project topic - network security of online e commerce web sites using generic algorithm

This is a research paper that focuses on network security of online e- commerce web sites. Rrapid increases in internet use is are significantly affecting e-commerce websites in the modern environment. This project aims at examinesing the type of security threats that exist in the e-commerce websites and the appropriate measures to ensure the security of the sites. Comment by Keith A Hartley: Solid introduction. Be diligent on your grammar. Also, you should explicitly include your research questions in the introduction.

[Don’t fully justify your text. The APA style is left justified only. Use the ‘normal’ style in the template. It will ensure the proper formatting.

With the drastic increase in the use of e-commerce websites today, security threats to the sites have also increased tremendously in the past few decades. Maintaining the security of e-commerce is very paramount as there has been a drastic increase in the amount of sensitive information that is sent of the e-commerce websites (Laudon & Traver, 2016). This has attracted many cyber thieves to the growing area with the intention of getting customers confidential information. This calls for the e-commerce websites to be protected, and this is the reason why most of the institutions today are in a move to ensure that their websites are fully protected from any form of cyber threat. Some of the customer’s concerns are due to an increase in the credit card frauds witnessed in recent times, where several customers have lost a lot of money due to fraudulent activities. Among many security issues raised by customers includes credit card security as well as the privacy of their data present in the e-commerce websites. Through the use of credit card credentials, an unauthorized person can obtain goods even without paying or use it to get money from an account. Comment by Keith A Hartley: Provide an in-text citation to support this statement. Comment by Keith A Hartley: Wrong word – not exactly sure what you’re trying to say. Comment by Keith A Hartley: What? Explicitly state what you mean Be careful with indefinite articles like “this”. It is often not as easy for readers to know what you mean. Comment by Keith A Hartley: Replace with what ‘this’ means. Comment by Keith A Hartley: Re-write for greater clarity. Comment by Keith A Hartley: Re-write for clarity. Add an in-text citation to support this statement. Comment by Keith A Hartley: Meaning unclear as written. Comment by Keith A Hartley: Re-write.

Comment by Keith A Hartley: Remove all extra spaces.

This mainly occurs when a hacker gains access to customer personal data, especially payments information. This usually happens when a hacker penetrates an e-commerce database website through the application of malicious software. Among other security concerns includes a man in the middle attacks where attackers gain access to the communication between the e-commerce website and the customer. Distributed denial of service is another threat where attackers send many requests to their servers. An increase in malicious programs and worms is another security issue that is taking a toll on the e-commerce industry where attackers inject infected files in the websites intending to gain access to the online stores. An increase in spammers is also hitting more on e-commerce websites whereby spammers introduce infected links in customer’s e-commerce inboxes and thus compromising on the site speed and security. It is paramount to ensure that the e-commerce websites are protected to ensure that the security of the customer information is secured and protected from malicious access by unauthorized personnel as most of the stored data is very sensitive. Comment by Keith A Hartley: Replace with explicit term. Comment by Keith A Hartley: Provide an in-text citation to support this statement. Comment by Keith A Hartley: What other security concerns. This sentence should be re-written for clarity. Comment by Keith A Hartley: Provide in-text citations to support these statement.

Due to the increase in the growth and use of the World Wide Web, there has been an increase in new designs and development of online information (Laudon & Traver, 2016). Most of the e-commerce websites are currently loaded with a lot of customer's data due to the rapid increase in the number of customers that are using e-commerce websites today. The increase in the number of e-commerce buyers is due to the rapid increase in e-commerce applications. Due to the fact that through e-commerce websites, individuals are able to obtain nearly everything they want just by a click of a button, many individuals find it worthwhile to shop using e-commerce websites. It is projected that e-commerce activities are likely to increase at a higher rate in the coming years than it has ever been expected before. Going by the survey conducted by the authenticating survey, e-commerce activities are likely to be more than 200% by the year 2020 as compared to the year 2014. This clearly means additional of more information to the e-commerce websites as more and more customers will be joining the platform. Comment by Keith A Hartley: Support with an in-text citation. Comment by Keith A Hartley: Support with in-text citation. Comment by Keith A Hartley: Not sure this is a fact. It reads more like your opinion. If you have one, you should support with an in-text citation. Comment by Keith A Hartley: Support with an in-text citation. Comment by Keith A Hartley: Re-write to use in-text citation. Comment by Keith A Hartley: Re-write for clarity.

