IMTS DCA (Electronics commerce)

I ns t i t ut eofManage me nt & Te c hni c alSt udi e s ELECTRONI CSCOMMERCE

500

Di pl omai nc omput e rAppl i c a t i on www. i mt s i ns t i t ut e . c om

IMTS (ISO 9001-2008 Internationally Certified) ELECTRONICS COMMERCE

ELECTRONICS COMMERCE

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E-COMMERCE CONTENTS UNIT – I

01-20

Electronic Commerce: Electronic Commerce - Electronic Data Interchange - Value Added Networks – Electronic Commerce Over the Internet – Internet Commerce Examples – CommerceNet. PCs and Networking: Networking – Communication Media. Electronic Mail: Computer Communication Systems – ISO’s Open System Interconnection Model – Electronic Mail – The X.400 Message Handling System – Internet Mail – E-Mail Security – X.500 Directory Services – Mail User Agent.

UNIT – II

21-35

The Internet: The Internet : A Brief Introduction – Internet Communication Protocols – Internet Services and Resources – Internet Mail – Internet Search – Concerns About The Internet – Browsers – Hypertext Markup Language – JavaThe Java Electronic Commerce Framework – Internet 2. Intranets: Intranet – Intranet services – Intranet Implementation – The Webmaster – Electronic Data Interchange: Electronic Data Interchange – Costs and Benefits – components of EDI Systems – EDI Implementation Issues – Legal Aspects.

UNIT – III

36-53

The UN/EDIFACT Standard: Introduction – An EDIFACT Message – Interchange structure – UN/EDIFACT Message Directories. The Internet and Extranets for Electronic Commerce: E-Commerce – Commerce over the Internet – Commerce over Extranets. Identification and Tracking Tolls for Electronic Commerce: The EAN System – EANCOM – Article. Numbering – Bar Coding – The serial shipping container code and the EAN label – EAN Location Numbers – How It Works: Warehousing Example. Internet Bandwidth and Technology Issues: Bandwidth Issues – Technology Issue for The Internet/NII – NII Standards – NII services – Actors in the NII – NII Agenda – GII.

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UNIT – IV

54-70

Security Issues: Security Concerns – Security solutions – Electronic Cash Over the Internet – Security and UN/EDIFACT Messages – Internet Security – Guidelines for Cryptography Policy. Business Process Reengineering: Introduction – Approach to BPR – Strategic Alignment Model – BPR Methodology. Management of Change: Change Management – Change Management in Public Administration – The Implementation Plan.

UNIT – V

71-86

Legal Issues: Legal Issues – Risks: Paper Document Versus Electronic Document – Technology for Authenticating an Electronic Document – Laws for ECommerce – EDI Interchange Agreement – Legal Issues fro Internet Commerce.

E-commerce in India: EDI in India – The internet in India – Laws For ECommerce in India. Getting Started: Getting Connected: What Do You Need? – Setting Up a Website – Web Servers – Business-to-Business EC – Payment for Goods and Services – Bottlenecks.

Case Studies: EDI in Indian Customs – US Electronic Procurement – Banks – EDI Pilot Project in the Automotive Industry.

UNIT QUESTIONS

87-88

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E COMMERCE

UNIT 1 ELECTRONIC COMMERCE, PC’S AND NETWORKING AND ELECTRONIC MAIL UNIT STRUCTURE 1:0 Introduction 1:1 Objective 1:2 Electronic Commerce 1:2:1 Electronic Data Interchange 1:2:2 Value Added Networks 1:2:3 Electronic Commerce over the Internet 1:2:4 Internet Commerce Examples 1:2:5 CommerceNet Self Assessment Questions I 1:3 PCs and Networking 1:3:1 Networking 1:3:2 Networking Topologies 1:3:3 Communication media Self Assessment Questions II 1:4 Electronic Mail 1:4:1 Computer communication Systems 1:4:2 ISO’s Open System Interconnection Model 1:4:3 Electronic Mail Self Assessment Questions III 1:5 The X.400 Message Handling System 1:5:1. X.400 MHS Functional Model 1:5:2 X.400 Protocols 1:5:3 X.400 MHS Service Elements 1:5:4 X.400 Management Domains 1:5:5 X.400 Addressing Self Assessment Questions IV 1:6 Internet Mail 1:6:1 Internet Addresses 1:6:2 E-Mail security 1:6:3 X.500 Directory Services 1:6:4 Mail User Agent Self Assessment Questions V 1:7 Summary

Answer for self assessment questions

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1:0 INTRODUCTION The new industrial revolution which surrounds us requires profound change to develop our business, the way we manage and the structures within we manage. The change is not in the market but a fundamental change in the economic relationships between people, between economics, and between societies. Information and Information Technology are the new drivers of this age. Several manufacturing organizations have already set up Just-In-Time technologies with fully automated factories, which has resulted in improved productivity and reduced costs. Electronic commerce is an outstanding example of this kind of value addition for business in the market place. Technologies that are associated with Electronic Commerce have brought about a veritable revolution in the way business takes place. The Internet Intranet and extranets through the tools of Electronic Commerce are beginning to make this happen.

1:1 OBJECTIVE Make use of the Electronic Commerce tools to change the methods of governance.

Using the Internet and other proprietary networks, delivering services to citizens, bring in transparency between government and citizens are enabled.

Information can be retrieved, forms can be submitted, and returns can be filled electronically.

Electronic commerce not only automates manual processes and paper transaction, but also helps organizations move to as fully electronic environment and change the way they operate.

1:2 ELECTRONIC COMMERCE Electronic commerce is associated with buying and selling of information, products and services over computer communication networks. It helps to conduct traditional commerce through new way of transferring and processing information.

It refers to the paperless exchange of business information using Electronic Data Exchange, Mail, Electronic Bulletin Boards, Electronic Funds Transfer and other new work-based technologies. In the last few years, organizations have started conducting EC over the internet.

1:2:1 Electronic Data Interchange EDI can be used to electronically transmit documents such as purchase orders, invoices, shipping notices and receiving advices. EDI can also be used to transmit financial information and payments in electronic form.

EDI allows a new look at the ‘processes’ within an organization, with a view to reengineer them in what has come to be known as Business Process Reengineering(BPR).

Benefits of EDI: The use of EDI eliminates many of the problems associated with traditional information flow.

• • • • • • •

The delay associated with making documents is eliminated.

Since data is not repeatedly keyed, the chances of error are reduced.

Time required to re-enter data is saved.

As data is not re-entered at each step in the process, labour costs can be reduced.

Because time delays are reduced, there is more certainty in information flow.

Also it generates functional acknowledgement whenever an EDI message is received.

It reduces the production costs.

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The concept of EDI is that data is transferred electronically in machine processable form without any human intervention. So EDI is suited in many areas which has any one the following charactertics: • • • • •

A large volume of repetitive standard actions.

Very tight operating margins.

Strong competition required significant productivity improvements.

Operational time constraints.

Trading partners request for paperless exchange of documents.

1:2:2 Value Added Networks VAN is defined as a telecommunication network, primarily for data that processes or transform data and information in some way and thereby provides services beyond simple transport of information. VAN is a third-party link in the EDI communication system that provides the EDI translation software-service, EDI mail boxing and trading partner validation services among others. The VAN switches messages from one mailbox to another providing one-callconnect from a customer to any number of his trading partners. It also arrangers to provide audit information. In case of dispute, it authenticates messages and acts as a buffer between the trading partners for all possible problems. EDI messages have been carried over VANs such as IBM Global Network, GEIS, and British Telecom etc.

1:2:3 Electronic Commerce over the Internet The internet is an international network of networks. The internet allows millions of computers to be linked together offering a global network that connect universities, individuals, government agencies and more corporate and private enterprises. ”Internet will do for personal networking what the microcomputer did for personal computing”. The internet is expected to change the way people relate to each other and to institutions in business, government and society in general. A recent report by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) predicts that Internet trading will grow from today’s estimated $500 million to $5 billon by 2001.

EDI over private VANs, for exchanging commonly used business documents. Speed of delivery, error-free automatic entry of requisite data in the supplier’s system has saved money for companies. EDI was developed for high volume exchange of commercial documents. E-mail, on the other hand is the exchange of less structured correspondence in electronic format. EC includes any business transacted electronically, whether business-to-business or between a business and its customers.

There are two ways in which EC is being conducted over the internet. The first is EDI in its present form over the Internet, i.e. the Net is used as a free or cheap network for business communication instead of using the more expensive private VANs. The other is the World Wide Web (WWW) as a marketplace where vendors can offer goods, information and services for sale and where purchasers can browse, see and feel the goods through browsing tools, before they buy.

The Web consists of two components: Web servers and Web browsers. Web servers run on any hardware platform and operating system and store documents in Hypertext Markup Language (HTML). All Web Servers and browsers communicate through a common protocol, the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP). The WWW and the Internet have, in fact, influenced the acceptance of EC.VAN is also important for EC because the VAN characteristics which are present lacking on the Internet. These include integrity, confidentiality, non-repudiation and authentication. EDI is growing. The emergence of the Internet and the WWW has accelerated the development and adoption of EC. 1:2:4 Internet Commerce Examples Electronic Commerce conducted over the three commercial online services in the USA, i.e., America Online, Compuserve , and Prodigy during 1994 was estimated to be US$325 million.

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Compuserve hosts 200 odd merchants on its electronic mall. Presently, the visits to the mall by customers have increased by 78% and the orders by 50% each year. It will make use of WWW along with its tools of graphics, audio and video to make the mall attractive to its customers. Similarly, Prodigy, a Joint venture of IBM and Sears, too has a mall and it has also connected to the Internet. America Online on the other hand took the direction of creating distinct sites for corporations wishing to reach a target audience.

Hawaii’s Best Espresso Company is successfully selling coffee through its home page on WWW.Kodak and Ragu, Volvo and the Atlantic Chili Company have also put up home pages for marketing their products. A florist company is selling flowers and collecting orders over the Internet. CDnow, the largest music store in the Internet provides a huge amount of information with its products and carries music reviews from the All Music Guide.

One of the largest retailing and mall operations on the Net with 20,000 products from 600 vendors selling brand-name merchandise directly to members, is operated by the Internet Shopping Network(ISN).These examples illustrate the rising interest of vendors in Internet Commerce.

1:2:5 CommerceNet CommerceNet is a group of companies which is promoting the use of Internet for EC. It is also making it happen through the establishment of a number of working groups to address specific issues confronting the implementation. Some international companies also have been permitted by the CommerceNet to be its members.

The Objective of CommerceNet is to help companies streamline their procurement and development cycles by performing transactions online. The working groups set up by CommerceNet address among others, the following subjects: Connectivity, Network Services, Payment Services, Electronic Catologues/Directories, Internet EDI, Engineering Databases, Internet Marketing, Collaborating Tools and Public Policies.

The key enabler for EC is transaction security. The openness of the Internet which is its major strength is also its greatest weakness compared to VANs in so far as security of transaction is concerned. The following are the major security issues which are being addressed by various organizations including some of the projects launched by CommerceNet: • • • • • •

Authenticity of trading partners for transactions.

Integrity of the message sent and received by trading partners.

Confidentiality of message.

Non-Repudiation of Origin: the sender cannot deny sending the message.

Non-Repudiation of Receipt: the receiver cannot deny receiving the message.

Restricting access only to authorized users.

With digital signature and encryption, the transaction is secured and forms the basis for payment systems. However, in Electronic Commerce, it is necessary that someone keep record of all the transactions. So, the document with digital signatures and encryption would need to be stored at a central VAN. Public key cryptography now has been developed to such level that it indeed provides solutions for EC. Self Assessment Questions 1.What is meant by Electronic Commerce?

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

2. Mention some of the benefits of EDI.

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---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------3. What is the use of EDI? ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

4.Define VAN. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------5. What are the two ways in which EC is connected over the internet?

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------.

6. Mention the two components of Web. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------7. Write some of the VAN characteristics.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------8. Define CommerceNet. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------1:3 PCS AND NETWORKING The basic tools essential for E-Commerce are computers and networks. The computers are either workstations of individual office workers or servers where large databases and other information reside. It is the network that connects both categories of computers. It is the advent of Personal Computer (PC) which has given a new meaning to the network. The Personal Computer or PC is today available in two different versions. The standard desktop model or as Net PCs. The standard desktop models available today support 350 MHz or faster processors with 64 MB of RAM and 6-10 GB of hard disk and are able to run a host application.

The Network Computer (NC) that has emerged in the last couple of years, is a low-cost device that exploits the potential of high-speed computer networks. It supports a rich graphical environment and downloads software from servers over a computer network. The NC consists of a CPU, a few megabytes of memory, a network interface, an I/O interface and a way to boot from the network; it plugs into a power source and to the network.

1:3:1 Networking Business enterprises now have a number of computer system dispersed in organizational units both within and outside countries, depending on the business scenario. With increase in resources and processing power, the need for optimum network performance to deliver enough throughputs is crucial.

