Security issues in Internet commerce

For many companies, Internet commerce means taking credit card orders from customers shopping electronic catalogs on the World Wide Web. For others Internet commerce means dealing electronically with clients and suppliers, as an alternative to private, leased-line electronic document interchange (EDI) over value added networks or VANs). This use of the Internet is sometimes called a virtual private network (VPN) or tunneling. A third area of Internet commerce, which overlaps both of the others and includes areas largely unexplored, is digital authentication (of anything from contracts and invoices to photographs and sound bites). The issues involved in Internet commerce affect companies large and small. The author discusses some of the security problems in Internet commerce together with prospects for the future.