Secure web presence

Within this report I have been asked to compare the following websites in terms of what business they each provide, why it is necessary to have a secure web presence, the risk factors each have and what kind of people will these websites focus and attract on and how come we overcome such risks.

• www.amazon.co.uk
• www.barclays.co.uk
• www.hillingdon.gov.uk
• www.savethechildren.org.uk

To get a clear goal of all these aspects, clear research must be carried out by going on these websites and directly concentrating on the aspects that are lacking from the above guild lines.

Amazon

Starting from the first website in the list, amazon is a very world known site that attracts millions of users each year. The nature of this online ?purchasing store? if you like was created not only by having an online catalogue from which you can order new products from but also to sell second hand products to other people. The majority of all products are sold less than the retail street prices and this is simply how they do business. Before an order can be placed an account has to be created via the website and this will include personal details e.g. customers address and banking details. Such integral information must be kept safe and these are some ways amazon deals with it:

• Using software called secure sockets layer also known as SSL which encrypts any information a user may input.
• They only reveal the last four digits of a credit card number.
• They maintain physical, electronic and procedural safeguards in connection with the collection, storage and disclosure of personally identifiable customer information. Their safety procedures mean that they may infrequently demand proof of identity before they reveal any personal information to you.
• They advise customers to protect themselves from unauthorised access by keeping their passwords safe and also by logging off when using a shared computer.?

Amazon also provides guidelines on how to stay safe while doing any online shopping with them and in order of preventing any unpleasant experiences, the following must be carried out by the user:

• By not sharing any personal information.
• Always to pay via Amazon Marketplace and nowhere else.
• Checking the sellers feedback from other customers.
• Identify fake phishing e-mails and report them.
• Protecting your accounts password at all times. [1]

By accepting the terms and conditions they will be complying with amazon?s policy?s for example the data protection act which will help to keep personal information confidential and not sell it to third parties. It is vital that there is a secure web presence in order to give the customers the confidence to buy or sell without getting defrauded on. This way as long as there is a secure web presence the company can only gain more customers and continue to expand.

The customers amazon will attract will vary from students who own a debit card to pensioners, there is no age limit, once becoming 16 up until 18 you will need the involvement of a parent or legal guardian in order to carry out any transactions.

The risk appetite from a scale of 1-100, where 1 being the lowest and 100 the highest, Amazon would have to be in its lowest so in between 8 to 10. This is because amazon in order to survive with different competitors like e-bay it has to keep its customer satisfaction sky-high. So they have specific boundaries in order to keeping these customers by having an all-time low risk appetite. Also by having an up-to-date e-commerce platform is crucial because this would help customers in all usability aspects plus it would be more secure for making transactions online. This is something that amazon currently worked on so it has one of the best e-commerce platforms out there in the online market. This is the reason why it is the biggest online retailer on a global basis.

For example if a customer has a bad experience with amazon and posts in a blog and tells all their friends about it then that could stop potential customers from buying or selling on the website in the future. This is because people tend to look at the bad side of things rather than the good. If there more than let?s say 100,000 unsatisfied customers then that could cause a crisis for the company so customer satisfaction and excellent customer service must be at the top of their agendas.

Barclays

Barclays is a British Financial banking firm which has been operating from 1690, where it was first established. The banking firm has expanded over the last century?s world-wide making it the 25th largest company in the world. As it is based in the United Kingdom and its headquarters are in London it aims to provide:

• Retail banking
• Commercial banking
• Investment banking
• Investment management
• Private equity

There is a well-established fact that the actual strength of a tree lies in its roots and not the new branches at top. If the roots do not grow strong there are chances that the tree may fall someday. [2] This is exactly what happened to Lehman Brothers. After the collapse of Lehman Brothers, Barclays stepped in to take over parts within the firm in a $1.3 billion deal to save 9,000 jobs. Being second largest bank in the United Kingdom and second on world based assets you can imagine how important it is to assure reasoned steps are taken to keeping the confidentiality, integrity and finally the availability at a minimum level possible. [3]?

Being in the 21st century the internet has expanded largely across the globe and that?s the reason why you can almost do right about everything over the net these days. And yes that includes banking online with Barclays safely. In order to stay safe online and safe in general the following is strongly required by each client:

• PINs, passwords, cards, documents and personal information must be kept secure at all times.

This will help to protect the clients from online fraud, card fraud, identity theft and any other malicious activities the hacker would want to carry out. Identity theft costs the United Kingdom over ?1 billion a year, so to avoid falling victim to this, these steps are essential to brining the percentage at a minimum from it happening to you.