This overloading of customer information on e-commerce websites makes most customers feel frustrated, lost, and insecure, mainly due to security reasons of their stored data. Currently, the e-commerce owners are working out on how to improve the security of e-commerce websites to ensure that maximum protection is achieved for online transacting customers. The e-commerce owners are mostly concerned with the available facts that should be implemented to ensure that customers can conduct secure transactions when using e-commerce websites. The main writing objective of this paper is to ensure that readers can get insights about web technology that will help online to conduct secure online transactions. Also, the article paper will highlight some security suggestions and tricks. It is very paramount for e-commerce owners to ensure that customers are comfortable and have trusted e-commerce websites when doing business online. Among most of the customers, worry includes loss or access to their data, especially the data in their credit cards, as well as the fear of viruses and worms (Laudon & Traver, 2016). Denial of service is another challenge that is faced with e-commerce websites where an attacker sends overwhelming requests to e-commerce servers with untraceable IP addresses. Denial of service attacks is likely to bring the activities of an e-commerce website to a halt or slow. The use of password encryption is a way that is currently used to protect the password from Trojan attacks, viruses, or other worms. To attain a high level of security, organizations are going top-notch, where they are using encryption techniques to ensure high-security levels (Held & Bowers, 2001). The project research question includes: Comment by Keith A Hartley: Fact or your opinion? If fact, support with an in-text citation. Comment by Keith A Hartley: You’ve discussed significant increase, but not overloading. How is the information overloading websites? Comment by Keith A Hartley: Not sure what you mean by available facts? Expand or re-write. Comment by Keith A Hartley: This is not an article. Comment by Keith A Hartley: Use a more scholarly/academic term. Comment by Keith A Hartley: Compare to what other challenge? Unclear as written. Also – provide an in-text citation to support. Comment by Keith A Hartley: Why is it likely? Comment by Keith A Hartley: This discussion on passwords and encryption seems abrupt and doesn’t flow with the rest of the paragraph. Introduce and support with an in-text citation. Comment by Keith A Hartley: Is this still related to password encryption or the other information discussed in this paragraph? Re-write to improve clarity. Comment by Keith A Hartley: Replace with academic/scholarly term. Comment by Keith A Hartley: Move to Introduction.

i. What is the importance of maintaining data integrity and confidently in the e-commerce business?

ii. What are the benefits that arise from proper data protections

iii. What are the risks that arise from poor data protection of the e-commerce websites

With the advancement in the internet today, commerce activities are shifting from the traditional mortar and bricks store to the use of e-commerce where the internet facilitates everything. The success of the e-commerce business mostly relies on customer trust and the security of the e-commerce platform website. To gain the confidentiality of the customers, the e-commerce website owners should invest all possible measures to ensure that there attain the highest security levels for the websites. Comment by Keith A Hartley: This would be better at the beginning of the current situation sectin. Comment by Keith A Hartley: Re-write for clarity. Comment by Keith A Hartley: Unlikely. No business can afford all possible measures.

There are three fundamental concepts in security, which are integrity, confidentiality, and availability. Comment by Keith A Hartley: Support with in-text citation. Consider making this a sub-section. It would be easier to read and understand.

Through the confidentiality principle, only authorized personnel are required to access information. This ensures that only individuals who are authorized access to specific data. Without proper data confidentiality, people who are not allowed to access data access to the data, and thus, a data breach happens. Due to the fact that most of the e-commerce websites contain very crucial customer data, it is very crucial for these sites that the data is protected from cybercriminal. To achieve this, the principle of data confidentiality should be adhered to and not at any particular time should an unauthorized individual be allowed to access the customer’s data and information. Comment by Keith A Hartley: Support with in-text citations.

