What are the risks of e-commerce? An important part of any e-commerce project is to ensure that your customers details can be collected in a secure and confidential manner. How many levels of security you build in depends on what you perceive the risks to be. To put things in proportion, there is far more chance that someone will suffer credit card fraud in a high street shop or by buying through conventional mail order than by using the internet What is the minimun security I need? The minimun you require is that the data is sent via a secure HTTP connection which ensures that the data is passed in an encrypted manner. Levels of encryption start at 40-bit and go up to 128-bit. 40-bit is considered adequate for most use How can I tell if a page is secure? You can tell when the page is secure because the address changes to HTTPS instead of HTTP, and the requesting browser will display the 'Padlock' icon at the bottom of the page (although some shopping carts use built in encryption which ignores these standards). You might also get a browser message pop up which confirms the page is secure. What is encryption? Encryption is the process of scrambling data. There are many different (and complicated) ways to scramble and unscramble information. This section provides a brief description of encryption without going into too much technical detail. On the Internet, there are two main uses for encryption. One occurs when you visit a "secure" Web site, such as an online store or shopping mall. This is called server-side encryption because it uses the Digital ID given to the server (computer) that runs the Web site. The other use occurs when you send or receive encrypted e-mail. In both cases, the encryption process involves exchanging public keys. When encrypting information, the encryption process is done with either a public or a private key and then decrypted with the matching public or private key. Think of it as a lock that requires one key to close the lock and another key to open the lock. For example, when you visit a secure Web site, your computers receives the Web site's public key. When your computer sends information to the Web site, your computer encrypts it using the Web site's public key. The only way to decrypt the information you are sending is with the Web site's private key. What is Thawte Certification? When people visit a web site with the intent of making an online purchase, they want proof of the identity of the web site owner. They also want to know that their personal information cannot be read by hackers. Thawte Certificates provide this peace of mind. Click here to see www.thawte.com

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