Lesson 19-E-Commerce Security Needs

Overview

Understand e-commerce services.

Understand the importance of availability.

Implement client-side security.

Implement server-side security.

Implement application security.

Implement database server security.

Develop an e-commerce architecture.

Understand E-Commerce Services

Organizations perform e-commerce to make profit by

providing goods and services at a lower cost.

Providing electronic library functions for sensitive or

confidential information has come with the advent of e-

commerce over the Internet.

Understand E-Commerce Services

E-commerce service is most commonly thought of as the

purchasing of goods.

Security to e-commerce services can be measured by its

confidentiality, integrity, and accountability.

Understand E-Commerce Services

E-Commerce Services and regular DMZ Services differ in

their requirements.

Requirement of verification and confidentiality differentiate

the e-commerce services from regular DMZ services.

Availability becomes a critical security issue for the e-

commerce site.

Understand E-Commerce Services

E-commerce services may involve selling goods, providing

confidential information, or distribution of information.

Security to e-commerce services can be measured in terms

of confidentiality, integrity, and accountability.

Understand the Importance of Availability

Availability is the key issue for e-commerce services.

Availability of the site has a direct impact on the confidence

a customer will have in using the service.

Failure in availability is almost guaranteed to push a

potential customer to a competitor.

Understand the Importance of Availability

Business-to-consumer issues:

The entire site along with payment processing must be up at

all times.

Problem of availability includes business issues such as ability

of the organization to fulfill orders entered into the system.

Size of the infrastructure must be built according to the

expected load.

Understand the Importance of Availability

Business-to-business issues:

Business-to-business e-commerce is established between two

organizations that have some type of relationship.

Availability issues may be more stringent in Business-to-

business e-commerce.

When one organization needs to make an order, the other

organization must be able to receive and process it.

Understand the Importance of Availability

Global time:

E-commerce availability is governed by the concept of global

time.

This concept identifies the global nature of the Internet and of

e-commerce.

An e-commerce site must be able to handle orders from

unexpected locations.

Understand the Importance of Availability

Client comfort:

Client must feel comfortable with the ability of the organization

to process orders and deliver goods.

Customer comfort or discomfort can multiply quickly.

Understand the Importance of Availability

Cost of downtime:

The cost of downtime is high.

It can be measured by taking the average number of

transactions over a period of time and the revenue of the

average transaction.

An e-commerce site must not have single points of failure.

The site should also have procedures for updating hardware

and software.

Understand the Importance of Availability

Solving the availability problem:

Downtime can be reduced through redundancy.

For sites that expect large amounts of traffic, load-balancing

application layer switches can be used.

Network infrastructure components must also be configured to

fail-over if high availability is required.

Implement Client-Side Security

Client-side security components

Implement Client-Side Security

Client-side security deals with the security from the

customer’s desktop system to the e-commerce server.

A realistic solution to communications security is encryption

of information.

Implement Client-Side Security

A cookie is a small amount of information that is stored on

the client system by the Web server in cleartext or

encrypted.

Organizations must ensure that a legitimate customer

places the order to reduce possible repudiation.

Implement Server-Side Security

Security of servers includes:

Information stored on the server.

Protecting the server from attack.

Information Stored on the Server

An e-commerce server is a semi-trusted or untrusted

system which should not store sensitive information.

If information is kept on the e-commerce server, it should

be protected from unauthorized access through file access

controls.

Protecting the Server from Attack

Three categories in protecting an e-commerce server from

attack:

Server location.

Operating system configuration.

Web server configuration.

Server Location

Server should be located in a protected area such as a data

center.

If the server is placed at a co-location facility, physical

access to it must be separated from other clients.

Firewall should be configured to only allow access to e-

commerce server on ports 80 (for HTTP) and 443 (for

HTTPS).

Operating System Configuration

The first step in configuring the server securely is to

remove or turn off any unnecessary services.

The latest patches must be checked and loaded for the

chosen operating system.

The system should meet the organization’s policy and

vulnerability scan should be conducted.

Web Server Configuration

Web server must not be run as root or administrator for

security.

CGI scripts on Web server that are not being used should

be removed to prevent intruder attack.

Web server should be scanned for known vulnerabilities.

Implement Application Security

Security of e-commerce application as a whole is the most

important part of e-commerce security.

Security requirements should be included in the

requirements definition phase of project.

Security requirements include requirements pertaining to

protection, authentication, audit, availability, and

identifying sensitive information.

Implement Application Security

All sensitive information needs to be protected.

Programs are a major source of system vulnerabilities due to

programming errors.

Buffer overflows can be reduced by not making assumptions

about the size of user input and not passing unchecked user

input to shell commands.

Peer review or code review can catch many programming

errors before the server goes into production.

Implement Application Security

Vulnerability scanners should detect buffer overflow

problems before the site goes into production.

The two parts of configuration management are control of

authorized changes and identification of unauthorized

changes.

To prevent false alarms, checksum should be updated

during configuration management procedure.

Implement Database Server Security

The database server may contain sensitive and confidential

information which should be protected.

Organizations must examine database location, communication

with e-commerce server, and internal access protection.

Database servers must be kept in controlled areas.

The e-commerce server should initiate SQL connection to the

database server for processing transactions.

Implement Database Server Security

The e-commerce server must have an ID and password to

initiate an SQL connection to the database server.

Employees of the organization have access to internal

network and thus are able to directly attack it.

Database server could be moved to a separate network and

protected by an internal firewall.

Develop an E-Commerce Architecture

A high-traffic and high-availability e-commerce site requires two

ISPs with fail-over capability.

Routers, switches, and firewalls should be cross-connected so that

failure of any one component will not affect traffic.

Redundant switches may be used to ensure availability of the site.

Regular vulnerability scans and database auditing must be

conducted.

Summary

E-commerce service providers can increase revenue by

providing information to customers at a lower cost.

Security with respect to confidentiality, integrity, and

accountability plays a major role in e-commerce.

Availability is a key issue for e-commerce.

Client-side security protects information in transit, information

stored on customer’s computer, and prevents repudiation.

Summary

Server-side security involves protection of information

stored on the server and protection of the server itself.

Security of the e-commerce application as a whole is

probably the most important part of e-commerce security.

Confidential and sensitive information present in the

database server must be protected.