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What is "Ecommerce"?
Ecommerce is the term used to describe the selling of goods and services over the Internet. In the
most general sense, simply creating a Web site that advertises and promotes your products can be
considered “ecommerce.” In recent years, however, ecommerce has become much more
sophisticated.
Ecommerce businesses now offer elaborate online stores where customers can browse thousands
of products, place an order, select the desired shipping method and pay for their purchases using
their credit cards.
How does e-commerce work?
Because there are hundreds of different products and services for consumers and the multitude of
different ways these products and services can be delivered, e-commerce by its nature is varied
in the way it works. In its most basic form e-commerce works as follows:
1. Consumers choose a product or service on a website
2. Consumers pay electronically on the website (online credit card transactions) or using a
third party payment provider such as PayPal
3. The business owner or merchant receives the order and payment and the order is fulfilled
(delivered by post, booked in for services etc)
Making payments online is completed via a secure connection to ensure that sensitive data such
as credit card details and personal information are kept private.
What are the benefits of e-commerce to the consumer?
Over the past decade e-commerce has become the preferred method of shopping for a large
number of consumers. Online shopping provides a vast array of benefits to the consumer that is
otherwise unavailable in standard brick and mortar stores.
Quick, easy and convenient: E-commerce has enabled the consumer to complete transactions
from the comfort of their own home, transactions that would usually happen within the walls of a
store. Transactions now take only minutes, rather than the hours included in physically getting to
the stores.
Product comparisons: Not only are consumers finding it quick and more convenient to shop
online but they are also making more comparisons than ever. Comparing the price, delivery time
and product specifications have never been simpler. Quickly browsing multi websites that stock
products that suite your criteria is as simple as a Google search - consumers can now compare
multiple products in minutes.
Lower prices: Many consumers are turning to e-commerce for their needs due to the lower price
for many everyday items. Different factors on the merchant's side of the equation allow them to
sell products at a lower price compared to a standard store and these cost savings are often
passed to the end consumer.
What is SSL?
SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) is a method of ensuring that information submitted through your
Web site is secure and cannot be accessed by unauthorized users. When a site offers an SSLsecured form, the information submitted via that form (typically credit card information) is
encrypted using a special “certificate key” and then decrypted with another key after it has been
transmitted.
When users access a site secured with SSL using either Netscape or Internet Explorer, a symbol
displays in their browser windows indicating that the site is secure.
What is a payment gateway?
Online payments are made thousands of times a second all over the world. There are hundreds of
different ways these payments are made, including PayPal and EFT transactions but a large
proportional are based on payment gateway technology. A payment gateway allows a connection
directly between a website and a bank, meaning that payments can be placed directly on a
website and deposited straight into a bank account.
A payment gateway is a server that is dedicated to linking websites and banks so that online
credit card transactions can be completed in real-time.
What is a Shopping Cart? On a website that sells products or services online, the shopping cart is a common metaphor
(from the original grocery store shopping cart) for the catalog or other pages where a user reads
and makes selections. Typically, the user checks off any products or services that are being
ordered and when finished ordering, "Checks Out" by proceeding to a page where the various
information such as billing and shipping information is collected and the order is placed and
confirmed. The programming that provides a website with the ability to build a catalog, build its
associated database and integrate pages into the website that provide users the ability to shop is
known as shopping cart software.
A primary consideration when choosing shopping cart software is whether it will continue to
serve your needs as your catalog and volume of orders grow. Our hosting plans include
numerous shopping cart options. Here are a few of our most popular, listed in order of popularity
- Magento, Zen Cart, osCommerce, Cube Cart, and Agora Cart.
Cookies
A cookie is a small piece of information stored as a text file on your computer that a web server
uses when you browse certain web sites that you've visited before.
Cookies are commonly used when you sign up for services (such as web hosting). Cookies are
also commonly used for sign in (login) features. Cookies can only be used with the Domain
Name that stored them. Basically, the web server needs to use cookies in order for the web site to
work correctly, and the information is nothing more than a string of letters and numbers.
local area network (LAN)
A local area network (LAN) is a computer network that interconnects computers in a limited
area such as a home, school, computer laboratory, or office building using network media.[1] The
defining characteristics of LANs, in contrast to wide area networks (WANs), include their
smaller geographic area, and non-inclusion of leased telecommunication lines
wide area network (WAN)
A wide area network (WAN) is a network that covers a broad area (i.e., any
telecommunications network that links across metropolitan, regional, or national boundaries)
using private or public network transports. Business and government entities utilize WANs to
relay data among employees, clients, buyers, and suppliers from various geographical locations.
In essence, this mode of telecommunication allows a business to effectively carry out its daily
function regardless of location. The Internet can be considered a WAN as well, and is used by
businesses, governments, organizations, and individuals for almost any purpose imaginable
What Is Encryption?
Encryption is the translation of data into a secret code. Encryption is the most effective way for
data security. To read an encrypted file you must have a password or a secret key.
Encryption is the process of encoding messages (or information) in such a way that
eavesdroppers or hackers cannot read it, but that authorized parties can. In an encryption
scheme, the message or information (referred to as plaintext) is encrypted using an encryption
algorithm, turning it into an unreadable ciphertext (ibid.). This is usually done with the use of an
encryption key, which specifies how the message is to be encoded.
