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E-Commerce Website Security Issues

Running Head: SECURITY ISSUES OF SMALL E-COMMERCE WEBSITES

E-commerce Website Security Issues

March 26, 2008

Abstract
The research topic I have chosen for this CIS666 final paper is focused on recognition and evaluation of e-commerce website security issues for a small company that lacks the technical and human resources to fully cover all aspects of running a website. How can a small company protect its e-commerce website against all the security threats endangering company’s assets and operations? With the list of security issues I covered in this paper, my recommendation is, that a small company with limited resources should outsource running of its e-commerce website to a credible web-hosting company with enough IT resources to better deal with common security issues.

Any company trying to get in any business should conduct an extensive research of its ability to succeed in the increasingly challenging environment, thoroughly evaluating its situation, business opportunities, challenges and risks, carefully weighting all of its options before deciding how to implement its business plan. The same applies to a company that wants to successfully launch an e-commerce website. A detail research and solid planning will significantly affect the outcome. While there are many challenges of building an e-commerce website, I would like to focus only on one, but major aspect of running an e-commerce website, and that is: security. Security is one of the most important issues that must be resolved to ensure the success of e-commerce. With so many well publicized security failures that often embarrass even sizable companies, small businesses must seriously question if they will ever be able to completely defend their websites, when even some big companies occasionally fail to defend themselves against all the security threats awaiting on the Internet to be tested by hackers and scammers and possibly risking all their business future. Of course, to reach the...