Electronic Commerce and Information Security and Ethics - Essay Example

Tools and strategies needed to follow in order to implement electronic and mobile commerce in business. Electronic and mobile commerce which has its origin in Finland can be described in the most basic terms as any transaction that involves the transfer of rights or ownership to consume goods and services. This transaction is usually achieved with the aid of an electronic device that uses mobile access to computer-mediated networks. This allows consumers to purchase products and services from sellers and also to share business information. Most of the products and services involved include; shopping for goods and services, conducting banking and monetary transactions, playing online interactive games, sending and receiving emails, linking to social networks to connect to people and finally trading stocks and shares. On the other hand online presence refers to the sum of all identities created either personally or business wise, interactions created by these identities and those that a business or a person have participated in online (Traxler, 2009). A successful online presence is bound to earn an individual or a business followers, fans and customers. Another benefit of a good online presence is that it is bound to spread brand awareness which is the dream of every business out there. Therefore, building an online presence entails establishing the goals of an individual or the business, creating accounts and profiles, building a website which will serve as the home base and finally working on the best ways to engage and interact online. The first step businesses need to take into account when creating an online presence is strategizing their business goals. By doing this it will help them understand their business goals whether short term or long term that are driving them to create an online presence. This is the time to also assess the impact of the online presence to your business goals. This stage helps in creating an online presence that will impact positively on the goals of the business. The next step is creating a solid platform. The most important thing in this step is to create a website which is going to be the home base for the business. A website facilitates your online presence by creating a platform for your business where people can find it easily and learn more about what they offer (Galliers & Leidner, 2014). Through this they can interact, engage, and contact you in case they need your services. Therefore, search engine optimization, clear message about the business, contact page, are a prerequisite in ensuring a good website to establish your online presence. Once you have created a website the next step is to work towards optimizing and improving the content. In this stage the business strives to find ways on how to improve the content and services they have to offer to their customers. This matters a lot because it is what will attract visitors to your site and help you to remain relevant online. The next step is to ensure that consistent value is being provided. This may take the form of online books, videos, podcasts, and even blogs. By providing consistent value and providing valuable content to the intended market, the business will gain authority in that industry thus promoting your online presence (James, Pirim, Boswell, Reithel & Barkhi, 2006). Building trust with your followers is also another strategy in creating value this can be achieved by sharing the content of other people too thus reaching out to a larger audience for your content. This will in turn promote your online presence. The next step and strategy is getting social. This entails creating profiles in the various social networks that will enable you to do postings and interact with the online community. In order to remain relevant it is advisable that the business be consistent in posting and engaging in conversations in order to increase their online following which will add value to their online presence. Building relationships is the next step and strategy in increasing your online presence. This is achieved through finding an online community that is made up of likeminded businesses or those that are in the same industry with you. By doing this chances are you likely to find connections and the exact audience for your content. The trick in doing this is always to express interest in the content of others and then they will be drawn to yours later. In doing this your presence will be noticed and people will start having interest ion whatever you are offering thus improving your online presence. Eventually, after all these steps and strategies the last one will be to track your online presence. This is to help you track your progress and know whether there is an input in the efforts made so far. This can be done by looking at the number of likes the business has on Facebook, number of circles the business is part of in Google+ and the number of twitter following. Tools and skills required in order to create a successful online presence include the use of social networks, use of search engines and finally the rating tools. Some of the social network tools that can be utilized by the business to reach a broad audience are Facebook, twitter, and Google+. These sites enable the business to meet many people including the target audience. Search engine optimization is also another way to improve the website’s rank in the search engines thus attracting more visitors (Van, Turoff & Hiltz, 2014). Another tool that could also be utilized is the Google keyword tool that incorporates the keywords you would want the website to rank for. Finally in tracking the progress of your online presence, Google analytics would prove beneficial in helping you track your website traffic. Mobile commerce has posed both opportunities and challenges to its users in different forms. Some of the opportunities mobile commerce has brought or created include; increasing the scope of business both at the local and international level. Sellers are now able to reach buyers in other countries with ease. Mobile commerce has also improved marketing of the various products and services. Through sharing information online, businesses are able to reach the wider community and also recommend products of various business entities. Mobile commerce has also made transactions easier by reducing the use of the bulky hard cash in purchasing and selling goods and services. This has ensured transactions are done faster and in a more secure way. Mobile commerce has also had its share of challenges and this include issues of information disclosure, issues of redress, security, and liability. When it comes to information disclosure, it has been noted that technological constraints have at times limited the amount of information the consumers are provided with during a mobile commerce transaction (Bassiliades, Antoniou & Vlahavas, 2006). For example a small screen may limit the