Local Area Network or LANs are computer networks which are owned by organizations or institutions and cover up to a few kilometers. A Wide Area Network or WAN on the other hand covers a large geographical area, which could extend throughout a country or the world. The intermediate network which normally covers an area within city limits is called a Metropolitan Area

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Network or MAN. These are differentiated from each other based on their size, data transmission technology and their network topology.

1:3:2 Networking Topologies There are different topologies in which computers can be connected to one another over networks. The topologies that networks can built around are the following: Bus The topology of the bus is shown in fig 1.This topology is commonly used to build up LANs. Every node connected on a bus network is allowed to receive every transmission on that network.

Disadvantage is only one communication channel exists to serve the entire network. So, if the channel fails then the whole network will go out of operation.

Ring: The ring topology is used for configuring networks. The data in a ring network flows in a circular fashion. Data flows in one direction only, with one node receiving the transmission and relaying it to the next node in the ring.

Disadvantages: There exists only single channel to connect the nodes. If a channel fails between two nodes, the entire network goes down.

Star:

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This topology is used in WAN. At the centre of a star network is the hub through which all traffic is routed. As a result, in the event of the failure of the hub computer, the network will fail.

Mesh: The mesh topology has been used more frequently in recent years. Due to the multiple number of paths between nodes, the reliability of the network is improved. Disadvantage of this topology is that there are more expensive when compared with other topology.

Tree: The tree or hierarchical network topology is nowadays a common topology found today.

Reliability problems can arise in this topology due to the control exercised by the topmost node in the ‘tree’. This topology is used to set up WANs.

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1:3:3 Communication media The communication media are used to interconnect computers in a large variety. One of the most common transmission media is the twisted pair cable which consists of two insulated copper wires twisted around each other. Another media is the co-axial cable contains a very thick copper wire at the centre. This wire is surrounded by insulating material which in turn is encased in a cylindrical conductor. The conductor is again wrapped in protective plastic. These cables are able to provide higher bandwidth with superior noise immunity.

Optical fibres are made from ultra-thin fibres of glass. Information is sent on optical fibres in the form of light pulses, which when detected, generate electric pulses. Fiberoptics can be used for LANS, supports higher bandwidth and more reliable . But has lower attenuation.

Satellite communication provides reliable data transmission over a network of a large number of geographically distributed sites. Textual data, images, voice and video are transmitted over satellite networks. It is used in sectors such as television broadcasting and public telecommunications. Transmission cost depends on the network capacity and bandwidth. The distance between sending and receiving centers is immaterial in satellite communications.

VSAT or Very Small Aperture Terminal It is an end-user equipment used to receive and send data, images, voice and video over the satellite network. It allows two way communication from remote locations in the same manner as the terrestrial telephone network. Commercial VSAT systems use satellite transponders operating as C-band or Ku-band. VSAT networks are generally set up in one of the following three configurations: Point-to-point networks provide two-way communications between two VSATs located at remote sites.

Star networks provide multipoint communications between a Master Earth Station(MES) and VSATs located at multiple remote sites.

Mesh networks provide direct communications between multiple VSATs located at different sites on the network.

Access scheme The network protocol employed by the VSAT facilitates effective transfer of data over the satellite link, while the multiple access scheme allows many users to share the satellite transponder resource.

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Frequency Division Multiple Access (FDMA): Users share the transponder by prior allocation of individual channels Single Channel Per Carrier (SCPC) is a FDMA scheme.

Time Division multiple access (TDMA): Each users is assigned the full bandwidth of the channel for a short period which is then made available to another user for the next period and so on.

Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA): Transmitted signal are spread over a bandwidth in excess of the data signal by combining with a code signal.

Frequency Time Division Multiple Access (FTDMA): Allows maximum utilization of available bandwidth through combination of FDMA and TDMA.

VSAT Network Components: A VSAT network comprises an MES, a number of remote VSAT earth stations and a host computer site. The MES in a star network not only provides the communication link but also performs address coding, transponder monitoring, monitoring and controlling traffic flow through the network and controlling access to the satellite. To set up a VSAT earth station both indoor and outdoor equipment are required.

Outdoor VSAT equipment consists of RF terminal composed of an LNB (Low-Noise Block Converter) for receiving and an up convertor and SSPA(Solid-State power Amplifier) for transmission.

Indoor VSAT equipment consists of one or more compact boxes of the size of a personal computer. It incorporates a modulator/demodulator, a microprocessor for data communications and a microprocessor for providing protocol handling for interfacing to terminal equipment.

Two-way VSAT networks offering voice and data services or two-way video conferencing are widely used.

Self Assessment Question I: 1.Name some of the Topology in which computers are connected.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------2..What are the disadvantages in the ring topology?

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------3. The disadvantages in the star topology, in the event of failure of hub computer, the network never fail. Yes or No. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------4. What is the advantages in the mesh topology?

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------5. Name some of the communication media.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------6. What is meant by VSAT. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------7. Mention the access scheme of VSAT.

1:4 ELECTRONIC MAIL Electronic Mail is the means by which we can electronically get our messages across to one another. Messages can be prepared and sent reliably over communication networks from the

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desktop computer of the sender to be received at the desktop computer of the recipient. The main components of electronic mail systems are: • User Agent (UA) which allows the user to prepare electronic mail.

• Message Transfer Agent (MTA) which is responsible for routing electronic messages to their destination.

• Message Store (MS) where electronic mail can be stored until it is picked up by the recipient.

MTAs are interconnected to each other to collectively from a message transfer system. The two most popular mail systems are the X.400 based Message Handling System supported by OSI standards and the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) supported over Internet’s TCP/IP protocol.

1:4:1 Computer communication Systems Computer communication system is nothing but getting computers to communicate with one another. The objective is to allow computers to communicate with each other as open system, irrespective of their make, location or operating system. This requires the communicating entities to agree on the format of the data being exchanged as well as to lay down the procedures for controlling and regulating information flow and detecting and correcting errors that may creep in. There exists the protocol that governs communication between computer systems connected in a computer network.

1:4:2 ISO’s Open System Interconnection Model The concept of providing protocol functions in layers within each communicating system was formalized by the International Standards Organization(ISO)in the late 1970sISO’s Open Systems Interconnection(OSI) Reference Model defined the protocols and interfaces needed to support an open system. This model comprises seven layers in which each layer is supported by the layer below and provides support to the layer above. The seven layers are: Layer 7 Application Layer 6 Presentation Layer 5 Session Layer 4 Transport Layer 3 Network Layer 2 Data Link Layer 1 Physical Layers 1 through 3 are known as the lower layers and govern communication across a segment of a communication network, whereas layers 4 through 7 are the higher layers which govern endto-end communication between the originating and destination systems. All seven layers must be implemented on originating and destination systems.

Application Presentation Session Transport Network Data Link Physical End System

Application Presentation Session Transport Network Data link Physical

End System

Services at each layer are provided through entities. Similar entities in corresponding layers across systems are called peer entities. A control message is known as a Protocol Data

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Unit(PDU).Requests for services from a higher layer to lower layer are passed in Service Data Units(SDU).The function of each layers are described below.

Physical Layer: The interface between the computer system and the actual physical transmission medium is defined in this layer. This includes aspects such as physical connectors, voltage levels etc.

Data Link Layer: Detection and correction of errors that may have crept in during data transmission across a single span or segment of the communication network are performed in this layer. It includes procedures for establishing identities of communicating parties, data exchange and retransmission in case of errors.

Network Layer: This layer routes information between computer systems which may or may not be connected to the same network. The services at this layer are of two types: • Connectionless - the packets of information traverse across different routes and may be delivered out of order at the destination in a datagram service.

• Connection-oriented – a specific route is always established before communication starts and all data flow on this pre-established route. This is also called virtual circuit.

Transport Layer: End-to-end reliable data transmission is provided in this layer, irrespective of the reliability of the underlying network. It ensures delivery when a message is being relayed across several nodes before reaching its destination and when the message is lost by an intermediate node.

Session Layer: When information is being exchanged between two computer systems, the flow of information is managed by this layer.

Presentation Layer: Internal representation of information differs widely among computer systems.

This layer provides a common presentation of information while it is being exchanged between two computer systems.

Application Layer: This layer provides OSI services such as File Transfer, Electronic Mail, Remote Log-in, Directory Access and Remote Job Entry to users.

1:4:3 Electronic Mail Electronic Mail is the means by which we can electronically get our messages across to one another. Messages can be prepared and sent reliably over communication networks from the desktop computer of the sender to be received at the desktop computer of the recipient. The main components of electronic mail systems are: • User Agent (UA) which allows the user to prepare electronic mail.

• Message Transfer Agent (MTA) which is responsible for routing electronic messages to their destination.

• Message Store (MS) where electronic mail can be stored until it is picked up by the recipient.

MTAs are interconnected to each other to collectively from a message transfer system. The two most popular mail systems are the X.400 based Message Handling System supported by OSI standards and the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) supported over Internet’s TCP/IP protocol.

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Self Assessment Question II: 1.Name the seven layers of the OSI reference model.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------2.What are the two types of services provided in Network Layer?

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------3.What are main components of electronic mail?

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------4.What is the function of session layer?

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------1:5 THE X.400 MESSAGE HANDLING SYSTEM The Consultative Committee on International Telephony and Telegraphy (CCITT) developed the X.400 series of standards recommendations for supporting cross-platform messaging. The purpose of Message Handling System (MHS) is to enable users to exchange messages on a store-and-forward basis with the objective of enabling a standard message format so that the contents can be interpreted correctly in any environment. Messaging networks should be such that messages do not get lost or modified during transmission.

1:5:1 X.400 MHS Functional Model MTA, MS, UA and Access Units (AU) comprise the X.400 Message Handling Systems. The Message Transfer System (MTS) is formed by a collection of interconnected MTAs. A message submitted by the originator is conveyed by the MTS and delivered to the agent, the recipients. It is assisted in the storage of messages by the MS. Then MTS store-andforward message transfer function.

X.400 (1984) message handling system Each X.400 user interfaces with the MTS through an UA. UAs are used by message originators to prepare X.400 messages for submission to the MTA as well as for receiving X.400 messages from the MTA. If the UA of the recipient is registered with the same MTA as that of the originator, then the message is delivered and a delivery notification is generated for being sent to the message originator. The MTA to which the message has to be forwarded is decided based on the routing tables. If the message cannot be delivered, a non-delivered notification is generated at the current MTA and the same is transmitted back to the originator of the message.

The concept of a MS was added in 1988. This was done to alleviate the problem faced by an MTA in delivering a message if the UA was not on-line. With MS , UAs submit and

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receive messages to and from the MS. The MTA also picks up messages from and delivers to the MS.

Access Unit where introduced to ensure that it was possible to interface existing messages technologies.

1:5:2 X.400 Protocols A number of protocols are defined to support X.400 messaging across computers connected over communication networks. These are, • •

• •

Message Transfer Protocol (P1) which is used by MTAs for switching and forwarding messages between interconnected MTAs. Interpersonal Messaging Protocol (P2) which defines the standard for the format of X.400 messages between the originator and the recipient. A P2 comprises a heading and a body. The head contains details of the originator and recipient, message identification and other element. The actual information is sent in the body of the message.

Submission and Delivery Protocol (P3) is used to interconnect the UA with the MTA. Message Store Access Protocol (P7) supports operations to access the Message Store and also allows submission of message by the UA.

1:5:3 X.400 MHS Service Elements The service elements available in X.400 Message Handling System include the following: • • • • • • • •

Delivery Notification Services which are used to indicate delivery or non-delivery of a message.

Receipt Notification Services which are used to indicate the originator of a message whether or not a message been read by the intended recipient(s).

Specification of Recipients. Message can be sent to single or multiple recipients.

Miscellaneous Message Transfer Services Such as submission and/or delivery time stamp indication.

Miscellaneous Inter-personal Messaging (IPM) Service Elements.

Conversion Related Services which allow for conversion of the contents of a message from one type to another.

Distribution List Services which allow the originator to address a message to a Distribution List.

Alternate Recipient Services. If a message cannot be delivered to the recipient, it can be delivered to the alternate recipient, if specified.

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Physical Delivery Services which allow the delivery of message by physical means such as postal delivery, express mail, fax etc.

Message Store Related Services such as auto-forwarding and listing, summarizing, fetching and deleting of stored messages.

Security Services including secure access management, message content integrity etc.

1:5:4 X.400 Management Domains Two different domains are defined for managing X.400 MHS. These are Private Management Domain(PRMD) of organization which operate private X.400 networks for their inhouse communication requirements and the Administrative Management Domain(ADMD) of organizations which are service providers providing communication services to clients. PRMDs and ADMDs operate independently and directly connected to one another.

