Livin’ on the edge
There’s a serpent in the Garden of Eden! Even as enthusiasm builds up in the dot.com world, concerns about security issues are mounting. The recent distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks have taken the security issue to a new height.

Editorial -- Net worries
Corporate India is gung ho about the new economy. Boardrooms are abuzz with proposals for new dot.coms. But, wait a minute; have the boardrooms discussed the financial impact of security breaches?

Tete a tete
128 bit encryption is not very prevalent here because of the US government's ban on export. Today, however, there are encryption systems coming in with 128 bit encryption. I think Citibank is using 128 byte encryption for their Suvidha account in Bangalore.

"No one is fully secure"
Ernst & Young, the $12 billion global professional services firm, is among the top e-security solutions providers in the world. In December 1999, Ernst & Young launched its e-commerce security solutions services in India.

IsThereAnyPrivacy.com
Take for instance, the experience of a fellow analyst. When he logged on to Cheekoo.com (the dot.com that provides 15 hours of Internet access free every month to anyone who has an ISP account) to register, he was in for a shock.

Crimes of omission
Such exponential growth indicates a heavy dependence on technology. Security is critical for any breach of safety will put off potential Net users. The growing significance of security can be seen from the graph alongside that shows the increasing number of web sites that have been defaced in the past four years.

Online privacy language
These are tiny software programs that keep a log of where people click, allowing sites to track customers' habits. Cookies are placed on consumers' computers when they first visit sites or use things like online calendars, personalised news service, or shopping carts.

Vulnerable in cyberworld
ZDNet, E*Trade, CNN, eBay, Amazon.com, Yahoo -- they all had seemed invincible, touting heavy security levels and sky-high market caps. Until along came February and their sites were crippled.

Why use secure transactions?
But some information is sensitive. For example, when ordering from a site via credit card, the credit card number is transmitted across the Internet from the browser to the server. In theory, a third party could intercept this information at some point on the network between the browser and the server.

How secure is the Net?
How secure is the Internet? This is a question that is asked at almost every other seminar or conference on e-commerce. I think the question should be reworded to read, 'How insecure is the Internet?'

"E-security very poor in India"
With the recent massive attack on some of the top dot.com companies in the world, security issues have once again assumed centre stage. To get a feel of India's Internet security status, Thinktank invited comments from software and Internet security experts and a couple of India's fastest growing dot.coms.