Conclusion

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The chapter has shown that e-commerce differs significantly in its characteristics, risk profile and security requirements from those of traditional ITSs that have previously underpinned commerce. RSM has become more critical since with e-commerce, the need for market responsiveness requires that systems are developed and operated in a very short time and continue to operate. Should a system outage occur due to a security breakdown, the time to recover is very short as well , since customers will be able to choose from other suppliers on the Internet to meet their needs and probably will not return.

To ensure effective RSM in an e-commerce environment requires a new approach by management. They need to realise that the new characteristics of openness, virtuality and volatility mean that a broad set of stakeholders participate in developing risk and security approaches. Their involvement will lead to a holistic approach where all facets of RSM will be considered and implemented. RSM should not be viewed as a costly overhead since it can provide competitive advantages in the form enabling new opportunities offered by e-commerce to be realised with confidence and ahead of rivals.

In the future, the speed with which new e-commerce architectures and applications will emerge will increase, and the danger exists that these developments may well outstrip the ability of management to keep up with the task of securing them. If they can't, it will severely limit the organisation's ability to exploit new business possibilities, causing the organisation to fall behind its competitors. The recommendations made in this chapter are sufficiently broad to guide management for the foreseeable future in managing the risk and security requirements of their e-commerce systems.

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