• By installing anti-virus software programmes and firewalls on the computer that will be used to carry out any online banking is a must.

They also have to be updated on a regular basis otherwise they would be vulnerable to different spyware or malicious viruses.

• Any kinds of communications that require clients to hand out personal details will not be legitimate.

Clients will always be reminded to be suspicious of any kind of letters, e-mails, texts, phone calls or any other form of communication to them that necessitate personal details, will always try to sound or look genuine. If this is the case then the chances are they are fraudulent and the clients would need to contact the company for any concerns.

• Clients are required to check their bank statements cautiously and to recognise each and every transaction made.
• Never open attachments from e-mails or follow any links unless they are certain they are safe.

If they doubt any e-mails they should delete right away because they could be tricks that are commonly used by fraudsters. Their aim is to install spyware and Trojans onto their system.

• To be very cautious while using cash machines.

Never leave your receipts in the machine. Once it has been checked it, it is advisable to shred it. Clients must be wary of any signs of the machine being tamped with because this could mean it has been illegally fitted with a scanning device. Move to another machine if the person behind you is acting suspicious or is trying to divert your attention.

• Check on a regular basis your credit file.
• Make sure Barclays is aware if you?re going abroad

Clients would avoid having any complications using their cards while being overseas and also helping to protect you from fraud. [4]

There is not a 100% online safety bank out in the market but they try as much as possible to get to that 100% stage by hiring the right experts. It is vital to have a secure web presence this is partly because huge deals of user?s requirements are dealt with online. The average daily customers of Barclays that use the online banking system are about 1 and a half million. The risk appetite for this business from a scale of 1-100, where 1 being the lowest and 100 the highest, it should be at its most minimum (possibly 6 being maximum). This is because they cannot afford to lose customers at this particular period with the credit crunch and the uneven global economy.? At this point the market within the bank sector has never been so competitive so customer satisfaction is essential. By having the correct experts working with one another to boost the online security, then the company can only continue to expand both within the UK and other nations.

With figures of 500 million pounds being stolen in 2009 alone from people who shop online is a very scary figure. 22 million pounds was stolen from people who bank online over the same period. One in 10 internet users is a victim of fraud gangs, losing an average of ?875 each.? One thing that all these online fraudsters had in common was phishing. Something that is used widely over the globe to capture people?s information by tricking them. [5]

One way they are tackling this multimillion crime problem is by introducing pin sentry [appendix 1]. This is a device that has been designed to make it safer to bank online. You stick the card in the slot, enter your pin and its spits out a unique 8 digit number. This changes every time the client users it so even if someone got hold of your pin and the unique 8 digit number, it would be useless to them simply because it can never be used again. [5]

The clients Barclays will attract are students, normal working people, business men/women, retail customers who seek loans, small businesses and large corporates.

Hillingdon

This is a website from the Hillingdon local authority which was made from the governments consent. Within this website information and services would be provided only for the residents of Hillingdon. Within the site each citizen living within the borough can:

• Pay council tax and fines
• Report issues effecting a local area or home
• Has an A-Z and FAQs which any citizen can view without having to waste time waiting on a phone line.
• Browse free of charge without having to register
• Register with allpay.net in order to make payments on council tax.

People most likely to use this website are residents within the borough, local businesses and also people that are planning to move into the Hillingdon borough.? If a user requests to pay their council tax, it would be through another service and its Hillingdon?s responsibility that is website is secure for its users to make payments.

Under the data protection act any valuable information entered would be kept safe, the website states the following:

?Where you choose to complete any of our online forms the personal information you give us is used, by the London Borough of Hillingdon or a third party service provider who are contracted to us, to provide the service(s) you requested. The London Borough of Hillingdon will endeavour to safeguard your information and any disclosures of that information will be in accordance with our registration under the Data protection 1998.?[6]

The risk appetite for this website out of the four would be the highest. From a scale of 1-100, where 1 being the lowest and 100 the highest they would have to around at 35. This is because not many users visit the website (ranked at 13,879 in the UK), so it is less likely to get targeted by online hackers. Therefore it can manage to have a higher risk since it doesn?t have a database in place.?

One main issue that maybe at hand here is that anyone can access the website without registering. This could be a potential threat to the local authority because if a prankster decides to make false accusations which are not legit, not only will it be wasting the local authority time and money but it can cause some sort of confusion which can lead onto something more serious. Although the usability of the website is ok, perhaps a more professional design might have to be created for the future of this website and its residents visiting it. By not having a well-designed website this may cause a great concern about the security within the site and maybe that why many users don?t interact with it.

