: privacy; threats and security; children safeguard online; e-mail security; and restriction, forged identity as well as impersonation (Hirschprung et al. Most of those who took part in the study admitted that organizations need to have an e-mail rule statement that is visibly spelt out. Several participants argued that regardless of the manner in which a company deliberates it, personal data need not be disclosed. The continuous issue in privacy and security is users’ incorrect and differing models of security as well as their seeming unwillingness and inability to follow critical privacy and security guidelines and policies. Not merely do operators comprehend what they desire to do, they frequently do not put into account the precaution required for the safety technologies to operate efficiently.

Organizations should possess the set of business procedures in place to contain intrusions, manage their peril and obtain security vulnerabilities. By coming up with responsibility chain and the effective separation of duty, firms can be secured against criminal insiders and intrusions. Organizations need to insist and consider policies for data integrity and privacy; that is to say, there has to be guidelines to avoid both the corruption and the leakage of data. With lack of organizational processes put into consideration and the necessary technologies, traders stand to lose merely as much as customers, correspondingly, when the e-commerce positioning is insecure. Safety holes are remarkable, and the merchant have to be capable of shopping decisions from exposure, financial data, securing consumers' identities, so as to prevent separating loyal purchasers (Li, 347). Whenever queried if they think the present guidelines and laws were satisfactory to protect the IT operators, likewise only few people indicated yes.

Actually, most of the Internet IT operators who took part in this examination trusted that the progressions in such innovation like encryption as well as other security highlights are not adequate to decrease their security and privacy concerns. Grounded on the feedback of participants, an overwhelming employee’s majority prefer the business to have guidelines for Internet and e-mail use and to as well inform the workers of the rules. It is upheld that such employees’ awareness and policies would lower liability and risks. Nevertheless, a larger number of the workforces who participated in the investigation showed that they were unaware of such guidelines. Dupree, Janna Lynn, et al. Privacy personas: Clustering users via attitudes and behaviors toward security practices.  Proceedings of the 2016 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems.

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