It is not unusual today for the users of the internet to experience having their private information hacked into, by a third party (Drumheller, 2008). This could either be a systems cracker, or a hacker. Owing to the escalation in these kinds of privacy invasions, there is a need therefore to ensure that we have exchanges that are both private and secure. That is why e-Commerce has embraced both the open and secure environments for doing business over the internet.
By and large, one advantage of doing e-commerce in an insecure open environment is that such an operation lets your customers easily browse and navigate through a site, in addition to the fact that such a customer may not be required to the first login for purposes of viewing such a site (Drumheller, 2008). This then allows such a customer to have a glimpse through the catalog that you as a businessman have to offer, prior to their making of a purchase. Furthermore, the associated costs to implementation of e-commerce in an insecure and open environment are also comparatively less, relative to those of an environment that is overly secure (Ghosh, 2001).
Nevertheless, Byran (2001) has noted that doing e-commerce in an insecure open environment may be riddled with grave consequences, such as having hackers to a site, breaching the information contained therein. This is in addition to the activities of crackers whose intent is to maliciously harm e-commerce programs, as well as the infiltration of an open site by viruses that proceed to have your programs overwritten, thereby jeopardizing the activities of such a site.
On the other hand, the action of doing e-commerce in a secure environment ensures that trust is established between a business and its customers, that the information that may be exchanged shall be secure. This is contrary to the open environment, in which security protocols get breached, and this begs the question as to the level to which such a service may be trusted, at least in the eyes of the customers (Drumheller, 2008).
However, there are a number of disadvantages that are linked to an overly secure environment. First, it is a requirement by this system that a customer-first creates an account for logging into this form of a system, prior to the making of purchase, a process that may very well take a lot of time. There is also the limitation of higher implementation costs for this system (Drumheller, 2008).
Given a choice between an open and unsecured environment on the one hand, and a secured one, on the other hand, the recommendation that may be made here, with regard to Grandma’s Treat is that of an environment that is overly secured. This is on grounds of customer trust, not to mention the ensuing security that this form of a system seeks to provide. Nevertheless, there is also a need to ensure that precautions and assurances are established, especially with regard to information dissemination between the various parties involved. This is for the purpose of protecting such kind of information from misuse, loss, and even periodic alterations (Online Privacy Alliance, n.d.).
In as much as this kind of a recommendation may be quite feasible, nevertheless, Grandma’s Treats would be best served by the use of either secured pages like in the case of financial transactions, or unsecured pages. In this case, a prospective customer gets to browse through a catalog quite easily (Ghosh, 2001), while at the same time also being able to add their products of purchase to their individual shopping cart, without the need for first logging into the website of Grandma’s Treats. If and when a customer feels that they may be ready to make a purchase, it is at such a time that they could be let to access a secured page that allows them to not only login but also execute their purchase decision.
References
Byron, L. (2001). E-Business and E-Commerce. Web.,
Drumheller, R. (2008). WS-Security Standard. Web.
Ghosh, A. K. (2001). Commerce security and privacy: proceedings of the 1st workshop. London: Springer.
Online Privacy Alliance. (n.d.). Guidelines for Online Privacy Policies. Web.