Online security incidents in 1999...
Just how secure is internet commerce?
There have been very few cases of security breaches, especially considering the volume
of commerce now conducted over the internet. However, there were problems reported
in the news media in April 1999:
"Security leaks have been found on many popular shopping cart programs.
ABC News and the LA Times reported that computer programs that are vulnerable to Web
browsers if improperly installed include those from Order Form, Seaside Enterprises,
QuikStore, PDGSoft and Mercantec."
Apparently, a number of users incorrectly installed these software packages. This
resulted in personal orders and credit card information being stored in the public
directories of the Web servers where anyone could look at the information.
NoOutage.com does not use any of these packages for our shopping cart system.
Is the online ordering at NoOutage.com vulnerable to similar problems?
No. We use a separate transaction network and do not rely on the skills of
independent web builders or ISPs to host our business transactions and security.
There is no chance of a security leak as described by ABC News. When you add items
to our shopping cart system at NoOutage.com you are transferred to a secure encrypted
server. Whereas our web site has a URL of the form http://www..., the secure server we use has a URL of
the form https://www... The "s" suffix indicates
that the data transmissions are encrypted. The main focus of the company that
operates this transaction network is security. They use only the latest 40bit and
128bit secure sockets layer (SSL) encryption schemes to protect data. Furthermore,
no one at the company (except the Executive System Administrator) has access to the
network. You do not ever need to worry about unauthorized curious eyes reading your
orders; they are kept confidential. The transaction network is also physically
isolated and is not on any shared network.
Click here for more recent Credit Card Security
information.
