Protection And Security Issues Experienced By Customers And Online Businesses Essay Samples

Executive Summary

Many small businesses have been on the growth, but there are a lot of security challenges facing them. Cyber security tends to be a critical focus of the World Security Strategy. This is because an estimate shows that cybercrimes cost the United Kingdom economy 27billion Euros per year (Culnan & Armstrong 1999). The potential of small businesses driving economic growth through e-commerce is being affected by cybercrime. Statistics shows that around three in every ten members have been a victim of fraud. Three types of frauds frequently experienced include; card fraud (11%), customer or client fraud (14%), and computer software fraud (5%). Small business especially small retailers have been reporting the impact they have experienced in their business from the fraud of card, not present fraud transaction.
IntroductionOnline crime and fraud are a major challenge that online businesses are experiencing as this poses threat their level of security and protection. These two challenges prevent small, businesses from venturing into online business because they fear the risk of fraud that may cost their business. It is, therefore, worth concerning to look into the issue of online growth since different countries are trying to encourage small businesses to venture into online businesses in order to help in job creation and improve the economic growth. In United Kingdom, analysis shows that small businesses lose and average of 3,500 Euros per year to fraud and online crimes. This issue can, therefore, be addressed through combined efforts from the governments, public, and private sectors and also the effective partnership between businesses.This report has concern in the following areas:
Current actions that business take in an attempt to reduce the risk of online crime and fraud and also the establishment of current response and support framework
The experience of small online businesses in relation to fraud and online crime and the associated shortcomings to business in terms of time management and monetary costs

The current situation of cyber security and how small business policy and guidance areparticipating on this.

This report will focus on the interests of micro businesses and small scale businesses as these businesses make up the small scale business category. The report also seeks to evaluate the efforts, support, responses, and strategies that have been laid out in an attempt to curb cybercrime and fraud so as to enhance business security and protection for online businesses.
Protection, security, and privacy are sensitive to online business changes as businesses want their privacy guaranteed (Berendt 2001, 21). Hence, the unauthorized people cannot access their confidential business information online as this will pose a real threat to their business.
In an attempt to curb online crimes and frauds, they have regularly tried updating software for virus scanning and that software for filtering spam. In an effort to combat fraud, businesses have more concern on the banks taking more responsibility so as to reduce the card, not present fraud transaction. Online businesses are also welcoming ideas and effective policy responses and advices that can assist them in improving their business security and be able to protect their businesses from any form of fraud or crime.
Below is a report presenting the security and protection challenges that online businesses face. The report will include technical issues, regulatory attempts to boost privacy, and consumers’ concerns about their security and privacy.Findings and AnalysisSocial and business issues
There are various business opportunities in the dynamic technical environment. Use of technological systems allows businesses and the consumers to fetch data at a larger rate. The sites for e-commerce could be able to collect data about what the consumers want, the patterns of shopping and what the consumers like (Dhillon & Moores 2001, 23). The data mined concerning the consumer’s shopping trends can be used in customizing the customers’ e-commerce experience and finding new potential customers to sell to. Ironically, the same trend used in the provision of value to organizations and consumers raises the protection and security concerns (Culnan & Armstrong 1999). From this, it has been established that many e-commerce sites have messed with data for their consumers (Fisher 2001). This has made few consumers to trust companies keeping their data. The consumers are concerned with two areas of privacy. First, they have a concern for the access by unauthorized persons to their personal data because of security breaches. Second, they are concerned with the reuse of their data by other persons without their consent. Consumers are therefore being faced with the challenge of their data being accessed by unauthorized persons. The matter is currently being analyzed by the presence of privacy policies and privacy laws on Web sites as one of the measures to enhance protection and security for online businesses. Socially, there is an increase in the instances data corruption. The social perspective indicates the increase advancement in technology result in more knowledge about the use of technology. Youth tend to be curious in trying to access confidential information and data for personal use (Jaishankar 2011, 32).Fraud and Cyber Crime
Fraud and Cybercrimes are two major challenges that small online businesses have been facing for a long time. Statistics shows there is a great concern about the crimes that are being committed the rising rate of fraud online. This affects both the business and its consumers. Software fraud is a situation where hackers interfere with the database of an organization and my personal information (Fisher 2001, 54). There is also card fraud, which is common to banks and other microfinance institutions. This poses a real threat to the consumers since they at times find that their cards passwords’ have been altered and probably their account information leaked. Customer client fraud is another form of fraud. When company’s database is hacked, personal information for the consumers is being accessed by unauthorized users.Technologies For privacy protection and security
A number of technologies have affected the current debate on privacy. There are technologies used for contracting on the release of private data, surveillance, and for trust and labeling (Clark 2001).  A number of technologies have been designed to enhance consumers’ and businesses’ level of privacy. Some have even developed to provide control on behalf of the user.
Businesses and customers have also had an issue with hacking, virus infections or security loss of availability or breach. There is a platform called Payment Card Initiative Data Security Standard (PCIDSS) meant to address issues for small businesses and micro retailers. The standard has been found to be dealing with issues from big businesses only rather those small businesses. Some of the businesses have acted in some ways in the attempt to boost business security and protect their privacy. They have come up with strategies such as; assessing the risks, regular installation of security patches, and training their staff. They also have written policies and plans.
One of the measures made to ensure that businesses and consumers are secure and protected from fraud and online crimes (Light 2001, 53). There is still need for online surveillance to be stepped up in order to ensure that online businesses are protected and through this small business will be promoted because they will have no fear of their businesses being altered.

