Security Issues in E-Commerce

1. Introduction

The term E-Commerce refers to the use of an electronic medium to carry out commercial transactions via internet. Now a day’s E-Commerce is playing a very vital role in online retail marketing and the number of people using this technology is increasing in leaps and bounds all over the world. The security becomes a paramount as the popularity of online shopping grows exponentially in the present days, not only for retailers but for any business that operates via internet. This leads to numerous security risks for consumers. In present scenario, consumer needs to be very cautious while making any kind of online transactions or even surfing the internet. Common mistakes that leave people vulnerable include shopping on websites that aren't secure, giving out too much personal information, and leaving computers open to viruses. This chapter mainly focuses the e-commerce security issues, security threats and guidelines for safe and secure online shopping through shopping web sites. A consumer can very well secure his online shopping to some extend by religiously following the guidelines mentioned in (Niranjanamurthy & Chahar, 2013). Privacy is a state in which one is not observed or disturbed by other people whereas Security is the action of keeping something secret or the state of being kept secret. So e-commerce security is an essential part of the Information Security Framework which specifically applies to the components that affect e-commerce. These components are generally known as computer security, data security and other realms of the information security framework. The section defines e-commerce and its importance.