Viruses in E-business

Risks are an inherent part of any business, but doing business electronically exposes a company to a whole other set of risks. This paper will concentrate on a single risk that all businesses that use computers face, viruses. While this risk exists for any business that uses a computer, it is even more of a risk for businesses that are constantly attached to the Internet and conducting business over the Internet. This paper will also discuss the business and legal implications of viruses and discuss mitigation techniques.

Viruses, as defined by Dictionary.com are: "A program or piece of code written by a cracker that 'infects' one or more other programs by embedding a copy of itself in them". (Dictionary.com, 2004). A virus can be dangerous to a computer because it can infect executable files, remain dormant before becoming active at some future time, slowly destruct files over time, or any number of other annoying or destructive tasks (Greenstein-Vasarhelyl, 2002). There are new viruses being created all the time that run the gamut from harmless to very destructive.

Business Concerns

Viruses are a large concern to businesses because of the potential financial disasters that they can cause. A virus can cause downtime, lost revenue, data loss, data corruption, and more. All of these issues can cause severe financial losses to a company. Downtime causes employees to have to wait around for the computers to be fixed before they can continue to perform their jobs. While there is downtime, a company is paying their employees for unproductive time that is not contributing to the company's revenue. A second affect of viruses is lost revenue from computers and web sites being unavailable to customers. If a company's website is down or not responding because of a virus, customers might not return to the site at a later time to make their purchase. Customers expect to be able to make a purchase whenever is convenient for them and if they cannot do it, they will look elsewhere. Viruses can also affect data in several ways. First, a virus can delete data from a computer system. It is important that companies actively back up their data and make sure they are able to recover information if it is lost. Second, a virus can corrupt data on a system. In some instances, corrupted data can be more detrimental to a company than lost data. If a company does not realize that its data has been compromised, they could be conducting business transactions with the incorrect data.

Legal Concerns

Viruses can also open up companies up to legal action from customers, partners, and or suppliers. Many of the issues that are business concerns are also legal concerns for a company. If data is compromised or destroyed, orders could be completed wrong or not at all. The company could then be liable for the costs associated with missing the order or not completing it correctly. In a hospital, missing or corrupted data could endanger a patient's life. Another data issue that is of concern to a business is confidential data becoming exposed. If this confidential data would happen to be customer credit card information, the resulting legal costs could be quite high. If the exposed data is medical in nature, then it is possible that a federal law has been broken (HIPPA).

Mitigation of Risk

One of the best ways a company can mitigate the risk of viruses is to purchase virus scanning software, such as Norton Anti-Virus or McAfee Antivirus. This software scans files on the computer looking for suspicious files or known viruses and then quarantines offending files so then cannot harm the computer. A second way to mitigate the risks of viruses if for companies to use either software or hardware firewalls. A firewall sits between the Internet and the network computers and monitors communications between the computers and Internet. A firewall can be set to varying levels of strictness to limit the level of communications, thus limiting the risks of contracting a virus. A third method of mitigating the risks of viruses is by setting strict rules on how employees can use and access the Internet. U.S. Steel has a set policy that email attachments cannot contain executable files. If an email is received with an executable file, it is stripped from the email by the server. If the employee can show a valid need for this file, they can send a request to the security department to get the file released. USS also has a strict policy of Internet use and downloading of files from the Internet.

Conclusion

Viruses pose a serious legal and financial risk to any company, but they are an even greater threat to companies that conduct their business over the Internet. Viruses can be annoying to the user or they can be destructive in nature. When viruses are destructive, they can either compromise data or delete it entirely. Companies can mitigate their risks from viruses by using virus scanning software, firewalls, and setting strict policies on employee usage.

References

(n.d.). retrieved Sep 29, 2004, from Dictionary.com Web site: www.dictionary.com.

Greenstein-Vasarhelyi, . (2002). Electronic commerce. Second ed. : McGraw-Hill Companies.