How Safe is Digital Business

            
             This report analyses the major safety issues and factors concerned with the ever-growing industry, Digital Business' (formally known as electronic commerce). It also attempts to answer the question: "How Safe is Digital Business?-. A review of literature published over the past 5 years, provides sufficient and up-to-date information to discuss the safety issues relating to Digital Business; these issues are:.
            
             Ethics.
            
             Personal responsibility.
            
             Security.
            
             Misuse of resources.
             Although this report concludes that Digital Business is an industry which lacks appropriate security measures; it must be stressed that these conclusions only reflect the personal views of the author.
             SCOPE.
             The scope of this report is bounded to a general research of the vulnerability and invulnerability of Digital Business worldwide, and how it relates to many safety issues (as earlier identified in the executive summary). It presents a well-argued case, supported by relevant literature and also provides a suggested recommendation/solution. Since Information Technology' is an ever-expanding advancement, this report does not examine the security of Digital Business prior to the past 5 years.
             INTRODUCTION.
             The term Digital Business' is a term that has been used since the 1990's, it replaces the older term E-commerce' which is still commonly used, although it has less applicability than the term Digital Business'. Digital Business (although it may have many differently viewed definitions) generally refers to the digital transactions of goods, services and information through the use of the Internet, or other similar networks; eg. purchasing CD's from www.cdnow.com ®, sending an e-mail to a workmate through the LAN (local area network), purchasing groceries from an online shopping site.
             Since the 1980's, the growth of technology and computers has helped to enable the growth of Digital Business. As technological advancements continued to increase throughout the years, this meant that more transistors could be placed on a single chip (Johnson [2000]), thus computers grew much smaller, common and affordable.