1:5:5 X.400 Addressing An addressing scheme is referred to as an ORAddress(Originator-Recipient Address). The attributes which are visible to a user are: • Country Name • ADMD Name • PRMD Name • Organization Name • Organization Unit 1 • Organization Unit 2 • Organization Unit 3 • Organization Unit 4 • Personal Name • Common Name • Domain Defined Attribute.

The X.400 address of a user named Ram Kumar could therefore specified as: C=IN;A=NICMAIL400;O=NIC;OU1=EDI;S=KUMAR;G=RAM. Here C stands for Country, A for ADMD, O for Organization and OUI for Organization Unit 1. The personal name has been broken up into S for surname and G for Given name.

The Domain Defined Attribute (DDA) is the only attribute of the ORAddress which is case sensitive.

Self Assessment Question III: 1. Mention the purpose of Message Handling System.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------2. Name some of the protocol that support X.400 messaging.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------3. What are the two different domains defined for managing X.400 MHS. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------4. Explain the address scheme of X.400 MHS. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

1:6 INTERNET MAIL The Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) of the US government’s Department of Defense set up the ARPANET in the late 1960’s while exploring new

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communication technologies. As a result of continued research and development the communication protocols used in the ARPANET formed the basis of the development of the widely known TCP/IP (Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol) suite of protocols. The IP defines unique address fro each computer on the Internet. The TCP part of the Internet Protocol suite takes the information sent by a user and divides it into smaller packets.

The addressing scheme on the Internet uses the Internet Numbers based on the 32-bit IP address, consisting of four 8-bit group joined by a period, each with a value of less than 256. For example, 194.80.1.4, 211.144.100.198 and 124.100.98.14 are typical addresses. The first two or three parts of the address represents network a system is on, called its subnet.

The right end of the address specifies the host on which the addressee would receive his E-mail. The structure of a user address looks like : User’s E-Mail address on a computer : Computer Name:

user@somewhere.domain somewhere.domain

The ‘user’ is generally the person’s account name on the system. The computer’s name somewhere.domain signifies the name of the system or location, and the kind of organization.

This kind of address is known as a Fully Qualified Domain Name (FQDN). The computers on the internet know one another through the Domain Name Server (DNS) database. TCP/IP allows the Internet to provide a reliable full duplex data and graphics transfer, and lately multimedia transfer too.

• Addressing • Connection Establishment • Connection Release • Data flow control • Routing and Management • Name Control and Translation • Status Translation and Communication • Fragmentation and Reassembly • Delivery The Internet is coordinated by the Internet Architecture Board (IAB). Network Information Centre (NIC) provides Internet registration services including IP address allocation, domain name registration, and Autonomous System Number Assignment. The most important ‘traditional’ services offered over TCP/IP are: File Transfer: The file transfer protocol(FTP) allows a user on any computer to get files from one computer or to send files to another computer. Security is handled by requiring the user to specify a user name and password for the other computer. The target system may allow access to certain directories of files.

Remote Login: The network terminal protocol (TELNET) allow user to login to any other computer on the network by specifying the computer to connect to. Once connected, all inputs are meant for the destination computer. When the telnet program exits, the user is back on the local computer.

Electronic mail: Using the simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP), messages can be sent to users on other computers on the network. Data to be sent on TCP/IP is split up into packets, each containing addressing information. These packets are then sent from one node of the network to another until the final destination is reached. At the destination these are all sequenced and collated together before being delivered.

1:6:1 Internet Addresses Internet addresses are 32-bit numbers, normally written as 4 octets. E.g.

128.6.4.7. There are three different types of address classes A, B, and C, specifying both the network and the host within the network.

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Class A addresses go from 1 to 126 and use only the first octet for the network number. The other three octets are available for the host number. Thus 24 bits are available for hosts.

Class B addresses uses the first two octets for the network number. Thus network numbers are 128.1 through 191.254. The last two octets are available foe host addresses, giving 16 bits of host address.

Class C addresses use three octets, in the range 194.1.1 to 223.254.254. These allow only 254 hosts on each network.

In Internet addresses, 0 and 255 have special meanings. Zero is reserved for machines that do not know their address. For example 0.0.0.23 would be a machine that knew its host number 23 but did not know on which network. 255 is used for “broadcast’.

The Simple Mail Transfer Protocol This protocol is used in TCP/IP networks for transferring electronic mail messages between end user computers and mail servers. SMTP is used only when both the mail sender and receiver are ready at the same time. If the destination PC is not connected, then a post office must be used to temporarily store the mail. A post office protocol (POP) must then be used to retrieve the mail. To provide the relay capability, the SMTP server must be supplied with the name of the ultimate destination host as well as the destination mailbox name.

Multipurpose Internet Mail Extension Multipurpose Internet Mail Extension (MIME) standard was developed to enable binary data to be sent files, such as spreadsheets, word processing documents, images etc to Email messages. The extension in the filename indicates the type of the file. When the MIME message reaches the destination, which must support MIME, an icon is displayed to indicate the type of MIME attachment.

The Post Office Protocol The Post Office Protocol (POP) allows UAs to access hosts so that E-mail messages that have been received can be retrieved and outbound messages can be uploaded to the server for onward transmission. Extensive manipulation of mail is not allowed at the server and once the mail has been downloaded on the UA system, it is deleted from the SMTP server.

Internet Mail Access Protocol The Internet Message Access Protocol (IMAP), allows a client to access and manipulate electronic mail message on a server. It permits manipulation of remote message folders, called ‘mailboxes’ in a way that is functionally equivalent to local mailboxes. IMAP includes operations for creating, deleting, and renaming mailboxes; checking for new messages etc. Messages are access by the use of numbers. These numbers are message sequence numbers or unique number.

Domain Naming System The Domain Naming System (DNS) is the distributed hierarchical naming system for resources within the Internet community. A node on the DNS tree can be named by traversing the tree from itself to the root. At each node, the name is added and a period (‘.’) appended to it until the root is reached. Each node can have any number of child nodes but only one parent node.

1:6:2 E-Mail security Security of E-mail messages essentially revolves around providing capability for encryption and signing messages. The major E-mail security protocols are Pretty Good Privacy (PGP), Secure MIME(S/MIME) and PGP/MIME. PGP standard for E-mail encryption on the Internet, supporting encryption, decryption, signing, verification and key management based on

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two-key cryptosystems. S/MIME tries to integrate MIME with the Public Key Crypto System (PKCS) standard.

The Message Security Protocol MSP is a protocol for providing security services for X.400-based electronic messaging. MSP is an application layer protocol which operates between the originator and recipients of messages. MSP defines, for an x.400 message, new message content type which includes the security heading as well as the protected original content. For message delivery, the recipient user agent may either form a direct association with the MTA or may use a message store. The message store provides a repository for incoming messages when the UA is unavailable and also provides the UA with information on delivered messages to support selective processing. The security services provided by this protocol include: Confidentiality, Data Origin Authentication, Integrity, and Access Control.

Non-repudiation with proof of origin.

Non-repudiation with proof of delivery.

MSP is designed to provide these services for messages sent to one or more recipients. The MSP operates by performing security operations on X.400 messages at the originator and recipient UAs. 1:6:3 X.500 Directory Services The need for a common directory to keep track of all messaging addresses resulted in the development of the X.500 series of recommendations on Directory Services by the ISO/CCITT in the year 1988 and republished with modifications in 1993. X.500 series comprises a series of Directory Systems Agents (DSAs) which are interconnected to form a Directory Information Base (DIB). DIB Services are provided to other DSAs or to users through Directory Users Agents (DUAs).

X.500 directory system The Directory is implemented as a distributed Database. The protocol through which a DUA accesses one or more DSAs is the Directory Access Protocol (DAP), whereas the protocol that DSAs use to talk to each other is the Directory System Protocol (DSP). The organizational model of a Directory Service Provider comprises Private Directory Management (PRDMD) and Administrative Directory Management Domains (ADDMD).

The DIB consists of a collection of objects which in turn consists of a collection of attributes. These objects are structured hierarchically in a Directory Information Tree(DIT). X.500 follows a hierarchical naming structure. AN example of a name is as follows: CN= DEbjani Nag; O=National informatics Centre; C =IN. This name represents the person with common name (CN) within the organization (O) and within country (C). The operations to access and manage data in the X.500 directory are: • Read • Compare • Search • Add • Delete • Modify The major changes made in 1993 are:

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Replication using Directory Information Shadowing Protocol (DISP).

Access Control in view of data replication.

Changes to the internal operations and management features.

1:6:4 Mail User Agent E-Mail User Agent help the user in sending and receiving electronic mail. On the main screen of any E-mail User Agent, there will be a column which displays all folders belonging to the user. Folders are used to file copies of electronic mail sent or received by the user. Some folders come pre-built within the E-mail client such as ‘In’ where mail is received, ’Out’ where copies of E-mail messages are stored and ‘Trash’ for discarded messages. On selecting a folder, the headers of all the messages that are stored in that folder are displayed in a split window. The bottom half displays the contents of the particular message that has been selected in this folder.

When a message has been selected, the following buttons can be used: Reply: Automatically, the address of the sender from whom the mail has been received is picked up and presented in the ‘To’ component of the new message.

Forward: The user is presented a message window in which the ‘To’ component has to be filled up to identify the recipient of the forwarded message.

File in folder: This option is used for filling away E-mail message into desired folders.

Print: The contents of the currently selected E-mail message can be printed using this option.

Security: If messages are to be made secure by incorporating confidentially and authentication, this option is used.

Delete: To delete the currently selected message in the open folder, this option is used.

Some of the most popular and widely used E-mail clients are the following: • America Online • CompuServe • Eudora • Lotus Mail • Microsoft Outlook • Microsoft Outlook Express • Netscape Navigator Self Assessment Question IV: 1. What are services offered over TCP/IP? -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------2. Mention the three types of address used in the Internet Addresses.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------3. Define SMTP. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------4. Define POP. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------5. What is the use of the MSP? -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------6. List out the operations in the X.500 Directories.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------7. Explain the buttons used when message is selected.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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1:7 SUMMARY EDI and EC will change the way business and commerce are conducted.

Electronic documents will substitute paper documents. For an organization to be able to retain its market position, it has become imperative to deploy IT and network-based solutions. Electronic mail and Directory Services are very important technology tools used in Electronic Commerce.

Many Network Service Providers have been using electronic mail for transferring EDI content.

X.400-based electronic mail will be used for some years to come. The user can make choices based on availability of services.

Answer for Self Assessment Questions I.

1.Electronic Commerce is associated with buying and selling of information,

and services over computer communication

products

networks.

2. Time is reduced Data is not repeatedly entered Labour cost can be reduced.

3. Production costs and inventory costs are reduced 4. Value Added Network(VAN) is defined as a telecommunication

network

processes or transforms data and information.

5. One way is EDI over the Internet and the other way is World Wide

Web

(WWW) 6. Web servers and Web browsers 7. VAN charactertics are integrity, confidentiality, non-repudiation

and

authentication 8. CommerceNet is a group of companies which is promoting the use

of Internet for

EC.

II.

1. Bus, Star, Ring, Mesh and Tree 2. In the event of a channel failure between two nodes, the entire

network

goes

receive

and

down.

3. No 4. Reliability of network is improved.

5. Twisted pair cable, co-axial cable, optical fibres and satellite.

6. Very Small Aperture Terminal (VSAT) is an end-user equipment to send data, images, voice and video over the satellite

network.

7. They are, Frequency Division Multiple Access (FDMA) Time Division Multiple Access (TDMA) Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) Frequency Time Division Multiple Access (FTDMA)

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1. The seven layers are, Application Layer Presentation Layer Session Layer Transport Layer Network Layer Data link Layer Physical Layer 2. Connectionless and Connection-oriented are the two services.

3. The main components of E-mail are User Agent (UA) Message Transfer Agent (MTA) Message Store (MS) 4. The flow of information is managed by this layer.

IV.

1. The purpose of the MHS is to enable users to exchange

messages on a store-

and-forward basis.

2. Some protocols are, •

Message Transfer Protocol

• Interpersonal Messaging Protocol • Submission and Delivery Protocol • Message Store Access Protocol 3. Two different domains are, Private Management Domain

(PRMD)

and

Administrative Management Domain (ADMD) 4. An address in the X.400 scheme is referred to as an ORAddress.

V.

1. File Transfer, Remote login and Electronic mail 2. Classes A, Classes B and Classes C address.

3. SMTP is used in TCP/IP network for transferring electronic mail

messages

between end user computers and mail servers.

4. POP allows UAs to access hosts.

5. MSP is a protocol for providing security services for X.400 based

electronic

messaging.

