Web Commerce Security Design and Development

Summary

To talk about the profound impact that the Internet, the Web, and e-commerce have had on our everyday lives is stating the obvious. Personal computers, mobile phones, and other consumer electronic devices are gatekeepers of our interactions with the digital world: They are entrusted to be the de facto means to live our digital life. As a result of using our mobile devices to conduct business transactions, m-commerce is accelerating our dependence on the Web. Visiting the front page of an e-commerce site (that is, the first page that you see when you browse to www.ebay.com for instance) and logging in to your account is considered to be a very simple action; however, making this process secure and reliable is anything but.

Our digital security almost entirely depends on the security of our computers, mobile devices, and all the systems that they communicate with: This is a very complex setup. We all need reliable security, therefore it is of utmost importance to put in place secure processes to satisfy this need and protect our confidential information. From the system designers' vantage point, the task of securing such a complex system is overwhelming, to say the least. There are different parts of this ecosystem that need to operate in synchrony, although many of them were not originally designed to work together. From the end users' perspective, however, the need is much simpler; it must be easy, safe, and secure to use the system! In this book we will describe what it ...