Security, ethics and electronic commerce systems: cybercrime and the need for information sharing security

Abstract

Electronic Commerce (EC) provides the gateway for an enterprise's employees, managers, customers (clients), and all trusted suppliers and Trading Partners (TPs) to access electronic data applications and all the information they need (Akoh, 2001). Information security can be defined as the means of protecting data and information systems from any unauthorised access, use, disclosure, modification or destruction with the eventual goals of protecting the confidentiality, reliability and availability of information. When it is done correctly, tangible business benefits can be realised, including increased performance and efficiency, greater transparency and visibility of business processes, awareness of critical assets, risk reduction, and ultimately a direct improvement in the bottom line. Cyber attacks appear to be increasing in frequency, and few are willing to ignore the possibility that the severity of future attacks could be much greater than what has been observed to date. This paper discusses the relationship between security, ethics and information sharing applications such as EC, Business-to-Business (B2B), and Business-to-Commerce (B2C). It also discusses the effect of cyber attacks and the counter measures to restrict them and the issues of information and cyber security, cybercrime, the lawful and unlawful intercept of information flowing over the internet, profiling and information privacy concerns.