6. Read, compare, search, add, delete and modify.

7. The buttons are, Reply, Forward, Print and security etc.

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UNIT 2 INTERNET, INTRANET AND ELECTRONIC DATA INTERCHANGE UNIT STRUCTURE 2:0 Introduction 2:1 Objective 2:2 Internet Communication Protocols 2:3 Internet Services and Resources 2:3:1. Internet mail 2:3:2. Internet Search 2:3:3 Concerns about the Internet 2:3:4. Browsers 2:3:5 Hypertext Markup Language Self Assessment Questions I 2:4 JAVA 2:4:1. The Java Electronic Commerce Framework 2:4:2. Internet 2 2:4:3. Intranet 2:4:4. Intranet Implementation 2:4:5 The Webmaster Self Assessment Questions II 2:5 Electronic Data Interchange 2:5:1 Costs and benefits 2:5:2 Components of EDI System 2:5:3. EDI Implementation Issues 2:5:4 Legal Aspects Self Assessment Questions III 2:6 Summary

Answer for self assessment questions

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INTRODUCTION

The Internet, a group of worldwide information highways and resources, is enabling the world to truly become an information society. Its origin can be traced from the Advanced Research Project Agency(ARPA) of the US Department of Defence (DOD). Electronic mail over ARPAnet was a great success. The National Science Foundation (NSF) took over the network in the mid 1980’s.In 1987, the NSF created NSFnet. NSF upgraded the lines to 56 Kbps to connect the five supercomputer. Upgradation of NSFnet is done by the IBM and MCI. With this upgrading the Internet moved to modern computers and faster links, such as T1 (1.544 Mbps) and T3 (44.7 Mbps). Today, the Internet has two types of backbone: NSFnet and commercial Internet. The commercial Internet comprises several private backbones run by a number of Internet Services Providers (ISPs). The users have to pay for Internet services fro access through these routes. It was only in 1991 that a set of small commercial networks, created the Commercial Internet Exchange (CIX) for commercial use. The Internet is neither run nor owned by anyone. The advantages are: • no membership fees • no censorship • no government control The Internet basic workings are: The Internet Engineering Task Force IETF coordinates the operation, management, and evolution of the internet.

The Internet Research Task Force IRTF is concerned with the long-term research problems and technical issues confronting the Internet.

The Internet Architecture Board IAB concerns itself with technical and policy issues involving the evolution of the Internet’s architecture. There is another organization called the Internet Society which is considered as the ‘parent’ of the IAB. The Internet Service Providers have Network Entry Points (NEP) or Point-ofPresence (POP) through which users can get connected to the Internet. The ISPs are thus required to provide connections of various types and speed. The connections to the Internet fall within the following categories: Dedicated Connection : A leased telephone line at 56 Kbps or 64 Kbps or a T1 link at 1.544 Mbps connects a gateway computer of a corporate LAN/WAN to the router of an ISP. On-demand Connection: This is more like a dedicated connection except that the user has to dial-up the ISP using a modem or an ISDN. Dial-up Shell Account: A Single user is connected with a PC to the ISPs computer. The user has to manually download his data from the ISP’s computer using a protocol such as X-Modem, Z-Modem or Kermit.

Serial Line Internet Protocol (SLIP) or Point-to-Point(PPP) Account: The SLIP/PPP account is more like an on-demand type of a connection for a single-user PC. All the client application can be run directly from the PC. Part-time Connection: This connection is based on the Unix-to-Unix Copy Protocol (UUCP). A user organization may dial an ISP at periodic intervals, and transfer its mail etc. A single UUCP connection enables an organization to serve several mail user.

2:1 OBJECTIVE Make use of internet communication protocols for communicating between the traders.

Internet services are provided with the help of the resources Electronic mail is used to transfer the information in business

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Internet and Intranet are enabled to exchange the data Components of EDI systems are used for electronic data interchange Legal issues and aspects are well described.

2:2 INTERNET COMMUNICATION PROTOCOLS A Communication Protocol allows different kinds of computers using different operating systems to communicate with one another. In 1970s ARPAnet switched to a new protocol called the Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) and by 1983 all computers on the ARPAnet were using this protocol. UNIX system developed the UUCP protocol to network themselves into a network called UUCPNET. UNIX systems were later equipped to communicate using either TCP/IP or UUCP and to transfer data from one protocol to another. A system could receive data by TCP/IP and transmit it out by UUCP, or vice versa. This system acted as a gateway or a bridge between networks.

UUCP is a point-to-point protocol designed for communicating over telephone and serial lines. The UUCP program allows the transfer of files between remote computers and to execute commands on remote computers. When UUCP commands are executed, work files and any data files needed are ‘spooled’ in /usr/spool/uucp and its subdirectories. The uucico program scans these directories for the instructions contained in any work files and executes them. The uucp traffic is managed by three supervisory programs called; ‘daemons’ which run in the background, handling, file transfer and command executions. Uucico selects the device used for the link.

Uuxqt performs remote program execution. When an execution file is found, uuxqt opens it to get the list of data files that are required for the execution. It then checks to see if the required data files are available and accessible Uuxqt also verifies that it has permission to execute the requested command. Uusched schedules the queued work in the spool directories.

When a UUCP command is entered, the program creates a work file and usually a data file for the requested transfer. After these files are created in the spool directory, the uucico daemon is started.

2:3 INTERNET SERVICES AND RESOURCES There are innumerable information resources located on any number of services on the Internet. Information explosion on the Internet is fast becoming a threat. The Internet community has developed new ways of communicating in the Internet space or cyberspace.

Internet can be broadly classified into two groups of services: • Communicating in cyberspace.

• Locating and retrieving information.

2:3:1. Internet mail Electronic mail enables one to send information in the form os letters, messages, advertisements, spreadsheets, game program, binary files, multimedia data files across the Net to one more Internet addresses. E-mail on the Internet is inexpensive, volume-independent and distance-independent. E-mail comprises Mail Servers on the Internet, and Mail User Agent or Mail Reader at the user-end, The mail servers are based on various protocols: Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP), Unix-to-Unix-copy (UUCP), Post Office Protocol (POP).

The Mail User Agent software running on a PC or a terminal is used to compose and send mail via a server, retrieve mail from a server and display the same on the users screen.

It can perform variety of functions to make mail management. Internet Mail UAs may use POP or some proprietary Protocol such as Microsoft-Mail or CC: Mail.

The Mail UA can also process attached files using proprietary formats, within a message, or the Multipurpose Internet Mail Extension (MIME) Protocol which has developed into an Internet standard. There are other ways of communicating on the Internet as follows:

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Usenet News The Usenet news is similar to an electronic bulletin board. These bulletin boards are referred to as newsgroups. There are over 10,000 newsgroups carried by major ISPs. Newsgroups may be free form, i.e. anyone can post a message on it.

Starting with first experimental Usenet group in 1979 by the University of North Carolina, and the Duke University, USA, there has been a virtual explosion in the sites that carry Usenet. There are several uses of Usenet News. One can post one’s question on a new software package, on a newsgroup. Someone will respond with solutions.

Mailing Lists Usenet group is open to all, but if the interest is confined to a smaller domain, a mailing list may be used. Discussion group or announcement group of a specific nature generally use mailing lists. Usually servers allow more and more users to enlist themselves in the mailing lists by sending an E-mail message. Normally there is no charge for use of a mailing list.

However, the sender can charge for use of a mailing list e.g. E-magazines. An organization could use a mailing list to broadcast EDI messages such as RFQs (Request For Quote) to its potential vendors.

Internet Relay Chat The IRC service on the internet differs from Usenet in that the chat or discussion takes place in real-time. It was developed in 1988 by J.Oikarimen in Finland, the IRC offers a unique type of talking experience on the Net. The IRC network on the internet consists of multiple interconnected servers. The IRC service comprises a number of channels: public, private, secret or invisible. The user’s interaction with his system known as the IRC client. IRCIIWIN, WS-IRC and WINIRC are some of the well-known IRC clients.

Internet Talking The internet ‘live’ audio/video service allows a user’s computer to connect to other users computers on the Internet. The messages are exchanged in real-time by these users as soon as they are typed by any of them. A program executed in background, called the ‘talk daemon’ handles the actual communication service. Once the connection is made, the talk daemon divides each users screen into two halves by drawing horizontal line in the middle. The local user’s keyboard strokes are captured in the upper half, while the typed text of the remote user is displayed on the lower half of the screen. If there is more than one users in the talk mode, the ‘ytalk’ program divides each user’s screen into as many partitions as the number of Users.

2:3:2. Internet Search The Internet is an enormous source of information, locating and retrieving information are the key problems. Major tools of the Internet can be divided into the following groupings: • ‘Telnet’, rlogin’, and ‘rsh’ • File Transfer Protocol(FTP), and Archie • Gopher and Veronica • Wide area Information Service(WAIS) • Hypertext Transfer Protocol(HTTP) • WHOIS • World Wide Web(WWW) Telnet This is a very popular Internet service which enables a user to log into another computer to run software there. Telnet is a program which allows a computer to establish a session with a remote host on the Internet. Many public services can be accessed using Telnet.

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Once a user has logged into the remote server, he can execute various commands to operate the host system.

File Transfer Protocol FTP is a tool that is used to transfer data/files among computer on the Internet.

FTP is a program which enables one to login to an account on a remote computer in order to send files to it, or receive files from it. Ts is very useful for sharing information by moving files between computers. The files may be of any type : text, graphics multimedia or binary files.

FTP is a collection of programs which includes both clients and server software.

The server provides a specific resource, and the client makes it. The interaction is between an FTP client programs on a local computer with the FTP server program on a remote host on the Internet. There is another facility that enables an Internet user to access files without being registered on the FTP server. This is called Anonymous FTP. The user signs in an Anonymous, and accesses directories which are open to the public. The world of Anonymous FTP includes free software, books, magazines, weather pictures and so on.

Archie The information archives on the Internet can be searched for the right data, information and magazines, using a tool called Archie. The vast number of FTP servers is archived on a number of Archie servers on the Internet.

Archie is merely an indexing mechanism similar to that in a library. A user wishing to search a file goes to the Archie server, looks for the file name, locates the FTP server on which it is located, and then using FP downloads it.

Gopher Gopher is a powerful search tool based on a client-server system That permits a user to access Internet resources. It is a menu-based approach for wading through and browsing the Internet. Gopher provides the user with menu-listed items representing text files. Each menu contains selections with one-line text descriptions. A Gopher menu selection could be: 1. a file containing text 2. any other type of documents 3. access to another program, e.g. FTP, Telnet, or 4. any other menu.

The files on a Gopher server are structured into a hierarchy of menus that users navigate by using some combination of arrow keys, ether keys, mouse clicks or selecting by a number. An Internet user can access a Gopher server by using Gopher client software on his/her computer, that helps display the received files and menus.

Veronica Veronica is at level higher than Gopher, it is a system that indexes the entire set of Gopher menu items, thereby making the search for specific information faster. It is an acronym for a Very Easy Rodent-Oriented Net-wide Index to Computerized Archives.

Wide Area Information Service (WAIS) WAIS in another Internet service which uses a client-server system, and enables an Internet user to search collections of data information sources, which are maintained by a WAIS server program. The WAIS program on the user’s computer accesses a public WAIS server on the Internet where the search is conducted. WAIS as a search engine has evolved from the library and computing communities, based essentially on a project by Apple Computers, Thinking Machines, and Dow Jones. WAIS can be used to provide search access to collections of audio, video, image, and multimedia information.

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WHOIS WHIOS is a program that can be used to find information on users and sites on the Internet. A client WHOIS program on a computer can initiate search on a WHOIS server and present the result. One can also Telnet to a public WHOIS server to get content information about the desired users or Internet sites.

World Wide Web The World Wide Web (WWW) or the Web is a system for organizing , linking, and providing point-and-click access among related Internet files, resources and services. The Web is an Internet-based navigational system, an information distribution and management system with tremendous potential for commerce. The Web has become an integral part of the Internet. The computer-based information programs that enable Web navigation are hypertext or hypermedia.

The hypertext refers to computer-based documents in which cross-references are embedded within documents and other entities. The hypermedia links connect to visuals such as graphics, audio etc. The hypermedia documents thus get presented on a PC with excellent visuals. Like other Internet services, the web service also uses the client-server model. The client is known as the web browser. It is a tool that enables an Internet user to access many services and resources on the Internet.

The Web facility on the Internet is made up of a collection of servers and clients that can exchange information. The web is a distributed system, since pieces of information are stored on different Web servers worldwide in the HyperText Markup Language (HTML). These are communicated with one another or to a client in the HyperText Transmission Protocol (HTTP). The web browser. On the other hand, opens a connection to a remote computer, the Website, and retrieves the initial information, and quickly close the link. The first information that gets from a remote Web site is known as a Home Page. The links or hyperlinks, which define the hypertext or hypermedia documents, are actual live links. The hidden addresses are called Uniform Resource Locator (URLs). URLs represent a link to almost every document, file and resource on the Internet. The WWW is a distributed system with millions of users and an equal number of Web authors, who contribute to this electronic warehouse.

2:3:3 Concerns About The Internet There are some major issues with the Internet. They are, • robustness • reliability • bandwidth • security Robustness Internet must be robust. In the commercial world, an EDI message cannot be allowed to bounce back undelivered. A document reported missing by a trading partner is unacceptable. Internet was created as a robust infrastructure since its design was based on the stringent requirements of the military. It is indeed robust, since the TCP/IP suite of protocols and the underlying architecture of the internet are stable and mature.