amount of important text required by the consumers to enter into a binding agreement thus misleading the buyers. Another challenge facing mobile commerce is security and liability issues. This is a challenge due to the increasing number of unauthorized transactions, mobile phone malware, nature of technology involved and its susceptibility to theft. The many unauthorized transactions are as a result of consumers failing to understand terms and conditions of the transactions they are engaging in. Issues of redress are also a challenge because most consumers find difficulties in identifying responsible parties whenever something goes amiss. Therefore, consumers find difficulties in accessing complain handling mechanisms. These challenges have in most times discouraged consumers and imparted fear in them thus having adverse effects to mobile commerce. Policies and procedures that organizations should implement to protect themselves. Security or e-policies refers to a set of well defined, clear and comprehensive rules, plans and practices that regulate access to the information and systems of an organization. It could also refer to the plans that organizations have towards protecting their physical and information technology assets. Examples include ethical computer use policy, information privacy policy, acceptable use policy, email privacy policy, internet use policy, and anti-spam policy. Normally inform of a document, it is subject to updates in order to conform to the changing technology and employee requirements. Therefore, a good policy protects information and systems, employees and the organization as a whole. Considering the nature of most organizations and the nature of work together with the large number of employees involved, trusting them with the company’s information and systems may not be a prudent move. Therefore, I would recommend ethical computer use policy, acceptable use policy and internet use policy to most organizations as they tend to cover most organizational activities. Ethical computer use policy contains general information and principles that are aimed towards guiding computer user behavior. It generally ensures all computer users are informed of the rules guiding the performance of a certain task in the computer. And therefore by agreeing to use the system they have accepted to abide by the rules governing that operation. Principles guiding this policy include staff treating information like any valuable asset of the company. Chief information officer is the one responsible for managing information from its generation to its destruction. CIO is the one responsible for controlling access to information and its use. He is also the one responsible for preventing the inappropriate destruction of information. These guidelines therefore help in guiding users to tread with caution when handling information and reminds them that the chief information officer s the overall manager of information. This policy is crucial to most organizations as it employs bureaucratic procedures in information handling thus ensuring controls. Acceptable use policy provides guidelines that a user must agree to follow in order to access the internet or a network. It usually contains a non-repudiation clause that ensures online users do not disown or deny their actions. Some of the stipulations in this policy include such things like not posting commercial messages to groups without their knowledge. Not attempting to break the security of any user or computer network. No sending junk mails or spam to people who are not interested (Smith, Dinev & Xu, 2011). This policy ensures people take full responsibility of their unwarranted online actions. I would therefore recommend this policy as it helps in scaring away those with malicious intentions through holding them accountable for their actions. Internet use policy on the other hand is a policy that contains general information and principles to help in guiding the proper use of the internet. Generally this policy should complement the ethical computer use policy. It also should define the position of the organization on the purpose of internet access and the restrictions on the access. This policy is beneficial to an organization as it tends to monitor what users have to do in the internet. Dangers encountered during internet access such as downloading malicious software are also prevented in this policy. The increasing misuse of the internet by most individuals in organizations will be monitored by this policy thus ensuring ethical internet use in the organization. Developing policies is an easy affair but implementing them has been the biggest challenge most organizations face today. Therefore, in implementing the policies the following steps and guidelines will be beneficial in realizing this goal. The first step would be to review the draft policies and standards with the management, users, and legal counsel. This is the validation process that ensures the management and users will support the policies and standards, and that they are in line with the needs of the organization. The presence of the legal counsel is to ensure that the policies comply with the state laws. The next step is to train all the personnel and educate them about the information security policies. This will help them understand what they are supposed to do and why they are supposed to do. Having this done helps employees to take individual responsibility in securing critical information assets of the organization. The next step is to enforce the policies and standards. This can be achieved by the use of technology such as web filters to prohibit access of certain sites. Eventually the policies are reviewed and modified occasionally. The inevitable changes that face the business and the technological world today necessitate a review of the policies that are currently in place. Therefore, by occasionally reviewing their policies, it will ensure that the policies are up to date and they reflect the current corporate environment. References Bassiliades, N., Antoniou, G., & Vlahavas, I. (2006). A defeasible logic reasoner for the semantic web. International Journal on Semantic Web and Information Systems (IJSWIS), 2(1), 1-41. Galliers, R. D., & Leidner, D. E. (2014). Strategic information management: challenges and strategies in managing information systems. Routledge. James, T., Pirim, T., Boswell, K., Reithel, B., & Barkhi, R. (2006). Determining the intention to use biometric devices: An application and extension of the technology acceptance model. Journal of Organizational and End User Computing, 18(3), 1. Smith, H. J., Dinev, T., & Xu, H. (2011). Information privacy research: an interdisciplinary review. MIS quarterly, 35(4), 989-1016. Traxler, J. (2009). Learning in a mobile age. International Journal of Mobile and Blended Learning (IJMBL), 1(1), 1-12. Van De Walle, B., Turoff, M., & Hiltz, S. R. (2014). Information systems for emergency management. Routledge. Read More