Definition - What does Decryption mean?
Decryption is the process of transforming data that has been rendered unreadable through
encryption back to its unencrypted form. In decryption, the system extracts and converts the
garbled data and transforms it to texts and images that are easily understandable not only by the
reader but also by the system. Decryption may be accomplished manually or automatically. It
may also be performed with a set of keys or passwords.
What is data mining?
Data mining (the analysis step of the Knowledge Discovery in Databases process, or KDD), an
interdisciplinary subfield of computer science, is the computational process of discovering
patterns in large data sets involving methods at the intersection of artificial intelligence, machine
learning, statistics, and database systems. The overall goal of the data mining process is to
extract information from a data set and transform it into an understandable structure for further
use.
Firewall
A firewall is a software or hardware-based network security system that controls the incoming
and outgoing network traffic by analyzing the data packets and determining whether they should
be allowed through or not, based on a rule set. A network's firewall builds a bridge between the
internal network or computer it protects, upon securing that the other network is secure and
trusted, usually an external (inter)network, such as the Internet, that is not assumed to be secure
and trusted.
Types of firewalls
1. NETWORK LAYER FIREWALLS
Network layer firewalls generally make their decisions based on the source address, destination
address and ports in individual IP packets. A simple router is the traditional network layer
firewall, since it is not able to make particularly complicated decisions about what a packet is
actually talking to or where it actually came from. Modern network layer firewalls have become
increasingly more sophisticated, and now maintain internal information about the state of
connections passing through them at any time.
One important difference about many network layer firewalls is that they route traffic directly
through them, which means in order to use one, you either need to have a validly-assigned IP
address block or a private Internet address block. Network layer firewalls tend to be very fast and
almost transparent to their users.
2. APPLICATION LAYER FIREWALLS
Application layer firewalls defined, are hosts running proxy servers, which permit no traffic
directly between networks, and they perform elaborate logging and examination of traffic
passing through them. Since proxy applications are simply software running on the firewall, it is
a good place to do lots of logging and access control. Application layer firewalls can be used as
network address translators, since traffic goes in one side and out the other, after having passed
through an application that effectively masks the origin of the initiating connection, Chris
Partsenidis says.
In some cases, having an application in the way may impact performance and may make the
firewall less transparent. Early application layer firewalls are not particularly transparent to endusers and may require some training. However, more modern application layer firewalls are
often totally transparent. Application layer firewalls tend to provide more detailed audit reports
and tend to enforce more conservative security models than network layer firewalls.
The future of firewalls sits somewhere between both network layer firewalls and application
layer firewalls. It is likely that network layer firewalls will become increasingly aware of the
information going through them, and application layer firewalls will become more and more
transparent. The end result will be kind of a fast packet-screening system that logs and checks
data as it passes through.
3.PROXY FIREWALLS
Proxy firewalls offer more security than other types of firewalls, but this is at the expense of
speed and functionality, as they can limit which applications your network can support.
Why are they more secure? Unlike stateful firewalls, or application layer firewalls, which allow
or block network packets from passing to and from a protected network, traffic does not flow
through a proxy. Instead, computers establish a connection to the proxy, which serves as an
intermediary, and initiate a new network connection on behalf of the request. This prevents direct
connections between systems on either side of the firewall and makes it harder for an attacker to
discover where the network is, because they will never receive packets created directly by their
target system.
Proxy firewalls also provide comprehensive, protocol-aware security analysis for the protocols
they support. This allows them to make better security decisions than products that focus purely
on packet header information.
4.UNIFIED THREAT MANAGEMENT
A product category called unified threat management (UTM) has emerged. These devices
promise integration, convenience and protection from pretty much every threat out there -- and
are especially valuable to small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs).
Security expert Puneet Mehta defines unified threat management as a firewall appliance that not
only guards against intrusion but performs content filtering, spam filtering, intrusion detection
and anti-virus duties traditionally handled by multiple systems. These devices are designed to
combat all levels of malicious activity on the computer network.
An effective UTM solution delivers a network security platform comprised of robust and fullyintegrated security and networking functions -- such as network firewalling, intrusion detection
and prevention (IDS/IPS) and gateway anti-virus (AV) -- along with other features, such as
security management and policy management by a group or user. It is designed to protect against
next generation application layer threats and offers a centralized management through a single
console, all without impairing the performance of the network.
Virtual private network (VPN)
A virtual private network (VPN) extends a private network across a public network, such as
the Internet. It enables a computer to send and receive data across shared or public networks as if
it were directly connected to the private network, while benefiting from the functionality,
security and management policies of the private network.[1] This is done by establishing a virtual
point-to-point connection through the use of dedicated connections, encryption, or a combination
of the two.
What is IPSEC?
Internet Protocol Security (IPsec) is a protocol suite for securing Internet Protocol (IP)
communications by authenticating and encrypting each IP packet of a communication session.
IPsec includes protocols for establishing mutual authentication between agents at the beginning
of the session and negotiation of cryptographic keys to be used during the session. IPsec can be
used in protecting data flows between a pair of hosts (host-to-host), between a pair of security
gateways (network-to-network), or between a security gateway and a host (network-to-host).
