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Figure 10.5.
With a public key, a
customer can only
encrypt his or her
messages, not decrypt
other messages.

Figure 10.6.
A shopper's browser and
your Web site set up the
business transaction
boundaries when the
customer logs in.

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With all these new methods of encryption, decryption, and digital signatures, Web security is probably like all other forms of economic security: Security is a function of profitability. As the Web becomes a place to perform business transactions, hackers will invest more of their time and money to break into these systems. Ultimately, with the Web, as with other forms of business, the greatest security threats are the individuals working around your electronic commerce project. No matter how difficult it is for an outsider to break into your business, the insider needs only the will and incentive to do so.

Summary

Now that you have examined Oracle's Internet Commerce Server and the world of electronic commerce as a whole, consider the example of the electronic supermarket where consumers can order goods and have them delivered to their home. By replacing the traditional supermarket with its checkout clerks, baggers, and equipment such as shopping carts, you can demonstrate that the cybermerchant can save a lot of money. In addition to the savings on the fixed costs of real estate for a consumer supermarket, a cybermarket saves on labor costs. It also allows for a centralized supply of commodities that don't need to be delivered to every neighborhood store.

Commodities don't need to travel to a beautiful showroom and then into the car of a commuting shopper. Consumer goods now move directly from a centralized warehouse to the consumer. Not only do the commodities move around less, but also the consumer needs only to travel to the computer terminal.

A network economy obviously lowers pollution levels when millions of shoppers are not frantically driving around to buy things. This economy puts less pressure on natural resources and imposes less of a burden on the infrastructure of highways, thus lowering the tax burden . In a world of dwindling energy resources, moving around the world to do business without physically being there is obviously a step in the right direction.

Will the future electronic-merchant kings abuse this new virtual world? Will our fruits and vegetables arrive to us damaged, leaving us no recourse in a cybernightmare where we are dependent upon computers? This question cannot be answered . I can demonstrate that this new technology is more profitable for many economic transactions, but that is all. Technology cannot improve a way of life unless society has the integrity and the respect for itself to demand that it does. Electronic commerce is only a tool, like the first wheel. How it is usedI leave that subject to the historians of the future.

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