E-Commerce Security: What Is It?

E-commerce is a commercial transaction between buyer and seller that occurs online instead of in person or over the phone. The customer uses a credit card, check/debit card, purchasing card, or a check to pay for goods or services on a Web site. Secure electronic payments are spreading beyond the Internet to mobile handsets and television set-top boxes. Look for m-commerce and t-commerce next.

E-commerce also refers to electronic payment processing. Instead of going to the bank with deposits and cheques or connecting over dial-up telephone lines to authorise credit cards, merchants use the Internet to connect to financial networks for payment.

If you are responsible for protecting payment data and securing Web-based e-commerce applications, Symantec can help with SSL Certificates and other security services. We have more than one million digital certificates installed throughout the world, protecting the majority of secure Web sites on the Internet.