Reliability Some of the existing characteristics of the Internet and proposed initiatives for reliable transmission of EC messages over the Internet include the following: • • • •

Special authentication/non-repudiation programs would fetch delivery and receipt reports.

Protocols and tools exist for diagnosing problems across the interconnected systems.

A dedicated Internet connection is recommended to transmit information via SMTP. For high-reliability applications, redundant ISPs with separate backbones and redundant mail servers at separate locations are recommended.

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An IETF initiative is working on the Reservation setup Protocol (RSVP) with the objective of allowing Internet application to obtain special quality-of-service for their data flows by reserving resources along the data path.

Bandwidth The number of connections to the Internet continues to grow everyday. More and more people are getting hooked to surfing the Net. The hype around the Internet has been created by every computer company, from Netscape to Microsoft, from IBM to Oracle, from Sun to Digital and so on. Everyone is busy creating new and easier ways of connecting to the Net, from Network PC to connected PC. The result of all this hype is exponentially increasing traffic.

The Internet is already getting chocked. The Internet bandwidth needs to be augmented substantially to assure commercial users of its availability when they need it. Nations are moving in the direction of setting up National Information Infrastructures(NII), high bandwidth information highways, to link with Global Information Infrastructure(GII).

Security Security of transactions is of paramount concern to the commercial world. Internet is an open network which can be invaded by hackers and criminals from all quarters. The intermediate nodes, through which the message packets get routed, are extremely vulnerable to security breaches. Secure Electronic Transaction (SET) protocol has been designed to make credit card transactions on the Internet fully secure.

2:3:4 Browsers Web browsers are used for browsing through Web Pages on the Internet websites. Early browsers displayed web pages containing text and links to other web pages. The pages were stored as HTML files. When Netscape launched its browser, it made a great impact as image files could be downloaded could also be displayed even before the entire page had been downloaded. This was followed by the capability to include animated images, so that moving pictures could also be included in web pages.

Finally, it is Netscape’s Navigator and Microsoft’s Internet Explorer that have emerged as the top ranking Web browsers. Both of these offer a core set of features conforming to HTML, so that text, images and links can be handled. While Netscape’s Navigator is available on all platforms, Internet Explorer is tailored for the Windows environment.

2:3:5 Hypertext Markup Language The HyperText Markup Language (HTML), is a language used to prepare documents which are accessible over the World Wide Web. In HTML ASCII codes are used to identify both the content and its presentation format. As such, any text editor can be used to create HTML documents. In HTML, markup tags, bracketed between ‘<’ and ‘>’ symbols, are used to decide on the presentation of documents. The markup tags are usually paired, with an ending tag starting with a slash (</[tag]>).m Depending on the version of HTML bring used, there are specific components that must be included in any HTML documents.

One of the powerful features of HTML is that of being able to link to documents on other computers. These documents are identified based on the Uniform Resource Locator (URL).

The URL can be thought of as a networked extension of the standard filename concept. The URL contains three parts: access protocol, machine name and path information of the document in the format.

Protocol://machine. name/directory/document The URL used for sending E-mail is in the format: mailto :<login@host> Hypertext Transfer Protocol

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HyperText Transfer Protocol (HTTP) is used to transfer HTML documents across the Internet. HTTP provides a means of transparently moving from document to document and indexing within a document. The background actions that occur when a user click a link on a HTML Page are, • The client browser uses HTTP commands to communicate with the HTTP server through a reference provided by the URL • A TCP/IP connection is established from the client to the server.

• A request message is sent by the browser client to the server computer.

• The server sends a response message with the requested data to the client. Messages are passed in a format similar to that used by Internet Mail and MIME. • The connection is terminated.

The status message is returned by the server and includes the message’s protocol version, a success or error code, and a message.

Self Assessment Question I 1. Internet is very expensive and distance-dependent. True or False ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------2. Name some of the major tools of the internet.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------3.What are the major issues with the Internet?

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------4. HTML is ----------------------------------------------------------------------------5. HTTP is used to transfer HTML documents across the Internet. Yes or No. 2:4 JAVA Java evolved around a Sun Microsystems research project started in the early 1990s. Reliability is a much more important factor. This resulted in the creation of a new language called Oak in August 1991. As the technology developed Oak was renamed Java in January, 1995. Java is an object-oriented, network-capable programming language. All variables and methods are defined within objects or classes. Java program can run as stand-alone applications or as applets running under a Java capable browser. An applet is written in the Java language, Compiled and called from an HTML Web page. An application written in the Java language, complied and called from the command line or from another program. Java is complied into bytecode which runs on a virtual machine available on many platforms. Both applets and applications run on this interpreter -the Java virtual machine.

The Java Development Kit (JDK) runs under Solaris, Windows NT and Windows 95. Applications written in Java will run anywhere, eliminating incompatibility between operating system and versions of operating systems.

2:4:1. The Java Electronic Commerce Framework The Java Electronic Commerce Framework (JECF) of Sun is a secure and extensible framework for conducting business both on the Internet and within corporate intranets.

The JECF creates a secure, flexible, software framework for purchasing, banking and finance that runs on any hardware platform, from environments as small as smart cards to ones as large as IBM mainframes. It provides support for multiple payments mechanisms.

The Java Wallet is a client-site application distributed as a core component of the Java environment. The Java Wallet provides a Graphical User Interface (GUI) for commerce on the Internet to executer secure transactions using a variety of payment methods. The Wallet also contains a secure database of transaction information that can be accessed by Cassettes to record and edit transaction. Cassettes are Java packages that can be distributed and installed on a consumer’s Wallet. The appropriate Java Cassette can be used to access the secure database and record the payment with the credit card company in real-time.

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2:4:2. Internet 2 To ensure that the academic world on the Internet continues to get fast access, a group of universities started work on a joint project called Internet 2. Internet 2 was the result of a 1995 meeting of higher education CIOs and government and industry network leaders. Recently, a new company, the University Corporation for Advanced Internet Development (UCAID), was formed to serve as a support umbrella for Internet 2.

Internet 2 plans to connect universities at rates up to a gigabit per second. Internet 2 links are being built on top of existing Internet links including the vBNS (very high-speed Backbone Network Service). The vBNS is an existing backbone, originally designed to connect a few supercomputing sites. The goal is to allow applications to exchange data at 100Mbps from end to end. At these rates, the network requires very fast switches-thus the ‘gigapop’, a Point of Presence (POP) that can route a gigabit per second. A big goal of the project is transferring the technology to industry for general deployment.

The Internet 2 project is expected to bring focus, energy and resources to the development of a new family of advanced applications to meet emerging academic requirements in research, teaching and learning. Internet 2 addresses major challenges facing the next generation of university networks by: • Creating and sustaining a leading-edge network capability for the national research community.

• Directing network development efforts to enable a new generation of applications to fully exploit the capabilities of broadband networks media integration, interactivity, real-time collaboration to name a few.

• Integrating the work of Internet 2 with ongoing efforts to improve production Internet services for all members of the academic community.

The goal of the Internet 2 are: • • • • • • • •

Demonstrate new applications that can dramatically enhance researcher’s ability to collaborate and conduct experiments.

Support development and adoption of advanced applications by providing middleware and development tools.

Facilitate development, deployment and operation of an affordable communications infrastructure, capable of supporting differentiated Quality of Service (QoS) based on application requirements of the research and education community.

Promote experiments with the next generation of communication technologies.

Coordinate adoption of agreed working standards and common practices among participating institutions to ensure end-to-end quality of service and interoperability.

Catalyze partnerships with governmental and private sector organizations.

Encourage transfer of technology from Internet 2 to the rest of the Internet 2.

Study the impact of new infrastructure, services and applications on higher education and the Internet community in general.

2:4:3. Intranet Technology to fulfill the internal information flow requirements of organizations gave birth to the ‘intranet’. Intranets use Internet technology to deliver an organization’s internal information. This includes integration of E-mail, FTP, Mail Server(s) and Web Server(s) with the internal applications. Web Servers are the most visible part of the intranet. The Objective of an intranet is to organize each individual’s desktop with minimal cost, time and effort to be more productive, cost-efficient, timely and competitive. Intranets connect people together with Internet technology, using web servers, web browsers and data warehouses in a single view.

Though it uses Internet technology, an intranet does not have to be connected to the Internet. However, moving mail and the other information across the Internet o clients and partners might be needed, so as Internet connection may be desirable. The difference between Internet and intranet are, • The internet starved of bandwidth whereas intranet have no bandwidth issues.

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•

An application designed for the intranet may be choked on the Internet. The internet may run in a flash on an intranet.

• Security is major issues in Internet but Intranet are secured and confined to organization.

Intranet provides a lot of choice and flexibility by good quality of being developed on open standards and protocols. Security is provided in the intranet environment through the deployment of protocols such as Secure Sockets Layer (SSL), Secure Electronic Transactions (SET) and Secure MIME (S/MIME) to provide confidentiality, data integrity, authentication and digital signatures. Access o internal information systems from outside can be regulated through the installation of Firewalls. Times of India implemented the first intranet in the country in the year 1996.

Intranet Services An intranet provides Internet services within an organization. Intranet client is a universal browser using TCP/IP protocol. The requirements or services may include the following: • • • • •

Mail Services.

File Transfer Web Transfer Audio Services.

Video Services.

The key is to set up an intranet which incorporates in its design the concept of the universal browser as the touchstone for a vendor-independent implementation based on non-proprietary networking standards. The essential components of an intranet include the following: • • • •

A network.

TCP/IP on servers and clients.

Hardware for hosting intranet services.

Software – Mail server as the minimum _ web server for hosting Web pages.

• Mail servers.

• Browsers.

The optional are, • HTML editors • Productivity tools which are Web-aware • E-mail Remote User Agents • Proxy servers • CGI • Java • ActiveX While the essential components will make an intranet operational, it is optional elements that make it truly useful by delivering all, or most of the intended intranet services. The intranet achieves the following in an organization: • • • • • • • • •

Reduced costs Reduced telephone expenses Faster access Increased access to competitive information Latest, up to date research base Easier access to customers and partners Collaborative, group working Increased accuracy and timeless of information Just-in-time information.

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2:4:4. Intranet Implementation The intranet is best in phased manner. The existing databases and software applications should also be integrated into the intranet. The important steps to implementation are the following: Planning : The scope of services and facilities, mail, websites, homepages departmentwise, personal, administration of the site, layout of pages, connecting with existing databases and applications, dial up access to intranet and connecting with the Internet.

Subnet: The detailed planning of the intranet, with all its subnets. If the number if servers and clients is large, there may be many subnet.

Servers and Software: Server hardware platforms and the software that will be used on them for hosting mail and Web services need to be finalized.

Operating System: Choose an operating system from the following popular server operating systems – Unix, Linux, windows NT, Netware, Mac OS, OS/2, AS/400. The choice of the operating system will determine the software requirements of the Web server, mail server etc.

Proxy servers: If the intranet requirements include the users connected on it to have to share a single Internet dial-up connection on the network, A proxy server is essential. It is the proxy server that dials into the Internet connection and all the nodes access the Internet through it.

Content Creation Software: HTML editors, Web-enabled office productivity tools would be essential on client machines which have already been equipped with browser and Email software.

Training: Train the users on mail and Web applications. Show them how to use discussion group, how to convert their existing documents and report for the intranet.

Existing Databases: Set up a group of programmers to study the existing database, and to Web-enable them for intranet.

Web Publishing: The Web is like a magazine, and content creation is like Web publishing. The content have to be catchy, easy to access and up-to-date.

2:4:5 The Webmaster Intranets have generally come to be managed in organizations by managers who have been christened as Webmasters. In the intranet world, the Webmaster is responsible for the setting up and maintenance of a company’s internal or external website. The Webmaster is responsible for the creation and maintenance of intranet servers and services and also responsible for updating the content of the websites, mail directories, integrating with databases, connection with the internet, and so on.

The Webmaster has to know the organization’s business very well, besides being familiar with the Internet and being thorough with programming languages and network technology. Webmaster must be able to work with the organization’s intranet committee, since intranet is expected to change methods of working. The greatest ability is that of a desire to learn and acquire new skills. In larger organizations, several people collectively may act as the webmaster or as an intranet team. Central control is necessary for logical server administration, which involves the security of the intranet, website creation and content. The Webmaster can enable internet application to be ready for EC through the internet gateway. It is in this role that an intranet becomes ad extranet.

Self Assessment Questions II 1. What is Java?

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------2. An Intranet provides internet services within an organization. Yes or No. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------3. Name the essential components of an intranet ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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4. What are the benefits of an Intranet?