Save the children

This is an online registered charity that commits to saving young people that are in serious need of survival. Within the last few weeks of global disasters, like the earthquakes in Haiti and Chile, this online charity has found it extremely difficult to cope with the rising figures of children in need in these two regions. So, many campaigns have been carried out and have had a huge response from different people around the globe which have help the crisis that have struck the eastern part of the globe. Over the last year they have reached almost 6 million young children in more than 50 countries that are in need of food, education, protection and most importantly healthcare. And scary figures of 9 million children are still continuing to die each year before they reach their fifth birthday. [7]

The website was created by two sisters back in 1919 and its main purpose is to collect donations as well as raising the awareness of reality within these poor countries. Once a donation has been made the details will be kept e.g. Name, address and banking information. This is a unique website out of the other three because it doesn?t provide you with a service nor does it offer any products to the users.? The website is mostly used by women aged from 25-34 and have graduated but have no children. Since this website was established in the United Kingdom most of its visitors are from here (50.5%) and the rest (49.5%) are from Spain, India, France and the United States in order of ranking. [8]

Whilst being on the website the URL is simply HTTP, but once a possible donor requests to make a contribution they will need to be directed to another page in which this case the URL will be HTTPS. Meaning that the website is completely secure and it confirms the legitimacy of the site. Once a transaction has been completed then it will be encrypted with a secure socket layer also known as SSL.

The risk appetite of this website from a scale of 1-100, where 1 being the lowest and 100 the highest, it would have to be around 17-19. This is because although it?s a charity which makes thousands of pounds, I don?t think this would stop any hacker from accessing their database and steeling identities simply because hackers have no boundaries. If they can access it then why not go for it? This is simply how they work. There was a similar story about a charity being hacked a few years ago and they stole over 2,500 peoples identities. The size of the charity is not as big as Amazon so it attracts far less people so that?s another reason for the risk appetite being 17-19.

Conclusion

To conclude each website had a good web presence but on some further improvements need to be made to attract more users. Although the security measures where extremely high for Barclays and Amazon, this gives their customers an excellent image that they take security seriously and therefore they will allow them to continue to grow. As for the other two websites further improvements need to be made in order for them to survive if indeed someone was to hack onto their system. In order to tackle phishing we must all work together to stop these online hackers and illegal gangs. So if you see anything suspicious, always report it to the company or the police. By doing this you could stop criminals from doing further damage to you and your fellow citizens.

References

[1] Amazon [Online] Available from: http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=502584#e Accessed on: 04/03/2010

[2] Barclays [Online] Available from: http://www.consumercomplaints.in/complaints/barclays-shared-services-c293865.html Accessed on: 05/03/2010

[3] Wikipedia [Online] Available from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barclays Accessed on: 06/03/2010

[4] Barclays [Online] Available from: http://www.bank.barclays.co.uk/Helpsupport/Protectyourselffromfraud/P1242560036941 Accessed on: 08/03/2010

[5] Barclays [Online] Available from: http://www.bank.barclays.co.uk/Helpsupport/Onlinesecurityvideostaysafeonline/P1242562218440 Accessed on: 08/03/2010

[6] Hillingdon [Online] Available from: http://www.hillingdon.gov.uk/index.jsp?articleid=6524 Accessed on: 09/03/2010

[7] Save the children [Online] Available from: http://www.savethechildren.org.uk/en/34.htm Accessed on: 09/03/2010

[8] Alexa [Online] Available from:? http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/savethechildren.org.uk Accessed on: 09/03/2010

Appendixes

Picture 1

Barclays [Online] Available from: http://www.barclays.co.uk/pinsentry/images/00_sentry.gif

Accessed on: 08/03/2010

Picture 2

Save the children [Online] Available from: http://www.savethechildren.org.uk/en/8837.htm

Accessed on: 09/03/2010

Picture 3

Amazon [Online] Available from: https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/sign-in.html?ie=UTF8&email=&disableCorpSignUp=&path=/gp/yourstore&redirectProtocol=&mode=&useRedirectOnSuccess=1&query=signIn%3D1%26action%3Dsign-out%26useRedirectOnSuccess%3D1%26path%3D/gp/yourstore%26ref_%3Dpd_irl_gw_r&accountStatusPolicy=&pageAction=/gp/yourstore Accessed on: 17/03/2010

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