Security and Disturbances in e-Commerce Systems

E-commerce systems evolved into standard tools of business support among sellers (or suppliers and manufactures) and customers (consumers). Every component of e-commerce system can be influenced by many disturbances originating in internal and external environment and by hostile attacks which can be considered as a special type of such disturbances. Disturbances and attacks usually cause negative effects on e-commerce system usability, stability, performance, security, availability, functionality and operability. Internet and other computer networks implemented either separately or as a part of CRM (Customer Relationship Management) can be regarded as basic communication means of such systems. From the safety point of view, web server is one of the critical elements of the whole e-commerce system and may be affected by many disturbances and attacks that can have negative impact on its functionality. E-commerce systems generally, e-shops particularly, are based on client/server architecture. Hence, the safe data transfer between client and server is necessary for both customers and sellers. The web server should meet the web design and application standards, its architecture, semantic web approaches and other options have to ensure the appropriate, intuitive and safe functionality of the e-commerce system. Generally, if we want to ensure the stable functioning of the whole system, we need to identify possible disturbances and attacks, determine their metrics and define regulatory interventions to minimize or eliminate their negative effects. This paper presents web server and web sites security categorization, focused on possible disturbances and attacks that can affect Web servers and Web sites in operations.