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------2:5 ELECTRONIC DATA INTERCHANGE Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) is the electronic exchange of business documents in a standard, computer-processable, universally accepted format between trading partners. In EDI. The computer applications of both the sender and the receiver, referred to as Trading Partners (TPs) have to agree upon the format of the business document which is sent as a data file over an electronic messaging service.

Once data is entered into the buyer’s computer system and transmitted electronically, the same data gets entered into the seller’s computer, without the need for rekeying or re-entry. This is normally referred to as application-to-application EDI. The repeated keying of identical information in the traditional paper-based business communication creates a number of problems that can be significantly reduced through the usage of EDI. The problems include: • increased time • low accuracy • high labour charges • increased uncertainty EDI consists of standardized electronic message formats for common business documents such as Request for Quotation, Purchase Order, Purchase Order Change, Bill of Landing, Receiving Advice, Invoice, and similar documents. These electronic transaction sets enable the computer in an organization to communicate with a computer in another organization without actually producing paper documents. It eliminates the human effort required to read, sort, and physically transport such documents. EDI has enabled the concept of Just-In-Time (JIT) inventory to be implemented. JIT reduces inventory and operating capital requirements.

2:5:1 Costs and benefits The benefits accruing from EDI implementations can be classified into direct benefits and long-term strategic benefits.

Direct benefits 1. Since the transfer of information from computers to computers is automatic, there is no need to rekey information.

2. Cost of processing EDI documents is much smaller than that of processing paper documents.

3. Customer service is improved.

4. Information is managed more effectively.

5. There is improved job satisfaction among data entry operators.

Strategic benefits 1. Customer’s relations are improved through better quality and speed of service.

2. Competitive edge is maintained and enhanced.

3. Reduction in product costs can be achieved.

4. Business relations with trading partners are improved.

5. More accurate sales forecasting and business planning is possible.

If only one order is received per week, then there are up to five working days to process that order, however, if orders are received daily or even hourly via Edi, the processing time is dramatically reduced. Here EDI is clearly superior.

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2:5:2 Components of EDI System The three main components required to be able to send or receive EDI messages are, • • •

EDI standards EDI software Third party networks for communications.

EDI standards The exchange of business documents in a commonly agreed structured format necessitated the development of EDI standards. EDI standards are basically data standards in that they lat down the syntax and semantics of the data being exchange. In the US, the transportation industry was one of the first to develop EDI standards. Other sets of standards were developed, they are Trade Data Exchange(TDI) for warehousing, Organization for Data Exchange by Tele Transmission in Europe(ODETTE) for the automobile industry, and Data Interchange for Shipping(DISH).EDI standards are firm but not static because the development of EDI is a continuing effort.

UN/EDIFACT (EDI for Administration, Commerce and Transport) Standard was announced in 1987 by the United Nations. The ISO is responsible for developing syntax rules and the data dictionary. The basic unit of communication among EDI Trading Partners defined by EDIFACT is an interchange. An interchange consists of functional groups of messages. Every message consists of a collection of segments with each segment comprising data elements-both composite and otherwise.

EDI Software EDI software consists of computer instructions that translate the information from unstructured, company-specific format to the structured EDI format and then communicate the EDI messages. EDI software also receives the message and translates from standard format to company-specific format. Thus the major functions of the EDI software are data conversion, data formatting and message communication.

EDI software is available for mainframes, minicomputers and microcomputers.

The requirements of EDI are: a computer, a communication interface and appropriate software.

Though technically any file transfer protocol can be used to transport standard EDI message, the benefits of using X.400 Message Handling Systems (MHS). The EDI translators perform the important function of translating business data from company-specific formats to standards formats and vice-versa. The most important concern when buying EDI translation software is flexibility.

EDI translation software must be able to handle more than one standard. EDI software, provide new features and capabilities as well as to male using it easier. EDI translation software should be able to easily accommodate such upgrades or modifications. EDI uses flat files, that is, data files that use fixed fields in a defined order, with the transaction information contained in a continuous string of text characters.

Communication of EDI Messages EDI documents are electronically exchanged over communication networks which connect trading partners to one another. These documents are stored in user mailboxes on the network’s EDI server from where they can be downloaded/uploaded at the user’s convenience.

These Value Added Networks (VANs) provide users with a single point interface to the trading community freeing the user from worries of handling different communication protocols. There could be more than one VAN offering EDI services, implying that there is a range of service options to select from. Some of the features to look out for, when selecting a VAN, are the following: • the level of customer service; • the extent to which they are able to communicate with other providers;

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the degree of commitment to handle inevitable changes in standards and to provide the wider-range of functions anticipated in the coming years; costs.

The reliability of message transmission along with the generation of delivery notifications provided

by X.400 Message Handling Systems resulted in number of EDI server products being developed over X.400 based communications. An EDI message consists of •

Heading: A set of heading field(s), each an information item giving a characteristic to the EDI message.

• Body: A sequence of one or more body parts.

The primary body part contains the EDI Interchange itself or a forwarded EDI message. Other body parts that can be used to carry data, such as voice, text, or a drawing related to the interchange. The EDI heading contains information required to provide services such as selective retrieval that more fully satisfies EDI requirements. The header contains both X.400 specific fields and EDI interchange-specific fields.

2:5:3. EDI Implementation Issues The basic options available to an organization when implementing EDI are: EDI Service Bureaus EDI Service Bureaus can be used for all the EDI messaging requirements of an organization. This is viable option when the volume of documents being handled does not justify the establishment of an in-house EDI capability.

Stand-alone EDI The next option in terms of level of difficulty is a stand-alone non-integrated approach on a PC. Instead of paper forms electronic forms are handled. These forms are filled within the organization and sent over a communication network to the recipient. The consequent re-entry of data negates the realization of a major benefit of EDI. Integrated EDI This option is achieved by implementing EDI on the mainframe business system along with the business application. Or, there could be a Front-end-Processor (FEP) taking care of translation and communication. Information could be downloaded and uploaded between the FEP and the computer. This approach ensures smooth flow of data between business processes and the EDI module.

2:5:4 Legal Aspects With paper documents, certain legal terms and conditions are printed on the back of each form. With EDI, the same information is accounted for in what is known as a trading partner agreement. The laws of the land also have to be suitably modified to cater to an electronic environment for conducting business transactions.

Self Assessment Questions III 1. The benefits accrued from Edi implementations can be classified into -------------------------------and ----------------------------------------.

2. What are the main components of EDI systems?

3. An EDI message consists of _______________ and ________________.

4. Mention 3 types of notification.

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2.6 SUMMARY The internet represents a powerful tool for any organization. The importance of the Internet in opening up new frontiers for Electronic Commerce cannot therefore be denied.

Intranets use Internet technology to fulfill specific functional requirements of an organization EDIenabled business processes are critical for organizations wanting to maintain a competitive edge.

Though the initial costs may appear to be high, long-term benefits far outweigh the costs of implementing EDI and integrating it with the business processes within the organization.

Answer for self assessment questions I.

1. False 2. FTP, Gopher and Veronica, WAIS, HTTP etc 3. Robustness, reliability, bandwidth and security 4. HyperText Markup Language 5. Yes.

II.

1. Java is an object-oriented, network-capable programming language.

2. Yes 3. A network, TCP/IP on servers and clients, Hardware, Software, Mail servers and Browsers.

4. Some benefits are, Reduced costs, easier, faster, latest just-in-time information etc.

III.

1. direct benefits and long-term benefits 2. The main components of EDI system are, •

EDI standards

•

EDI software

•

Third party networks for communication

3. Heading and Body 4. There types of notification are defined as, Positive Notification Negative Notification Forwarded Notification

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UNIT 3 UN/EDIFACT STANDARD, TRACKING TOOLS FOR ELECTRONIC COMMERCE AND INTERNET BANDWIDTH AND TECHNOLOGY ISSUES UNIT STRUCTURE 3.0 Introduction 3:1 Objective 3:2 An EDIFACT Message 3:2:1. Interchange Structure 3:2:2.UN/EDIFACT Message Directories Self assessment questions I 3:3. The Internet and Extranet for the Electronic Commerce 3:3:1 E-Commerce 3:3:2 Commerce over the Internet 3:3:3 Commerce over Extranets Self assessment questions II 3:4. Identification and tracking tools for Electronic Commerce 3:4:1 The EAN system 3:4:2.EANCOM 3:4:3. Article Numbering 3:4:4 Bar Coding 3:4:5. The Serial Shipping Container Code and the EAN Label 3:4:6 EAN Location Numbers 3:4:7. How it works: Warehousing Example Self Assessment Questions III 3:5. Internet Bandwidth and Technology Issues 3:5:1. Bandwidth Issues 3:5:2. Technology Issues for the Internet/NII 3:5:3 NII Standards 3:5:4. NII Services 3:5:5 Actors in the NII 3:5:6 NII Agenda Self Assessment Questions IV 3:6 GII 3.7 Summary Answer for self assessment questions

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3.0 INTRODUCTION EDI is the electronic exchange of business documents in a standard, computerprocessable, universally accepted format between trading partners. EDI standard come in to provide the structured information that is one of the key components of an EDI system. EDI has recognized as the international standard for EDI messages by the United States Standards for EDI for Administrative Commerce and Transport (UN/EDIFACT). They comprise a set of internationally agreed standards, directories and guidelines for the electronic interchange of structure data, and in particular that related to trade in goods and services between independent, computerized information systems.

UN/EDIFACT sets out a new ‘language’ for document interchange with syntax or grammar. This syntax is specified by the International Standard Organization’s ISO 9735 standard. An UN/EDIFACT message is a collection of data values relating to business documents. About 150 standard message formats have been developed within UN/EDIFACT covering all three areas: Administration: messages such request/response, job applications etc.

as

Customs

Declaration,

Legal

Administration

Commerce: Tender, Purchase Order, Invoice, Payment Order, Remittance, Advice, etc.

Transport: Transport Booking, Multimodal Status Report, Arrival Notice etc.

3:1 OBJECTIVE UN/EDIFACT standard are used to form a interchange structure EAN system is used as the identification and tools for electronic commerce Main objective is to overcome the internet technology and bandwidth issues To maintain the NII and GII Standards 3:2 AN EDIFACT MESSAGE An EDI message is a collection of information that is exchanged to convey information related to a specific transaction between the partners engaged in EDI. Messages are composed of logically-grouped segments required for the type of message transaction covered.

The term message is also known as a Transaction Set. A Segment is the intermediate unit of information in a message. A segment begins with a segment identifier, a unique code, and ends with a segment terminator. The status of a segment in a specific message type may be : • Mandatory(M)- this segment must be used in the message.

• Conditional(C)- this segment will be used in the message depending on certain conditions.

Segments may occur in any of the following three sections of the message: • •

Header section - a segment occurring in this section relates to the entire message.

Detail Section - a segment occurring in this section relates to the detail information only and will override any similar specification in the header section.

• Summary Section - only segments containing totals or control information may occur in the summary section.

A data element is the smallest unit of information in a segment. Its description and usage are defined in the UN/EDIFACT Data Element Directory (EDED). Two or more data elements may be grouped together to form a composite data element. The status of a data element in a segment may be : • •

Mandatory(M)- this data element must be used in the segment.

Conditional(C)- this data element will be used in the segment depending on certain conditions.

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A data element whose function is to give a more precise meaning to another data element is referred to as a qualifier. Segments are functionally defined to be applicable over a wide range of messages.

Of the many messages that have been standardized, a United Nations Standard Message(UNSM) is one which : • has been registered, published and which maintained by the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe.

• has the value contained in the Controlling Agency, Message Type, Message Version Number and Message Release Number fields allocated and controlled by the UN/ECE. • Always has the code value ‘UN’ in the Controlling Agency field.

A sub-set of a UNSM is a message which is directly derived from an approved UNSM, has the same function as the UNSM from which it is derived and which contains all of the groups and segments defined as having a mandatory status within the message, and the mandatory data elements within them. A sub-set of a UNSM therefore: • does not change the status; • does not add any segments; • contains the identical values specified for use in the Message Type as are specified for the UNSM from which the sub-set is derived.

3:2:1. Interchange Structure The basic unit of communication between trading partners as defined by UN/EDIFACT is an interchange. An interchange consists of functional groups of messages. Each functional group contains one or more messages of the same type. A collection of segments makes up a message with each segment comprising data elements. Each segment begins with a tag – a 3 character code which identifies the segment. The 3-character strings beginning with ‘UN’ are tags for control segments in the interchange.

In an interchange the Service String Advice, identified by the tag, ‘UNA’, and the service/control segments appear in the following order: Service String Advice Interchange Header Functional Group Header Message Header User Data Segments Message Trailer Functional Group Trailer Interchange Trailer

UNA UNB UNG UNH UNT UNE UNZ

Conditional Mandatory Conditional Mandatory As required Mandatory Conditional Mandatory

A connection contains one or more interchanges. The below content shows which parts of an interchange contain.

