Strategic & Tactical Tools for Ebusiness

From the social side:

• Social engineering
  • psychological manipulation of people
    into performing actions or divulging confidential information
• Social phishing attacks
  • most common type of attacks leveraging social engineering techniques. Attackers use emails, social media, instant messaging and SMS to trick victims into providing sensitive information or visiting malicious URLs in the attempt to compromise their systems
• Fraud and scams on the Internet
• Data breach (leak)

1. Integrity

• It refers to the ability to ensure that information being displayed on a website or transmitted or received over the internet has not been altered in any way by an unauthorized party. 

2. Nonrepudiation

• the ability to ensure that e-commerce participants do not deny or repudiate their online actions

3. Authenticity

• the ability to identify a person or entity with who one is transacting with on the internet

4. Confidentiality

• the ability to ensure that messages and data are only available to those who are authorised to view them

5. Privacy

• the ability to control the use of information about oneself

6. Availability

• the ability to ensure that an e-commerce site continues to function as intended and is available to provide service

• Malware
• Malvertising
• Drive-by download
• virus
• worm
• ransomware
• trojan
• backdoor
• Dos
• DDos
• Identity fraud
• SQL injection attack
• etc.
• Credit card fraud / theft

• Social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest and Tumblr provide a rich and rewarding environment for hackers
• Viruses, site takeovers, identity fraud, malware-loaded apps, click hijacking, phishing, and spam are all found on social networks
• Common types of scam on social networks include manual sharing scams, where victims unwittingly share videos, stories and pictures that include links to malicious sites, with “free” gift cards, for example
• Another technique is a fake reaction button: when clicked, it installs malware and post updates to the user’s newsfeed, further spreading the attack
• SN firms have by far been relatively poor policeman because they have failed to aggressively weed out accounts that send visitors to malware sites (unlike Google, that maintains a list of known malware sites).

• The existence of mobile devices has broadened opportunities for hackers
• Mobile users are filling their devices with personal and financial information and using them to conduct transactions, from retail purchases to mobile banking
• Mobile devices face the same risk as any other Internet device, as well as some risks associated with wireless network security
• Public Wi-fi networks that are not secured are very susceptible to hacking
• Malicious mobile apps (MMAs, malware for cell phones) was developed early 2004
• The majority of mobile malware still targets the Android platform

• The move of so many Internet services into the cloud also raises security risks
• DDoS attacks threaten the availability of cloud services, on which more and more companies are relying
• Companies with hybrid networks, with their applications scattered among public clouds, private clouds, and on-premises systems, are more at risk

• Encryption
• Symmetric key cryptography
• Advanced encryption standard
• Public key cryptography
• Digital envelops
• VPN
• Firewalls
• Proxy servers

customer relationship management, demand management, order fulfillment, manufacturing management, procurement, product development, returns, logistics/transportation, and inventory management

E-Commerce: describes specifically that portion of B2B commerce that is enabled by the Internet (including mobile apps). It is the sale of goods or services between businesses via an online sales portal. In general, it is used to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of a company's sales efforts. Instead of receiving orders using human assets (sales reps) manually – by telephone or e-mail – orders are received digitally, reducing overhead costs

• Lower administrative costs
• Lower search costs for buyers
• Reduce inventory costs by increasing competition among suppliers (increasing price transparency) and reducing inventory to the bare minimum
• Lower transaction costs by eliminating paperwork and automating parts of the procurement process
• Increase production flexibility by ensuring delivery of parts just at the right time (known as just-in-time production)
• Improve quality of products by increasing cooperation among buyers and sellers and reducing quality issues
• Decrease product cycle time by sharing designs and production schedules with suppliers
• Increase opportunities for collaborating with suppliers and distributors
• Create greater price transparency—the ability to see the actual buy and sell prices in a market
• Increase the visibility and real-time information sharing among all participants in the supply chain network.

• Often Lack of real-time demand, production and logistic data.
  • Result of this is unexpected supplier failure
• Environmental impacts
• Natural disasters
• Labor concerns (strikes etc.)
• Impacts of economic, financial and political instability

The sensitivity in the supply is a difficult challenge to manage (Bullwhip effect)

The bullwhip effect is, how a change in the user demand can echo all the way down in the supply chain with an increasing effect between each link in the supply chain and is commonly visualized with the waves a bullwhip makes, and thus the name.

Information systems can help avoid this bullwhip effect, as they make companies able to be more transparent about their expected demand, and thus the following links in the supply chain have better odds of matching the precise demand. However, this require companies to share information with each other, which is not always wanted.

