E-Commerce in Our Organization, Electronic Data Interchange - Essay Example

E-Commerce E-Commerce means to set up or run your business on the Internet, permitting the s to be able to visit your website, and check through a virtual catalog of the products or the services we are offering online. When a customer visiting your website wants to buy an item or a product he or she just have to add it to their virtual basket. Products that a visitor adds to his or her virtual basket can be edited any time, and when the visitor is done with the shopping he or she heads to the virtual checkout or payment counter that's present on the website. On the counter the visitor is told his or her complete total and is asked about the address and the method of payment he or she will use. The payment is usually done through credit cards. Once the person has entered all the information he or she just have to wait for the delivery of the products at their home. The biggest issue that arises here is the security of the information transmitted we will discuss about it later. A poll conducted by CNN during Christmas season resulted in 62 percent of the respondents saying they prefer to shop online in this season. Hence by using E-Commerce not only you save money but you can buy products 24 hours a day, 7 days-a-week, without experiencing traffic jams, crowded markets, and carrying heavy bags of shopping. Apart from this organization can increase their profits by introducing E-Commerce as their business runs 24 hours a day. E-Commerce in our Organization Our organization follows the simple E-Commerce method of using a website, but not only for buying products also for after sale services and complaints about any defected product. We also welcome any suggestions by our customers to improve the way we do business. The organization has its own website that has a multiple range of products as mentioned in the online catalog, the prices are updated every day in order to keep our customers informed. We follow a delivery procedure that has no charges meaning we offer a free delivery for the citizens of the country where the company is operating. Hence we have made different websites for different countries. If a person orders his or her product from the country's website than he gets a free delivery. The ranges of products that the organization is offering are different in different countries and regions. We have a direct interaction with our customers meaning that every customer is contacted through his email for informing him about promotions and different offers or sales that are being held by the organization, the organization also offers a loyalty card after 200 purchases that enables a customer to get discount on purchases. The organization also does business with other organizations doing E-Commerce. E-Commerce in our organization takes care of automatic collecting of data by these systems, funds transfer by electronic means, electronic-marketing, processing of transactions online, EDI (Electronic Data Interchange), inventory management by automation, and management of supply chain. Security After discussing so much about E-Commerce and its advantages and how our organization follows it, E-Commerce seems to be an easy subject but there are complications as well. The biggest issue that E-Commerce is experiencing during this time is the security issue. When customers are buying online they give the websites personal information that is private and confidential hence it's the organization's duty to protect it. To make sure that the information transmitted is secure certain steps have to be taken. E-Commerce is said to be prone to internet crime, which to an extent is quite true hacking credit card numbers has become a menace to E-Commerce and sometimes people only discourage to buy online because of this. Making sure that E-Commerce is secure physically and from hackers, its important to identify the following: The role of a security policy in e-commerce. Approaches to security risk assessment in e-commerce. Physical security options. The features of dynamic firewalls. The risks involved in downloading code via a Web browser. The role of a security policy in e-commerce A security policy is very important when running e-commerce because it decides how much secure will be an organizations transactions and how much other organizations and its customers can trust it. Approaches to security risk assessment in e-commerce These approaches enable an organization to test its level of security and to formulate its buying and selling strategy. For example if an e-commerce has a security system that's weak for using credit cards then it would tell customers to pay via some other source. Physical Security Options These are the options available for an organization to make sure that their information system used for e-commerce is physically safe from thefts and access from unauthorized personnel The features of dynamic firewalls The features of the firewall being used has to be known by every worker who has any kind of interaction with the firewall in order to capitalize the resource in an effective and efficient way. The risks involved in downloading code via a Web browser There are many risks involved while downloading codes through a web browser hence these risks should be known by every worker in order to easily identify them when a need arises. All these account to make a secure e-commerce work successfully. Security at our organization is given a priority and all these points are covered well and good. There have been security threats emerging since e-commerce came into function but they have been dealt successfully. Hackers trying to access our virtual catalog and trying to hack credit card numbers have been the most common threats, and our security system is specially designed to deal with these. Apart from these viruses injected into the information system is another threat but the anti-virus that was developed in our own software house has been successfully removing them. So far none of the security threats that have emerged have been dangerous enough to cause any possible damage but this does not mean that the organization will stick to the security system that's being used. The reason being that every day new kind of threats emerge hence to deal with them successfully the organization should be equipped with the latest and the most effective security system. Bibliography Debra Cameron. (August 1998). E-commerce Security Strategies: Protecting the Enterprise. Computer Technology Research Corporation. Anup K. Ghosh. (January 21, 1998). E-Commerce Security: Weak Links, Best Defenses. Wiley. Kenneth Laudon, Carol Traver. (March 22, 2006). E-Commerce: Business, Technology, Society. Prentice Hall; 3 edition. David Travis. (December 5, 2002). E-Commerce Usability: Tools and Techniques to Perfect the On-Line Experience. CRC. Read More