What is cyber squatter?
Cyber squatting is the act of registering domain names, especially those connected with
celebrities or recognizable trademarks, with the intention of reselling them at an inflated price. A
cyber quatter takes advantage of the domain registration companies' 'first come, first served'
policy by submitting a large list of very popular words and names all at once. While the domain
registration company is in the process of entering these names, the cyber squatter uses profits
from individual domain resales to finance the required registration fees.
A cybersquatter can literally sit on a popular domain name for years, causing grief to the actual
celebrity or company it represents. As long as a cybersquatter is recognized as the legitimate
owner of BillClinton.com, for example, the real former president cannot legally use his own
name as a domain. He would have to pursue a lawsuit to compel the cybersquatter to relinquish
the name, or actually pay whatever price the current owner assigns. Until a federal AntiCybersquatting Consumer Protection Act became law in 1999, most celebrities and companies
found it easier to pay the often exorbitant fees charged by the cybersquatter.
What is cyber talking?
Cyber talking is the use of the internet or other electronic means to harass an individual, a group
of individuals, or an organisation. A person relies upon the anonymity afforded by the internet to
allow him/her harass the victim without being detected.
What is phishing?
The act of sending an e-mail to a user falsely claiming to be an established legitimate enterprise
in an attempt to scam the user into surrendering private information that will be used for identity
theft. The e-mail directs the user to visit a Web site where they are asked to update personal
information, such as passwords and credit card, social security, and bank account numbers, that
the legitimate organization already has. The Web site, however, is bogus and set up only to steal
the user's information.
Phishing, also referred to as brand spoofing or carding, is a variation on "fishing," the idea being
that bait is thrown out with the hopes that while most will ignore the bait, some will be tempted
into biting.
Types of phishing?
There are different types of phishing. Phishing involves acquiring information such as credit card
information, passwords, or usernames through emails or directing the user to a false website that
resembles the actual website. The false websites may also be infected with malware. It reveals
the poor security measures in place within current web technology. The different types of
phishing include spear phishing, clone phishing, whaling, link manipulation, filter evasion,
website forgery, phone phishing, tabnabbing, and evil twins
What is OLAP?
OLAP (online analytical processing) is computer processing that enables a user to easily and
selectively extract and view data from different points of view.
For example, a user can request that data be analyzed to display a spreadsheet showing all of a
company's beach ball products sold in Florida in the month of July, compare revenue figures
with those for the same products in September, and then see a comparison of other product sales
in Florida in the same time period.
To facilitate this kind of analysis, OLAP data is stored in a multidimensional database. Whereas
a relational database can be thought of as two-dimensional, a multidimensional database
considers each data attribute (such as product, geographic sales region, and time period) as a
separate "dimension." OLAP software can locate the intersection of dimensions (all products
sold in the Eastern region above a certain price during a certain time period) and display them.
Attributes such as time periods can be broken down into sub attributes.
OLAP can be used for data mining or the discovery of previously undiscerned relationships
between data items. An OLAP database does not need to be as large as a data warehouse, since
not all transactional data is needed for trend analysis. Using Open Database Connectivity
(ODBC), data can be imported from existing relational databases to create a multidimensional
database for OLAP.
Two leading OLAP products are Hyperion Solution's Essbase and Oracle's Express Server.
OLAP products are typically designed for multiple-user environments, with the cost of the
software based on the number of users.
What is ethical-hacking?
White-hat hackers (ethical-hacking): So-called "ethical" hackers who work with clients in
order to help them secure their systems. White-hats can be: members of tiger teams system
hardening specialists researchers looking for vulnerabilities (with the goal of finding them and
removing them before the black-hats). Contrast: Whereas a "white-hate" is considered a "good
guy", a "black-hat" describes the "bad" hackers.
What is reengineering?
Systematic starting over and reinventing the way a firm, or a business process, gets its work
done. Michael Hammer and James Champy (in their 1993 book 'Reengineering The
Corporation')defined reengineering as "Fundamental rethinking and radical redesign of business
process to achieve dramatic improvements in critical measures of performance such as cost,
service, and speed."
What is M-Commerce?
M-commerce (mobile commerce) is the buying and selling of goods and services through
wireless handheld devices such as cellular telephone and personal digital assistants (PDAs).
Known as next-generation e-commerce, m-commerce enables users to access the Internet
without needing to find a place to plug in. The emerging technology behind m-commerce, which
is based on the Wireless Application Protocol (WAP), has made far greater strides in Europe,
where mobile devices equipped with Web-ready micro-browsers are much more common than in
the United States.
What is Interactive Marketing? State examples.
Interactive Marketing refers to the evolving trend in marketing whereby marketing has moved
from a transaction-based effort to a conversation.
John Deighton argued that interactive marketing features “the ability to address an individual
and the ability to gather and remember the response of that individual” leading to “the ability to
address the individual once more in a way that takes into account his or her unique response”.
Interactive marketing is not synonymous with online marketing, although interactive marketing
processes are facilitated by internet technology. The ability to remember what the customer has
said is made easier when we can collect customer information online and we can communicate
with our customer more easily using the speed of the internet.
Example: Amazon.com is an excellent example of the use of interactive marketing, as customers
record their preferences and are shown book selections that match not only their preferences but
recent purchases.
What is middleware?
"The software layer that lies between the operating system and applications on each side of a
distributed computing system in a network." Services that can be regarded as middleware include
enterprise application integration,