Examples:

• Blockchain
• EDI (Electronic data interchange)
• Cloud

A coordination of various organisations that are related in the process of producing value

Ad:

• Transparency
• Real-time information
• Security
• Immutability

Dis:

• Hard to build network
• Information loss (e.g. blackouts)
• Loss of sovereignty 
• Carbon footprint / Energy consumption

Reusable

Non-rival use

Versionable

• can be subject to different modifications (upgrades). Such as video games

E-business: digital enabling of transactions and processes within a firm

E-buss turn into e-commerce when exchange of value occurs

Business:

• all forms of e-comm (retail e/m, social network, on-demand, B2B) continue to show very strong growth;
• Social, mobile, digital advertising

Technology:

• Mobile / cloud computing, IoT, Big Data, 
• Mobile is king and new technologies help to build the mobile platform. Data flood is leveraged by analytics.

Society:

• User-generated content, privacy issues, digital copyright, taxation, surveillance, online security
• Conflicts over copyright, privacy, security threats

--> fundamental change to traditional commerce (information asymmetry, fixed prices, sales-force driven etc)

1.Ubiquity

• Available everywhere and all the time
• Alters industry structure by creating new marketing channels and expanding size of overall market. Creates new efficiencies in industry operations and lowers costs of firms’ sales operations. Enables new differentiation strategies

2.Global reach

• Reach = the total number of users or customers an e-commerce business can obtain
• Changes industry structure by lowering barriers to entry, but greatly expands market at the same time. Lowers cost of industry and firm operations through production and sales efficiencies. Enables competition on a global scale

3.Universal standards

• lowers market entry costs for merchants, reduces search costs for consumers, price discovery becomes simpler as prices and product descriptions are displayed, network externalities arise (mutual gains on consumer and seller side from using the same technology)

4.Information richness

• Complexity and content of a message

5.Interactivity

• Technology enables two-way communication between merchant and consumer
• Alters industry structure by reducing threat of substitutes through
  enhanced customization.

6.Information density

• The total amount and quality of information available to all market participants -> Information become less expensive and of better quality, more transparency on prices and costs, merchants can segment and target specific customer groups based on data

7.Personalization/customization

• Personalization = targeting of marketing messages to specific individuals by adjusting the message to a person’s name, interests, and past purchases
• Customization = changing the delivered product or service based on a user’s preferences or prior behavior
• Alters industry structure by reducing threats of substitutes, raising barriers to entry.

8.Social technology

• user-generated content and social networks

• B2C, B2B (most $),
• C2C, Mobile e-commerce (use of mobile devices to enable online transactions),
• social e-commerce (e-commerce enabled by social networks and online social relationships),
• local e-commerce (focused on engaging the consumer based his or her current geographic location)

Evolution of multi/cross-channel retailing to encompass all digital and social technologies

Customers can examine, access, purchase, and return goods from any channel, even change channels during process, and receive timely info at each stop in each channel

Economies of scale

•  inverse relationship between fixed costs and output / a proportionate saving in costs gained by an increased level of production
• used to be a competitive advantage (mass production --> lower costs), but is changing due to technologies (platforms and on-demand technologies)

Economies of unscale

• instead of offering a mass product, offering customized, smaller solutions that are targeted to specific customers due to emergence of platforms and on-demand tech (AI, cloud etc)

Interconnected network of thousand of networks, millions of computers, linking businesses, educational inst, and individuals

One of the internet most popular services

Phase 1: Innovation phase (1961)

- fundamental building blocks of the Internet (packet-switching hardware, IP, client server computing)

Phase 2: Institutionalization (1995)

- large instututions provide funding for fledging internet, evolution of civilian internet

- beginning of e-commerce

Phase 3: Commercialisation (1995)

- private corporations take over internet, expansion of the internet beyond military instututions and college campus

A method of slicing digital messages into packets, sending the packets along different communication paths as they become available, and then reassembling the packets once they arrive at their destination

- Packet switching

- TCP / IP (transmission control protocol / internet protocol)

- IP Adresses

- Domain names

- Client / server 

TCP: breaks data into packets and resembles it. IP provides the internets addressing scheme for the travel from one router to another.

Protocol: set of rules and standards for data transfers

TCP: core communications protocol for the Internet. establishes connections among sending and receiving computers and
handles assembly and reassembly of packets

IP: provides the Internet’s addressing scheme and is responsible for delivery of packets

IP: provides the Internet’s addressing scheme and is responsible for delivery of packets

IP-Address: unique identifier to communicate over network

Domain name: IP address expressed in natural language

Domain name system: system for expressing numeric IP addresses in natural language