An interchange contains : UNA – Service string advice, if used UNB – Interchange header UNZ – Interchange Trailer A functional group contains: UNG – Functional group header UNE – Functional group trailer A message contains: UNH – Message header Data segments UNT – Message trailer A segment contains: - A segment Tag - Simple data elements or - Composite data elements - or both as applicable

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A segment tag contains: - a segment code A simple data element contains - single data element value A composite data element contains - component data elements A component data element contains - a single data element value.

3:2:2.UN/EDIFACT Message Directories A new standard directory set is published, Draft directory sets contain all status 1 (Draft Recommendation) messages and all Status 2 (UNSM) messages. A directory is identified by an issue number, allocated and controlled under UN/EDIFACT procedures. When a document related to a UNSM under development reaches a Status of 2, the values in the following fields of the UNH/UNG segment used for the message will be: • Controlling Agency (data element 0051) – always the two characters ‘UN’.

• Message Version Number (data element 0052) – always ‘S’ when published in a Standard Directory.

• Message Release Number(data element 0054) – The last two digits in the year of agreement followed by a single, sequential alpha character assigned by the UN that starts with A at the beginning of each year and is incremented if more than one directory of the same type (S or D) is published in the same year.

When a document related to a UNSM under development reaches a status of 1, the values in the following fields of the UNH/UNG segments used for the message will be: • Controlling Agency(data element 0051) – always the two characters ‘UN’ • Message Version Number(data element 0052) – always ‘D’ • Message Release Number(data element 0054) – The last two digits in the year of agreement followed by a single, sequential alpha character assigned by the UN that starts with A at the beginning of each year and is incremented if more than one directory of the same type (S or D) is published in the same year.

If users wish to test messages which have not yet reached the ‘Draft for formal trial’ stage, a different procedure must be followed. The full procedures for the identification of documents containing message under development are contained in the UN paper. Such documents will have a status of ‘O’, plus a Revision’ number controlled by the Rapporteur’s Team (RT) where the request for the new UNSM originated. Users wishing to test such messages must always use a Message Version number of zero, a message Release number equivalent to the Revision number of the document revision upon which they are basing their test, and a Controlling Agency code of ‘RT’.

To provide a unique identification for any particular sub-set of a UNSM, users may wish to assign a code for the use in the ‘Association assigned code’ field of the UNH and/or UNG segment. UNSM are used by more industries. Since the standards maintenance time-scales may delay the implementation of the required modifications to the UNSM for some time, users may wish to implement the changes immediately so that the message can be used in their application.

Self Assessment Questions I 1.What is an EDIFACT message.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------2. --------------- is the intermediate unit of information in a message.

3. What is an interchange?

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------4. Segments may occur in any of ---------------- , --------------------- and --------------.

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3:3. THE INTERNET AND EXTRANET FOR THE ELECTRONIC COMMERCE. 3:3:1 E-Commerce E-Commerce recently realized through EDI and EFT over proprietary networks.

Universal access to information, enabled by the Internet, intranet and extranet, is at the heart of new business models for EC. Today, an enterprise is an internetworking organization. The following three types of EC, supported by networks have emerged: • • •

Consumer to business Business to business Internal procurement

Consumer-to- business E-Commerce Electronic malls, virtual storefronts allow individual consumers to browse for products and shop using credit cards. It is more like an extension of catalogue shopping, through mail order and telephone-ordering using credit card for making payments. Credit-card payments have to be secured against unauthorized access by intruders on public network.

Business-to-business E-Commerce This type of EC comprises the bulk of commerce conducted over networks.

Business-to-business procurement and fulfillment including financial transactions has traditionally been conducted over private networks. It is restricted to business partners and uses secure procedures based on firewall, encryption and authorization level, with payment by predetermined credit terms Intranet Procurement Business transactions which are internal to an enterprise, across its departments and subsidiaries also come under EC. This can span the entire globe in case of multinationals.

Intranets are responding to this challenge.

3:3:2 Commerce over the Internet Commerce over Internet is conducted essentially in two ways: 1. EDI over the Internet 2. Web-based EDI EDI over the Internet Internet mail is used as a means for transmitting EDI messages. The IETF-MIME specification is used to envelope the EDI data within the E-mail message. EDI over the Internet is more flexible, since there is no need for a prior network connection. EDI networks are typically set up as a hub with spokes, a big buyer at the hub dictating its suppliers at the spokes, which cannot communicate themselves. Individual trading partners (TP) register their business as domain names in the Internet. Even if they change network service providers, their own domain names remain the same. EDI messages arrive via the Internet in a particular mailbox under the domain name. The filtering programs analyze values in MIME headers, and forward messages to appropriate application bases. It is through this approach that the EDI message gets directed to EDI Translator programs, which retrieve the business, interchange for further processing in the recipient’s computer system.

The standard E-mail model of Mail Transfer Agent/User Agent is used to transfer EDI messages via standard exchange protocols. The MIME-encoded EDI message has the following parts: Headers: Author & Recipient Addresses Subject Summary

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41 Creation Date Handling Node Name etc.

Body :

Structured Body Parts Conforming to MIME These are transmitted using SMTP protocol over the Internet. The IETF-EDI specifications define the security standards for EDI messages. The implementation will require secure E-mail software as a layer between the mailer and the mail processing program, which will perform security functions such as decryption, digital signatures, receipts, problem handling etc.

FTP-based Messaging for EDI FTP is an information transfer method on the Internet. It can be used to exchange EDI messages between trading partners. Each trading partners would be allowed FTP access through a login with password. The FTP server contains the EDI messages stored in a file as per the conventions defined in the Trading Partners Agreement. The latter includes: FTP login name and password, machines from which login is accepted, security protocols , directory and filenaming conventions, file encryption protocols and keys etc.

Mailing Lists for EDI Mailing Lists are used for making announcements to a specific group instead of a large Usenet news group. Only those who subscribe to a mailing list receive the intended messages. Vendors might subscribe to a number of lists related to their products or services in order to receive messages, such as EDI RFQs (Request For Quotes) sent by potential customers. LISTSERV and LISTPROC are two popular mail-list techniques.

Web-based Commerce Web-based commerce on the Internet is a new way of conducting commerce. The Web with its capability to play audio, display graphics, pictures and video enables Internet users to request information and order products instantly. And all this is possible in interactive mode making it an excellent choice for companies and organizations to display their wares: products and services. The commercial Web sites of companies have Web documents that offer useful product information, interactive brochures, news, reviews etc. The electronic malls and stores on the Web enable one to see and order merchandise by using a forms interface, an electronic form that contains blank boxes for the user to enter information on product codes, credit card number etc.

Outside the digital technology sector, EC on the Web is being conducted in the following sectors: • Financial services • Travel • Retailing • Music • Books • Cars • Advertising and marketing • Pornography While the services sector is doing comparatively better on the Web, retailing on the electronic malls has not reached the level of profitability. EDI has been synonymous with EC. It was a way to automate purchasing by exchanging electronically the purchase order and invoice to make it safe, secure and verifiable. But now with the Internet, EC has taken over with tools like the Web which are as flexible as the Net itself. EDI has to transform itself for survival on the Net as EC; else other transaction technologies could take its place.

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3:3:3 Commerce Over Extranets An extranet is an extension of an intranet which makes the latter accessible to outside companies or individuals with or without an intranet. It is also defined as a collaborative Internet connection with their companies and business partners. Parts of an intranet are made available to customers or business partners for specific application. Extranets provide the privacy and security of an intranet while retaining the global reach of the Internet.

The key characteristic of an extranet is that it extends the intranet from one location to another across the Internet by securing data flows using cryptography and authorization procedures, to another intranet of a business. This way intranets of business partners, material suppliers, financial services, distributors, customers etc. It is the combination of intranets with extranets which has established the virtual corporation paradigm. Business-tobusiness EC is growing on extranets. Extranets are not new technology. Business has been trying to develop secure links with trading partners and customers for years. The use of IP to support secure intercompany virtual private networks has led to the creation of extranets.

Self Assessment Questions II 1. What are the three types of EC support by network?

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------2. Commerce over the Internet is conducted essentially in two ways. They are ________________ and __________________.

3. Define Extranet.

3:4. IDENTIFICATION AND TRACKING TOOLS FOR ELECTRONIC COMMERCE 3:4:1 The EAN system The Universal Product Code (UPC) system set up in the USA by the Uniform Code Council(UCC) was a forerunner to the formation of a council comprising manufacturers and distributors of twelve European countries, in 1974. The Council was entrusted with the responsibility for examining the possibility of developing a standard article numbering system, compatible with UPC, for Europe. The European Article Numbering Association (EAN) was established in 1977 as a result of this effort.

Numbering Organizations are national associations that provide full EAN system implementation support, to their member companies. Their main responsibilities are : • allocating numbers • providing training on numbering, bar coding and EDI • supplying information on the standards and the evolution of the systems.

Even though it was devised for the retail industry, the EAN system caters to commercial and industrial sectors for identifying consumer goods, books, textiles, etc..

The EAN system consists of the following elements: • a system for numbering items so that they may be uniquely identified.

• a system for representing supplementary information.

• standard bar codes to represent information.

•

a set of messages for EDI transaction.

3:4:2.EANCOM The physical flow of goods using bar codes and the business document flow using EDI are integrated with one another through the use of the EAN label. The information contained in the EAN label is transmitted using the EANCOM EDI messages. EANCOM, a sub-set of UN/EDIFACT messages, is an implementation guideline of the UNU/EDIFACT standard messages. EANCOM messages then become much simpler and accurate as a result of which transmission costs are reduced and more efficient transaction processing is achieved.

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EANCOM messages are developed and maintained by EAN and its Numbering Organization and can be divided into the following categories: 1. Master Data Messages : Messages containing data which does not change very frequently. These include information such as names, addresses and production information.

2. Commercial Transactions Messages: These cover the entire trading cycle including Quotation, Purchase Order and Transport and Logistics related messages starting from requests for quote up to the remittance advice that is transmitted on completion of payment.

3. Report and Planning Messages: These messages include general trading reports which allow the users to develop business plans.

4. General Message: The message provides for data transmission in cases for which there is no specific standard message.

3:4:3. Article Numbering The EAN numbering system guarantees unique and Unambiguous identification of articles. These numbers can be used by manufacturers, exporters, importers, wholesalers and retailers to communicate information regarding the goods or services they trade in. A trade unit may be a single product or a package which is used for storing and shipping. EAN numbers are: • Unique; • Non-significant; • Multi-industry and international; • Secure.

EAN numbers are structured with 14,13 or 8 digits as EAN -14, EAN-13 or EAN-8 as below: EAN-14 EAN-13 EAN-8

V123456789012C 0123456789012C 0000001234567C

V: Logistic Variant assigned by the manufacturer for trading items, is a number between 1 and 8 and is used in EAN-14. It is chosen by the manufacturer according to its specific needs for representing a packaging configuration.

C: The last digit is a check digit which serves to check that those preceding have been correctly captured. It is always calculated using the previous digits.

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EAN-13 is used to identify retail items. EAN-14 is used for identifying trade units. The 12 digits in the EAN code has the following general structure :

First 3 digits

Next 9 digits

PPP EAN Prefix

XXXXXXXXX Company prefix & Item numbers

PPP: EAN International allocates a prefix to the EAN Numbering Organization of a country or region.

XXXXXXXXX: The EAN Numbering Organization allocates these 9 digits to the member organization.

Exceptionally when an item is very small, An 8-digit number. The EAN_8 may be used.

3:4:4 Bar Coding EAN numbers which are used for identifying items can be represented by bar codes. Bar codes allow numbers to be encoded in machine-readable form. The data can then be captured automatically, quickly and securely. The numeric value of the code is printed beneath the bar code symbol which can be read omni-directionally by a scanner.

9876

54 3 0

Black bars set against a white background are the safest representation of article numbers to ensure correct scanning. The size and the light margins at each end of the bar code are the other components of a bar code. The Interleaved Two of Five(ITF) methodology of bar code symbols is specially suited to the inferior quality of packaging materials which are often used for trade items.

The UCC/EAN-128 Symbology for the bar coding uses Applications Identifiers(AIs) to define the data structure.UCC/EAN-128 bar codes always contain a special non-data character Known as ‘function 1’ (FNC 1), which follows the start character of the bar code. The UCC/EAN-128 bar code comprises: • a light margin • a start character A,B or C • a FNC 1 character • data • a symbol check character • a stop character • a light margin

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3:4:5. The Serial Shipping Container Code and the EAN Label Packages created for storing and transporting goods are known as logistic units.

The need for individual logistic units to be identified gave rise to the development of the standard EAN identification number known as the Serial Shipping Container Code (SSCC). The SSCC is a non-significant, fixed length, 18-digit number. The first digit ‘p’ SSCC contains the packaging indicator while the last digit ‘c’ is a check digit. The company prefix and the serial reference number come in-between these two digits.

