Web Commerce Security Design and Development

How This Book Is Organized

The book is organized into nine chapters and four appendices, with the chapters sequentially developing the important background information and detailed knowledge of e-commerce and e-commerce security issues. The appendices provide a review of important technical and compliance topics to support the material in the chapters.

The material in the chapters begins with the introduction of the era of e-commerce and its effect on consumer buying habits and norms. The subsequent chapters focus on the important qualities a robust and secure e-commerce system must possess and then lead into the fundamental building blocks of e-commerce. Using this information as a foundation, the middle chapters provide a detailed look at the tools available to implement a robust e-commerce environment and the means to secure such an environment. The final chapters explore methods and approaches to certify the assurance posture of e-commerce implementations.

Chapter 1 reviews the basic concepts of distributed computing and explains the unique characteristics of e-commerce as opposed to “conventional” commerce. It also covers digital goods, hard goods, payment methods, and introduces mobile or m-commerce.

Chapter 2 discusses consumer electronic devices and delves into the differences between e-commerce and m-commerce. The chapter then goes into great detail about mobile hardware, operating systems, and stacks. It also explores thin versus thick clients, application warehousing, ...