Amazon.com Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Amazon.com - Essay Example These e-commerce marketplaces have certain features which enables shoppers to be present in a virtual world where they can shop items of their choice and purchase them within a few presses in the keyboard and have it delivered to their doorsteps. There are hundreds of online marketplaces existing as of this very moment. Each having their unique feat which would attract more shoppers, buyers and even sellers. The most famous shopping sites today are Amazon, Yahoo! Shopping, EBay, and the like. For one instance, Amazon.com, a huge internet company has this certain Amazon affiliate program wherein site-owners from simple blogs to a complex network of site management, can participate in promoting and advertising the shopping site. In the certain program, the incentives that will be given to the affiliates can receive up to 10% from referral alone (Amazon.com, 2007). Aside from the famous Amazon site, there is also EBay, Yahoo Shopping and other affiliates wherein online shoppers can purchase all sorts of things from accessories to appliances, all in one big marketplace. What is good about these online marketplaces is that customers will feel an easier way of shopping and purchasing goods. Also, there is privacy between the seller and the buyer because transactions can happen through private messages. The business-to-business (B2B) electronic commerce (SMU-Cox, 2005) featured in these markets makes it more hunted by prospect buyers and sellers. Aside from these online markets, the introduction of shopping carts is also a big innovation in the online business world. Shopping carts are virtual representation of a real shopping cart wherein the buyer can place his or her selected items so that after shopping, the purchase and payment method would be easy and systematic. These shopping carts may be installed on the company/ site or may be used through a software in which the shopper can shop from several online stores and marketplaces instead of

Internet Protocol Security (IPsec) Research Paper

Internet Protocol Security (IPsec) - Research Paper Example In order to ensure security of information over the Internet various security technologies have been proposed that usually work on the higher layers of the OSI model and provide security in terms of authentication, confidentiality, integrity and availability. IPSec is one such security technology that operates on the IP layer and provides confidentiality, integrity and authentication. As it operates at the IP layer, its implementation provides security in the higher layers as well. And its implementation is such that the existing setup of Internet does not have to be changed in order to implement it. This report presents an overview of the IPSec technology. It discusses the general architecture of the technology, briefly covering its technical details and its operation modes. Furthermore the report discusses how IPSec can be integrated into the existing Internet setup. 1. Introduction The security of information is defined by four attributes; confidentiality, integrity, privacy and a vailability (Adeyinka, 2008). In the past, when computers were not that common a commodity let alone the Internet, virtual private networks were formed through installation of dedicated leased lines between the hosts e.g. networking of remote offices (Liska, 2003). Figure 1 Dedicated Leased Lines VPN Since these lease lines were private the information sent or retrieved remained within the related parties and so the communication was fast and secure. Thus private networks were formed. But the setup was costly and very few companies could afford it. Later on, in order to accommodate the mobile users, the companies installed dedicated remote dial-in servers (Remote Access Servers) that had modem(s) each connected to a separate dedicated phone line (Liska, 2003). Figure 2 Dial-up VPN Although the networking was achieved, yet the effort was not that useful as the speed of these networks was very slow. With the advent of the Internet and its global web servers that provided larger and ea sier access worldwide, the use of leased lines became an expensive burden and remained limited to very few resourceful companies. In view to the easy access to worldwide communication granted by the Internet, the element of security somewhat lost its significance and every other school, office, company and business sought out to be connected through the Internet. The instances of some serious cyber crimes (â€Å"Cyber Crime Stories†) led to the realization that the Internet is not at all secure. Being a public medium, the information sent across the Internet in the form of data packets passes through various networks until they reach their intended destination. Since the Internet protocol (IP) offers no built-in security, this plain text data in the IP datagram cannot be prevented from unauthorized access from the public network. Any third party can easily inspect, even modify or generate false data and compromise system security. For instance the passwords that are sent can be tracked and looked into (packet-sniffing), IP packets