data integration,

message oriented middleware (MOM),

object request brokers (ORBs), and

the enterprise service bus (ESB)
What is symmetric and asymmetric encryption?
Symmetric encryption is the oldest and best-known technique. A secret key, which can be a
number, a word, or just a string of random letters, is applied to the text of a message to change
the content in a particular way. This might be as simple as shifting each letter by a number of
places in the alphabet. As long as both sender and recipient know the secret key, they can
encrypt and decrypt all messages that use this key.
Asymmetric encryption, in which there are two related keys--a key pair. A public key is made
freely available to anyone who might want to send you a message. A second, private key is kept
secret, so that only you know it.
What is meant by revenue model?
In business, revenue typically consists of the total amount of money received by the company for
goods sold or services provided during a certain time period. Therefore, revenue models are a
part of the business model. Many online companies generate revenues from multiple income
streams such as advertising, subscription, affiliate marketing etc. Online models not only sell
goods or services but also contacts (e.g. banner) and information (e.g. user-data). Five revenue
models are:





Advertising Revenue Model
Subscription Revenue Model
Transaction Fee Revenue Model
Sales Revenue Model
Affiliate Revenue Model
What do you mean by 'Click And Mortar'
A type of business model that includes both online and offline operations, which typically
include a website and a physical store. A click-and-mortar company can offer customers the
benefits of fast online transactions or traditional face-to-face service. This model is also referred
to as "clicks and bricks."
What is pure play organization?
A pure play is an organization that originated and does business purely through the Internet;
they have no physical store (brick and mortar) where customers can shop. Examples of large
pure play companies include Amazon.com (in its initial business when it was only involved in
retail products) and Netflix.com (in content). With a much lower barrier to entry, the Internet
affords smaller companies the ability to compete with much larger brands due to typically lower
overhead and marketing costs. Though multichannel marketing is a hot buzzword, there is still
plenty of growth opportunity for pure play merchants.
What are the components of information technology?
The 5 components that must come together in order to produce a Computer-Based Information
system are:

Hardware

Software

Data

Procedures

People
What is an intelligent agent’s internet?
On the Internet, an intelligent agent (or simply an agent) is a program that gathers information or
performs some other service without your immediate presence and on some regular schedule.
Typically, an agent program, using parameters you have provided, searches all or some part of
the Internet, gathers information you're interested in, and presents it to you on a daily or other
periodic basis. An agent is sometimes called a bot (short for robot).
What is upselling and cross selling?
Upselling (sometimes "up-selling") is a sales technique whereby a seller induces the customer to
purchase more expensive items, upgrades, or other add-ons in an attempt to make a more
profitable sale. Upselling usually involves marketing more profitable services or products but
can be simply exposing the customer to other options that were perhaps not considered.
Upselling implies selling something that is more profitable or otherwise preferable for the seller
instead of, or in addition to, the original sale.
Cross-selling is the action or practice of selling among or between clients, markets, traders, etc.
or the action or practice of selling an additional product or service to an existing customer. The
objectives of cross-selling can be either to increase the income derived from the client or to
protect the relationship with the client. The approach to the process of cross-selling can be
varied.