Data integrity is critical information security. It is essential for e-commerce owners to ensure that the customer's data are kept with the highest integrity level. One way through which customer's data in the e-commerce business can be kept safe is through maintaining data integrity (Held & Bowers, 2001). Since e-commerce business activities happen over the internet, it is not merely to record events that take place and thus the importance of data being non-repudiation taking place. Through the non-repudiation principle, security levels are added as they ensure that either party cannot deny data sent over the internet. This principle is fundamental as it ensures that the fear of insecurity among many buyers, especially those that feel that transactions may not be secure, is reduced. For an online business to be successful, online business dealers need to come up with different insurance plans. Comment by Keith A Hartley: Support with in-text citations. Comment by Keith A Hartley: Re-write for clarity. Support with in-text citations.

The last data principle is availability. This means that data should always be available and accessible for use by authorized users. In case attackers are able to bring down an e-commerce server successfully, it means that data will not be available for users.

Ensuring the security of an online e-commerce business is very crucial and cannot be neglected at any cost. It is essential for companies as it ensures that customers can transact their business smoothly and are secure (Held & Bowers, 2001). Through providing proper security measures, the e-commerce business can protect itself as well as its customers from cyber-related attacks. To ensure that the e-commerce businesses are entirely the owners of e-commerce should provide: Comment by Keith A Hartley: I disagree. Support with in-text citations or re-write to be more realistic.

Their serves and admin are secure Comment by Keith A Hartley: Re-write the title to improve grammar and clarity. Is this supposed to be a sub-section under Current Situation?

In most cases, the e-commerce platforms usually come with a default password, which is very easy to guess. It is, therefore, essential to ensure that these passwords are changed and a stronger password used instead so that to prevent chances of hacking. The e-commerce owners should provide to use multiple usernames and passwords and ensure to change them from time to time. It is also essential to ensure that the project can give a notification in case an unknown platform tries to log into the system. Comment by Keith A Hartley: Opinion? I disagree. Support with an in-text citation or re-write. Comment by Keith A Hartley: This paragraph is unclear. Add more content and explanation. How does this relate to your research questions.

Through the use of stolen cards, hackers can place orders even without the notice of the owner. Through tThe use of antivirus and malware can help to reduce this fraud. Through the use of anti-fraud and antivirus can be used to deal with some of the issues associated with e-commerce. Through the use of sophisticated algorithms, they can flag any malicious transactions and thus giving the e-commerce website owners a chance to take proper measures. The use of anti-fraud and antivirus helps companies to develop a fraud risk score, which helps in determining the legitimacy of transactions. Comment by Keith A Hartley: What’s a fraud risk score?

Secure sockets layers (SSL) are certificates that are used to link a transaction to different network paths. They are most often associated with details of a credit card as well as transaction details. During transmissions, the SSL certificate ensures that the transmitted data is encrypted and thus preventing any interception during the transmission (Held & Bowers, 2001). The use of SSL certificates is essential as it ensures the sent information from one destination to another. Owners of e-commerce websites should strive to use SSL certificates to ensure the security of all transactions that take place. Comment by Keith A Hartley: I don’t think this is correct. Review and update. Support with in-text citation. Comment by Keith A Hartley: Strive means it’s optional? Is that what you mean? Why wouldn’t or couldn’t a company use SSL?

Through the application of multi-layer security, e-commerce such as a content delivery network (CDN) to protect the sites, especially from DDoS attacks, as well as malicious traffic. The filtering of malicious traffic is mainly achieved through machine learning. Application of two-factor authentication plays a critical role also in meeting the security of e-commerce websites. This is primarily achieved by sending an authentication message to the user email, or an SMS to the users registered phone number (Dixit, 2016). This is very important as it only ensures that only the users have an opportunity to access the services and thus reducing the chances of data breaches and fraud. Comment by Keith A Hartley: What is multi-layer security? Are you going to introduce and explain this concept? Comment by Keith A Hartley: Spell out acronyms the first time they are used. Comment by Keith A Hartley: Really? Support with in-text citation. Comment by Keith A Hartley: What is two-factor authentication? Introduce, explain, and provide in-text citations. Comment by Keith A Hartley: Spell out. Comment by Keith A Hartley: Re-write for clarity.

