In the digital economy, security breaches are inevitable. Organizations rushing to build information systems for all forms of digital commerce are realizing there's no fail-safe way to secure the free flow of data or money. Except it's often far worse. Organizations engaged in Web commerce, electronic supply chains, and enterprise resource planning experience three times the incidents of information loss and theft of trade secrets than everybody else. The digital commerce sites experiencing the most attacks, including banks and financial services companies, are the same disciplined IT shops that also create information security policies, spend lots of money on security products such as firewalls and encryption, and institute policy training for IT staff and end users.

As indicated by the graph to the left, these security breeches are costing corporations money, and sometimes lots of it. Often times, the companies are not even aware of it. In a recent survey of 1600 IT and security professionals in 500 countries, 49% concede they don't know if they were pickpocketed in the past year. Only 28% say they're certain they haven't suffered any monetary loss. The expectation is that as electronic commerce revenues grow, so will the losses due to security breeches. Obviously, there is enough at risk for corporations to be motivated to protect their information systems.

There are many tools available corporations can use to safeguard their information systems. Our project has chosen only a few of them. Click on the links above for more information on each:

Team Tchaikovsky

Rich Aliano
Dominick Diorio
Tom Holleman
Paul Palicki
Cathy Malabunga

Last changed: March 18, 1999