What is Electronic Commerce?
What is SSL?
Do I need SSL for electronic commerce?
What is Cybercash?
What software does Xhost support for online storefronts?

What is Electronic Commerce?

Electronic commerce usually means a transaction over the Internet involving credit cards or some other form of "electronic cash."

What is SSL?

SSL stands for Secure Sockets Layer. It provides a secure, encrypted transmission mechanism to exchange data, usually between a user's software such as a web browser and a remote server. The encryped data is difficult for anyone to decipher other than the original sender and the recipient.

If you use Netscape as your browser, you will know you are communicating with a secure site because the key in the lower-left hand corner of the browser window will be complete instead of broken. Take a look at a secure version of this page and notice what happens to the key at the bottom of the page. You can also tell an SSL secured page by looking at the URL. If the URL begins with https:// (instead of http://), the document comes from a secure server.

To connect to an HTTP server that provides security using the SSL protocol, insert the letter "s" so that the URL begins with https://.

The Internet is an inherently UNSECURE mechanism for transporting data. Most data will pass through many intermediary points between its point of origin and ultimate destination. Anyone with the appropriate equipment and knowledge may "capture" this data at any of these intermediary points or any other point in a data packet's journey. They may choose to examine the information contained within the data, manipulate it so as to change the original meaning of the data, or even impersonate the original sender.

Encryption mechanisms such as SSL create a set of rules that improve the security of internet communication. The rules created prevent eavesdropping, manipulation or impersonation of data. Credit card (or other electronic transactions) are the most valuable pieces of data someone could steal from the Internet. Because of this it is imperative to secure communications that involve transmission of credit card numbers.

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How safe is it for me to enter a credit card number on an SSL page? It is very safe where the transmission of the number from your computer to the web server is concerned. However, just like providing your credit card number over the phone or giving your credit card number to a waiter in a restaurant, you should trust the merchant you are giving your credit card number to.

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Cybercash is one of the leading companies providing mechanisms to facilitate electronic transactions over the Internet. They provide a CGI tool called the CyberCash Register that enables a website to carry out a credit card transaction in real-time over the Internet. When a credit card number is used as payment on a web page, the CyberCash Register will authenticate the card and send the information to the merchants clearinghouse in the same way as if the merchant has conducted a "card swipe." There are no additional charges to the merchant for this feature as Cybercash charges the clearinghouses and banks for the transaction.

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Xhost supports Storefront 2000 and Actinic Catalog.

StoreFront is fully integrated with Microsoft FrontPage adding robust, flexible e-commerce tools right into the FrontPage tool bar. It provides everything necessary to create an online store, including Cybercash enabled transactions for real-time credit card authentication.

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