Security Considerations

Few people remain to be convinced of the commercial potential of the Internet. Before business can begin using it to conduct full-scale trading operations, however, they must be able to electronically exchange large quantities of transactional data--purchase orders, invoices, shipping documentation, and other information typically shared by trading partners--while ensuring the complete authenticity, data integrity, and confidentiality of every exchange.

Many of the toughest decisions facing integrators and VARs center around the choices they make in helping customers secure intranet and extranet applications. KPMG's Palmer says the easiest way to create a secure extranet is by adopting the EC model--using a commerce server that supports SSL and placing sensitive pages on that server. "By now, most end users have browsers that support SSL, since it's supported by both Navigator and Microsoft Explorer," he points out.

VARs also rely on encryption technologies to keep Internet transmissions safe. These digital authentication schemes ensure that data received from an entity has arrived unaltered, and they confirm the identity of both sender and recipient.

"Early forays with Web commerce have been concerned with publishing and query resolution," Aberdeen's Black adds. "But business is transaction-driven and requires a computing infrastructure that's secure, dependable, and volume-capable. This is the thrust of the new directions in EDI."