Abstract
Telecommunications and networking, two prominent technologies of the information age, have enjoyed substantial investments from industry and government, resulting in unparalleled growth in the transmission of voice, video, and data over wired and wireless media. Since their inception several decades ago, these technologies and their business applications have progressed through several stages. Such progression commenced from the development of the primitive electronic funds transfer (EFT) in which funds could be transferred electronically, to the enormous variety of technologies available today. Several decades ago, the delivery of video, voice, and data was accomplished through three independent networks: television, telephone, and data networks, respectively (Panko, 2007). Today, a convergence of the three networks is occurring. For example, networking technology can deliver video, data, voice (through VoIP), graphics and other multimedia contents at considerable speed. Currently, there are many applications associated with telecommunications and networking technologies. They include electronic mail (e-mail), voice over Internet protocol (VoIP), and videoconferencing. Also, the Internet which was built on the world-wide telecommunications and networking infrastructure gave rise to many applications such as electronic commerce (e-commerce), electronic data interchange (EDI), and several other World Wide Web (Web) applications. Electronic commerce, which is the process of buying, selling, or exchanging products, services, and information via computer networks, has evolved and become an ever-booming enterprise. The advent of broadband digital subscriber line (DSL) and broadband cable has enabled the transmission of data signals through telephone and cable-television (cable-TV) networks. Moreover, broadband technology has made high speed Internet access very affordable for small businesses and individuals. It has also facilitated e-commerce by providing businesses and consumers easy access to the global information super highway. The fact that e-commerce transactions involve the transmission of personal and organization’s proprietary information over the unsecured Internet, make them easy targets for hackers. Therefore, security of electronic communications is a major problem that must be addressed by organizations that engage in e-commerce. This article presents the trends in telecommunications and networking; security problems confronting such technologies and related e-commerce applications; and the management of security issues associated with these technologies.
TopBackground
Major trends surrounding telecommunications and networking technologies are distinctively at three levels, namely industry, technology, and applications. The attributes that uniquely characterize the different levels are described as follows:
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Industry trends: Are signified by more competitive vendors, carriers, alliances, and network services, accelerated by deregulation and the growth of the Internet and the World Wide Web.
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Technology trends: The extensive use of the Internet, digital fiber-optic, and wireless technologies to create high-speed local and global internetworks for voice, data, images, audio, and video communications are central and, individually and collectively highlight the changing patterns in technology.
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Applications trends: The pervasive use of the Internet, enterprise intranets, and interorganizational extranets to support electronic business and commerce, enterprise collaboration, and strategic advantage in local and global markets dominate the applications arena.
The most striking and strong impact effect is at the applications level where, as a consequence, the phenomenal growth of the Internet has heralded the new and ubiquitous electronic marketplace known as e-commerce. It is not an overstatement that e-commerce has revolutionized the way businesses trade with each other and with consumers. Models of e-commerce are many and varied. The most popular implementations are business-to-business (B2B), business-to-consumer (B2C), business to government (B2G) and consumer-to-consumer (C2C) e-commerce transactions (Oreku, & Li, 2005).
Key Terms in this Chapter
Optical Code Division Multiple Access (OCDMA): A spread spectrum approach to digital transmission in optical domain.
Multiple Access Interference (MAI): A phenomenon of interference due to the overlapping of spectra from different users a network.
Optical Spectrum Code division Multiple Access (OS-CDMA): One of OCDMA techniques based on spectral encoding.
Khazani-Syed Code (KS-code): A unified code definition of DW and MDW code (i.e., both DW and MDW codes can be redefined in one code construction under KS-code).
Phase Induced Intensity Noise (PIIN): Unwanted signal results from the phase incoherence of the overlapping signals on the same spectra, causing fluctuations of the total signal intensity.
Modified Double-Weight Code (MDW): An enhanced of DW code. The code weight can be defined as more than 2 and the cross-correlation of this code is maintained at 1.
Double-Weight Code (DW): A OS-CDMA code family in which the weight is equal to zero and in a pair arrangement. The cross-correlation of this code is 1.