With the current increased in customers' concerns about the integrity and confidentiality of their data, most of them are majorly concerned with the authorization and privacy of e-commerce websites (Dixit, 2016). This is because the more customers are sure that the security of their data is secure, the more they are likely to be satisfied with the provided services. Apart from benefiting customers, data security is of great importance to the organization as it ensures the organization does not suffer from significant losses associated with data breaches. It is crucial to ensure the encryption of data to ensure maximum security is achieved. One of the highest priorities is providing customer’s data, and transactions are safe, as this enhances the loyalty of the users, which will lead to an increase in customers due to the rise in better customer referrals (Reuvid, 2005). Because the security of e-commerce is very paramount, more research needs to ensure the effectiveness of the various methods that can be used to enhance the safety of e-commerce websites. More research needs to be conducted to ensure the safety of e-commerce is attained. Comment by Keith A Hartley: Verify this is an accurate paraphrase of the source. Comment by Keith A Hartley: Re-write Comment by Keith A Hartley: This is confusing since it seems to be going back to a generic discussion of the problem/current situation after talking about specific technical recommendations.

Security is vital in the modern-day, and this is what most organizations are spending most of their time trying to achieve. I will evaluate the importance of cloud computing in enhancing the security of e-commerce business. Cloud computing refers to the delivery of resources, especially computer resources, which includes databases, servers, software, and networking, to data centers through the use of the internet. Through the use of cloud, computing users are able to enjoy elastic resources in a manner that satisfies their demands. With most organizations moving their resources to the cloud, cloud providers have come up with different strategies to ensure that maximum data protection is achieved. To achieve maximum data protection, cloud computing combines numerous control levels and thus creating better atmosphere conditions for businesses.

To fully understand the importance of cloud computing, I will evaluate how companies that have adopted the use of cloud computing have benefited and enhanced their e-commerce websites. In addressing this, I will look at benefits that arise from taking to cloud computing services as well as the risks associated with the same. I will also address how cloud computing enhances the security of different stored resources. I will also evaluate other best measures that can be put in place to ensure that the security of e-commerce websites is achieved.

Analysis and Methods, I will use

I will analyze some of the multinational companies that have adapted and shifted to cloud computing. I will also take other organizations that have not moved to cloud computing technology so that to effectively compare the benefits as well as the risks which arise from adapting to the cloud computing technology (Reuvid, 2005). Also, through the comparison, I will be able to understand the reasons why some of the companies have shifted to cloud computing technology and why some are reluctant to adopt cloud computing for their e-commerce websites.

This research seeks to come up with the best solution that can be used to ensure e-commerce websites are secure, and the customer's data are not at any risk. Both the e-commerce companies and cloud providers need to ensure that they can provide the best security measure to ensure that customer's data are well protected. In most cases, data stored virtually is not always safe. It is, therefore, vital to ensure that proper organization architecture is maintained to enhance data security (Reuvid, 2005). It is paramount for organizations to ensure that those organizations have a strong architecture to win end-users trust. E-commerce websites also need to put all the available security measures into place in order to ensure that individual data are protected from any unauthorized access. This starts from ensuring the e-commerce platform is secure where the platform is object-oriented and sematic encoding based, and it also has an inbuilt security protocol. This is the first step in ensuring that e-commerce websites are well protected from malicious individuals.

The project scope is limited to the importance of data confidentiality and integrity, the importance of maintaining data protection as well as the risks that arise from poor data protection. The project does not involve other factors such as management skills, technical skills, as well as business financial skills. This project is entirely based on data protection, risks as well as benefits associated with data protection.

