security report

SECURITY REPORT

Electronic Commerce is often referred to as E-Commerce or eCommerce. E-Commerce entails a person buying or selling products and/or services over an electronic system such as the Internet. It specifically refers to the buying and selling of goods by transferring funds from one account to another. Transactions made with a customer and ASOS.com are part of the E-Commerce process.
With the rapid growth and spread of the Internet, E-Commerce has become a part of many people’s everyday lives. However, creating a revolutionary way of purchasing goods has also brought about many new threats and dangers that online customers are now at risk of.
Although, there are many advantages of purchasing goods online; someone that is housebound can get their food shopping delivered to their house via the Internet, someone that is time-poor can order Christmas presents, birthday presents, food shopping etc. online and get it delivered the next day etc. and someone that does not have the sufficient money to pay for petrol to pick up a product that is only stored in a certain area of the country can buy it online and get it delivered to their house, there are many disadvantages of purchasing goods this way.
E-commerce is more susceptible to threats than normal commerce as confidential details are needed when buying something online. For example you always need to write your address, your full name, date of birth, delivery address, billing address and your credit card details (unless you have a PayPal account). Whereas buying a product in a shop, you do not need to give any of these details, you only need to place your credit card into a machine and the company and your credit card company are the only people that are able to see this information. Whereas shopping online, in unfortunate cases, hackers and viruses can enable your information to be broadcasted.
There are many problems that have arisen from the evolvement of the Internet – allowing us to purchase products online, however, there are methods to help prevent these threats and dangers occurring.
Viruses are a computer program that can copy itself and infect a computer without the permission or knowledge of a user. Viruses normally attach themselves to computers that do not have up-to-date virus software and also, can be uploaded to your computer via opening an email with an ‘infected’ attachment in. As E-Commerce has evolved, virus makers have realised an easy way to get onto someone’s computer is by sending fake emails from online shops etc. urging them to open a very important attachment about their most recent purchase. People that are not aware of the dangers of opening emails that they do not know who are from or do not know how to tell between fake emails and real emails open these attachments and without realising, upload viruses to their computer which can be fatal. Information can be deleted or taken for harmful purposes. A way of preventing viruses from getting onto computers is by installing Anti-Virus software. There are many different types of anti-virus software, however, the most popular one is Norton Anti-Virus Software. This piece of software gives your computer protection against viruses and this software also includes protection against spyware. Regular updates and renewals are available from the website so the websites can always make sure their computers are safe from viruses and spyware.







Hackers are individuals that try to gain access to computer systems or networks without the user’s knowledge or consent in an attempt to steal sensitive and confidential information. E-Commerce websites such as ASOS.com have to be extremely careful that all of their computers and systems have sufficient methods to prevent hackers gaining access to their databases as websites keep personal information about their customers such as addresses and credit card details, which hackers could use to thieve someone’s identity or commit fraud. Hackers often create software that try to guess passwords by guessing millions of different combinations. There are methods to prevent hackers from gaining unauthorised access to networks and computer systems such as Firewalls. Firewalls are a combination of hardware and software that can be configured to block access to a network or individual computer to all except known IP addresses. Also, firewalls can be configured to block outward access thereby controlling the web sites that employees can visit.





This piece of software protects against hackers, spyware and viruses. It is easily installed and enables rapid automatic updates to come to your computer without user intervention and can be as regular as every hour. This software would be very beneficial to ASOS.com as there are hundreds of thousands of hackers that are trying to get into different computers and networks everyday, so therefore they need good protection and regular updates to ensure their computers are safe from hackers and other threats.




Spyware are programs that are installed into your computer without the user’s knowledge. Spyware is often found on most computers however some computers that hold very confidential information need to protect themselves against spyware. Spyware is installed onto your computer when a user goes onto different websites. It then sends back information to where it came from about activities on the computer and it can also open your files and send back any information it thinks is relevant. This can be extremely dangerous for computers at ASOS.com as they hold information about the website, its customers and their products and if this confidential information was sent off to the wrong person via spyware, there could be severe consequences. Websites such as ASOS.com need to protect all of their computers from spyware as although a lot of the time it can be harmful, it can also bring about major problems for its customers if their details are stolen.
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