Regulation, privacy co-design, and economic issues

The regulation includes the governmental attempts to regulate the new environment on behalf of its citizens. These attempts have consolidating slowly. The aim of regulation was to ensure that municipalities have their privacy regulations and web services that could be responsible for any online violations in order to continue the growth of e-commerce (Granor & Resnick 2000 51).
It is among the strategies that have been established to address economic issues and challenges facing e-commerce. This strategy has been widely practiced in United States and United Kingdom and has seen some progress in the enhancement of security and information protection from online crime. The economic issues concern the challenges that affect the living standard of people. Primary, data extraction will have the business as records would be tempered and inconsistency cases would be seen. Cybercrimes could, however, be protected bearing in mind that there can be in accessible cods that cannot be hacked.

Conclusion

In summary, protection and security have still ongoing research challenges facing online businesses and consumers. There have been interesting moves made and strategies established to curb these challenges and significant findings have been realized for consumers and e-commerce.Security and privacy have now been understood to be imperfect and hacking has been one of the online crimes. Significant technical developments have been made in the last three years. An organizational policy is one of the strategies that play an important role in site security. Finally, detailed sociologically-based and economics analyzes are now starting to penetrate into published literature, and this is a great platform for stepping up security for online businesses and consumers. Hence, it will help in curbing fraud and cybercrime. The state have a role as well in handle cybercrime issues, the state can have intelligence on the existence of cybercrime individual who tend to derail the progress of economy.

References

Belanger, F., Hiller, J. S., & Smith, W. J. 2002. Trustworthiness in electronic commerce: the role of privacy, security, and site attributes. The Journal of Strategic Information Systems, 11(3), 245-270.
Hoffman, D. L., Novak, T. P., & Peralta, M. 1999. Building consumer trust online. Communications of the ACM, 42(4), 80-85.
Jaishankar, K. (2011). Cyber criminology: Exploring Internet crimes and criminal behavior. Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press.
Kim, C., Tao, W., Shin, N., & Kim, K. S. 2010. An empirical study of customers’ perceptions of security and trust in e-payment systems. Electronic Commerce Research and Applications, 9(1), 84-95.
Luo, X. (2002). Trust production and privacy concerns on the Internet: A framework based on relationship marketing and social exchange theory. Industrial Marketing Management, 31(2), 111-118.
Miyazaki, A. D., & Fernandez, A. 2001. Consumer perceptions of privacy and security risks for online shopping. Journal of Consumer affairs, 35(1), 27-44.
Udo, G. J. 2001. Privacy and security concerns as major barriers for e-commerce: a survey study. Information Management & Computer Security, 9(4), 165-174.
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