According to the views and observations I have experienced. A capstone project is vital and essential to both the company and also to me as a person who aspires to be employed in the information sector. Many features explain the benefits of capstone as it tends increasing austerity of academic studies (Nahari and klutz 2011). This benefit helps the person both employed and waiting to be employed to do a lot of research on how various new and upcoming technologies can boost the network security, having studied in details helps one to understand better and be in a better position to offer a solution. The capstone project again tends to prepare a person and reducing the time that can be lost during learning. This is the time that can be lost when one is undecided on the discipline to follow, which allows time for other tasks and creativity and innovations. Being creative and more innovating makes a person more adapted to the work he has employed and is happy working.

Capstone tends to increase motivation levels of People to work at their best or do exceed their expectations with a corrector, an appealing form of motivation. Having a task that requires creativity that is appealing to the castor may act as a motivator. It can also act as proficiency in learning in that being able to tackle challenges and get the right solution to the exact problem proves academic competence. Being competent could mean one is ready and competent in demonstrating what they have learned. Therefore through undertaking this project, I will be in a position to learn better measures that should be put in place in order to ensure the protection of e-commerce websites. I will also understand the best measures different institutions uses in order to achieve better data protection. The project will also expose me to dangers and risks that are likely to arise if there is poor data protection.

Risk

The capstone is bound to fail as it faces many threats in their implementation, which might affect the outcome. Some of the jeopardies are likely to be met lack of missing a scope document that would lay down the entire plan of every step, completion, and achievement. Intermittent or inconsistent communication would lead to loss of some important connection or even lack of instruction to effect implementation. Some other risks include unreliable or unrealistic expectations, followed by poor planning. Ambiguous expectations are functional and attractive on paper but may deplete the resources available, and poor planning is a risk as it doesn't allow the project to reach completion as lack of preparation would either under budget or will lack enough personnel for implementation (Nahari and klutz 2011). Another risk I have identified is the lack of a collaborative team in which members may be pulling in different directions, thus either delaying the outcome or even lacking procedures that could be followed. It is possible to do the best in eliminating those risks by having credible solutions to the dangers. Some of the methods that can be applied include having a collaborative team that will corporate. Again it is good to have a well-prepared document that will show the scope while there should be clear, consistent communication; hence, there would be a communication breakdown. Planning and expectations should be realistic and achievable.

Conclusion

E-commerce is simply considered as the use of the internet in buying and selling of products over the internet. Transactions that happens over the internet through the use of internet means also are considered as e-commerce. Due to an increase in the number of individuals that use e-commerce services, which have been attributed to the advantages associated with e-commerce activities, a lot of customer information has been collected, especially the payment details, which includes the credit card detail. This, therefore, means that for the customer to be fully convinced that their security is guaranteed, best security practices have to be put in place. Considering the effects, an attack on customer data can lead to. It is important to put all the necessary measures in place to ensure that e-commerce websites are fully secured. This paper addresses some of the approaches that can be used to ensure that there is the achievement of e-commerce security where the use of cloud computing and adhering to other data protection methods have been proposed as the best ways of ensuring the security of e-commerce website is achieved. Comment by Keith A Hartley: Your conclusion should draw from all your capstone research and analysis. You haven’t done enough work to have formulated a conclusion.

References Comment by Keith A Hartley: This is not the correct APA formatting. The reference page should always start on a new page.

Dixit, S. (2016). E-Retailing Challenges and Opportunities in the Global Marketplace. Hershey, PA: IGI Global.

Held, J. S., & Bowers, J. (2001). Securing E-Business Applications and Communications. Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press.

Laudon, K. C., & Traver, C. G. (2016). E-Commerce 2014: Business, Technology, and Society. Pearson Higher Ed.

Nahari, H., & Krutz, R. L. (2011). Web Commerce Security: Design and Development. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.

Reuvid, J. (2005). The Secure Online Business Handbook: E-commerce, IT Functionality & Business Continuity. London, England: Kogan Page Publishers.

Sexton, R. S., Johnson, R. A., & Hignite, M. A. (2002). Predicting Internet/e-commerce use. Internet Research, 12(5), 402-410.

Qu, Q. X. (2015). Kansei knowledge extraction based on evolutionary genetic algorithm: an application to e-commerce web appearance design. Theoretical Issues in Ergonomics Science, 16(3), 299-313.