The UCC/EAN-128 symbology and the associated AIs are used to represent the SSCC. The EAN label combines a worldwide unique reference number, the SSCC with a secure bar code symbology, UCC/EAN-1210. This combination allows all participants in the supply chain to use a common, standard solution for their individual tracking and tracing needs.

EAN labels are structured in three sections: • The top section of the label contains free format information • The middle section contains text information comprising human readable interpretations of the bar codes.

• The lowest section includes the bar codes and their associated interpretation.

3:4:6 EAN Location Numbers EAN Location Numbers identify any location within a business or organization.

This includes companies, their subsidiaries and divisions, departments and physical units. A unique 13-digit identification number with a 3- digit prefix is allocated to each location. The last digit is the check-digit which is calculated based on the first 12 digits and provides security from wrong data capture.

An EAN Location Number example is given below: 456 234567898 EAN Company prefix & number Prefix allocated by the company EAN Prefix EAN numbering organization Company Number: Assigned by the numbering Organization followed by the number allocated by the company to a specific location Check-digit: Calculated on the basis of the First 12 digits

1 Check Digit

The EAN location number is recognized by the United Nations working party responsible for UN/EDIFACT and by the International Standards Organization.

3:4:7. How it works: Warehousing Example The combination of EDI and SSCC enables a large number of operations to be carried out, including confirmation of order, checking means of transport, verifying order completeness, printing bills of lading, sending a message of delivery and generating an invoice.

For example, packaged goods ready for shipment are marked with an SSCC, which is informed to the receiver through the use of the Despatch Advice EDI message. This EANCOM EDI message would contain the SSCC and the EAN article numbers and quantities of the contents of the package. The receiver may know in advance which goods are coming and prepare for their receipt. On receiving the Despatch Advice, it is compared with the original Purchase Order and when the actual goods arrive, the SSCC can be scanned and a comparison made to check delivery. Inventories may also then be automatically updated.

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Self Assessment questions III 1. Expand EAN. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------2. What is Article Numbering?

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------3. What is Bar Coding?

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------4. SSLC means ________________________________________________ 3:5. INTERNET BANDWIDTH AND TECHNOLOGY ISSUES 3:5:1. Bandwidth Issues E-commerce on the internet faces several challenges. It needs to cross a number of difficult barriers, which are presently holding back its growth. The challenges to E-commerce can be broadly grouped under technological, legal and regulatory heads. The categorizations are as follows: Technological • • • • • • • • •

Lack of reliable network infrastructure services.

Strength of security Deployment of public key infrastructure Interoperability of technologies and applications.

Lack of standards.

Technical integration with existing applications.

Richness and depth of content.

Comparative buying capabilities.

Availability of payment instruments.

Legal and Regulatory • • • •

Lack of consistent rules and policies Customs and tax uncertainties The role of government and nations Other regulatory issues.

Robustness, reliability, bandwidth and security of the Internet continue to be major concerns for the growth of EC. Countries have begun to realize that the Internet is shaping commerce, economics and societies. US government which first set up the information Infrastructure Task Force to define the commercial Internet or the National Information Infrastructure(NII) to realize EC and other applications on the Internet. NII is a seamless Web of communications networks, computers, databases and consumer electronics that will put vast amounts of information at user’s fingertips. NII is clearly the successor of the Internet for commercial applications. The word ‘Infrastructure ‘refers to the underlying foundation or basic framework of an organization or a system or a sector area. The NII is projected to have an expansive meaning which includes much more than physical facilities used to transmit, store, process, and display voice, data and images.

The NII is expected to provide new ways of learning, working and interacting with others.

The NII propose to bring networking and applications built around them to the general public. The objective is for the general public to access information and to communicate with each other easily, reliably, securely and cost-effectively in ant medium. The initiative for NII and thereafter for the Global Information Infrastructure (GII) was taken by the US government in the last few years. Today NII/GII represent an intersection of three major industries which were independent, namely telecommunications, computer and consumer electronics. The US

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president’s Council of Economic Advisers estimated 500,000 new jobs in the economy by 1996 merely as a result of speeding up the deployment of NII through telecommunication reforms.

3:5:2. Technology Issues for the Internet/NII The internet is based on the convergence of processing and communication technology. Its major consequences are the following: 1. Computer-based processing of information increasingly takes place at multiple sites in large, interactive networks of computers.

2. High-capacity communication services are increasingly dependent on information processing to manage and keep track of traffic, billing for services etc.

3. All organizations whether big or small, are equally dependent on new kinds of information utilities serving individuals and organizations.

The technology vision of NII is based on the Internet. It is thus a model that is a heterogeneous constellation of networks, services, and applications that are interconnected and interoperating which stand singled out as the most essential goals of the Internet/NII. While interconnection is a requirement from the telecommunication side, interoperability is a requirement of computer industry so that expected standards are followed for accessing information and data at the application level. A common method which is expected to help achieve interoperability is through allocating functionality to different layers and specifying the interface between layers.

Bandwidth issues related to the internet are being taken care of by networking standards such as Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) technology, and TCP/IP suite of protocols for interconnection. The NII plans call for broad communication capable of two-way voice, video and communication, connecting businesses and households. The connection could be provided through a network or a network of networks in a country.

ATM Technology Nowadays new technological innovations have started providing long-distance service, new applications and broadband services. Computer networks realized through telecom networks are now accessed by the public through the Internet. Providing interfaces between Cable TV(CATV) systems, communications and computer networks has become a major business. The required of broadband services on the Internet, NIIs and GII has pushed the existing technology of ATM into a nearly accepted international standard. ATM has evolved from the Broadband- ISDN proposals of the ITU, based on fixed sized ‘cells’. The ATM cell was standardized in 1989 with a 5-byte header and 48-byte information field.

Integrated broadband network services have been enabled using ATM networks in Italy and across a PAN-European ATM pilot network. The ATM switching nodes have been connected with high-speed optical fibre lines in Italy. These projects aim at the following: • To confirm interoperability of ATM cross connects in a multivendor and multiopertor environment.

• To test the support of services, the interworking between ATM and existing network infrastructures for data services lay.

• Network and service Integration through ATM transport platform providing the users with various ways to access services.

The results suggest various directions of evolution of the ATM technique for broadband services on the NII. This Include: Integration of the ATM technique to support the Internet connectivity, integration of the ATM network with N-ISDN and the dialed PSTN, enhancement of the existing service, improvement of the business service features.

ATM/Fibre-optic Networks High bandwidth in communication has been realized through optical fibres. Optical networks have been laid alongside copper cables to create information and data highways.

Optical networks vary depending upon the distance between transmitters and receivers, type/amount of information carried and the application. ATM transmission over the optical fibres are perceived as the key technologies for delivering the NII services requiring high bandwidths

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ATM transmissions on the other hand, can currently operate at 100-155 Mb/s speeds. There are problems due to this mismatch, which are further compounded by the wavelengths employed and the transmission characteristics of different fibre types. These are being addressed by vendors from both the fields. This is resulting in fibre-optic equipment being used to optimize and even enhance ATM transmission capabilities. Optical switches, optical cross-connect systems, wave division multiplexers and fibre-optic test equipment can enhance electronic switching and monitoring routines to provide physical layer network management.

High-Capacity Storage Systems In terms of technology issues for NII/GII, storage is one of the core issues.

Applications and services predicted on the GII/NII incorporate vice, video and data thereby increasing the demand for data storage, since the information content is not only created , processed and communicated but also stored somewhere on the NII. Technological development and the reduction in storage costs are key enabling factors for the establishment of the network environment.

The network storage systems may be broadly into the following three categories: • The main or central server • The local or distributed server • The client storage on the workstation Capacity requirement of the main server can easily run into the terabyte range, depending upon the application. Cost will be the major criterion with performance and reliability being secondary.

The issues for network interface components which tackle the main server in the terabyte range include the following: • Transmission of retrieved data over a wide range of communication protocols to client and local servers.

• Multimedia protocols force the requirement for an uninterrupted data stream to the client in order to provide synchronous delivery.

OS2

HP

SUN

AIX

Network

Network Interface

Application Specific Access Manager Servers DB Index

HSM

Device Controller Device Drivers

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HSM=Hierarchical Storage Manager FIG : SW and HW components of the main server 3:5:3 NII Standards The key components of NII are computing communications, consumer’s electronics and content. High-capacity communications services are in turn dependent on computing. Consumer electronics provides new information applications from TV set-top boxes, to laptop, to house-hold controllers etc. New kinds of content-oriented information services serving individuals and organization through computer networks, CATV and broadcast TV have emerged. The services may be integrated vertically or horizontally. Some providers may provide vertical services in the areas of law, health, education, finance and trade. The examples of horizontal services include electronic shopping on CATV networks, electronic mail, newsgroup and bulletin boards.

Electronic Commerce on the Internet.

Branscomb and Kahin summarize three distinct models for standards development converging in the NII: 1. The competitive, market-driven model of computer software and applications.

2. The collaborative, flexible and innovation-based model of the Internet.

3. The more traditional and formal practices in the telecommunication industry.

In all these models the standards are set by big players or strategic alliances of two and three or by a group. In the US, the government refused to help evolve standards for AM stereo in the early 1980s. But learning from the mistake, it played an active role in the HDTV proceedings in the 1990s to evolve digital standards and shape a cooperative ‘grand alliance’ of the industry.

Government can affect the standards processes in the following ways: • By procuring information technology for government purposes or as part of a public sector service, such as education.

• By conducting or investing in research, whether on generic technologies or on specific applications.

• By seeding development of resources or services as a strategic investment.

• By convening diverse interest and facilitating cooperation across industry and sectoral boundaries.

In the context of NII, the following four critical interfaces must have open specifications so that networks, content-providers and others may provide seamless services to users: 1. Appliance to network 2. Appliance to application 3. Application to application 4. Network to network.

This is especially important since the vision of NII in most countries is to create national capabilities which continue to evolve depending upon needs and demands in the wide range of economic, social, educational and security applications. NII standard should not just accommodate the NII, but keep open the maximum range of opportunities for realizing public benefits.

3:5:4. NII Services The services provided by NII are for business, government, education and household users. All these services exist today at various levels and are enabled by the Internet. Voice communication, entertainment, data access via computer networks is some of the services which have been around for many years. It only seeks to expand, enhance and integrate them by making them available in ways that are better, faster and cheaper.

The existing services include the following: Telephone, Voice Mail, Electronic Mail, File Transfer, Teleconference, Electronic Data Interchange, etc. Other services on NII which are being

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planned for the next few years are slower to develop and are expected to require a long time for payback. They are the following: Video on Demand, Video gaming, Electronic gambling, Remote shopping and Electronic banking. The market for new NII services will be greatest in business and government. The key applications in these segments are: Service delivery, workshop collaboration, teleconference and access to online information.

In unleashing the NII initiatives, the US government has decided to be a leading information provider and user of NII services. NII would enable new ways of delivering services to the public. A number of government agencies are developing ways to make their information accessible electronic form to permit intergovernmnetal electronic reporting and funds transfer and to improve electronic communication throughput the federal government. The Internal Revenue Service is encouraging electronic filing of income tax returns by offering immediate tax refund as incentives to filers. Social Security benefits processing is on the networks.

The US administration has also proposed grassroots experimentation for information distribution through NII in the states and local communities within the society. A number of projects have been funded for delivering public services and information, and planning is underway for such demonstrations and connecting on the Internet especially for populations in rural areas, the poor, the elderly and the handicapped.

3:5:5 Actors in the NII King and Kraemer have divided the NII players into: Provides Users and regulators. The following major roles are performed by the actors involved in NII: Providers • • •

The service providers are the owners of the communication infrastructure comprising of telephone, cable, cellular, satellite, broadcast TV etc. They ate generally grouped as the owners of the conduits.

Makers of information appliances such as TVs, telephones, computers etc.

All these tree types of providers are locked in battle in shaping NII services to their advantage.

Users Business and government are the prominent users of the services provided by the provides through NII. Household user have extremely diverse needs such as access to database, education courses, information about government programs and services, reference materials etc which could be enabled through NII 3:5:6 NII Agenda The NII Agenda which was released by the US vice president in September, 1993 set forth the administration vision for NII, It outlined the government role and principles for government action. It is the agenda which has been shaping the NII initiatives of other countries in the world too. It Plans the roles of the government and private sector. It recognizes that the stakes of the providers of NII are high and the need for a diverse population of users might not be fulfilled by the business motivations of the providers. The role of the government is thus very essential for setting the rules for operationalising NII and for controlling any socially damaging consequences from the resulting NII service package. Thus the government’s role would be twofold: • •

To facilitate private-sector development of NII through traditional support such as for R&D, promotion of government use, promotion of societal use, focus on standards and information protection, and review of telecommunications regulation.

To protect the public interest through promoting competition, interoperability, access, privacy, security and intellectual property

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The NII agenda recognizes that while the private-sector role in NII development will be predominant, the government has an essential role to play. The major investments will come from the private sector. The US administration has set out the following nine principles to guide government action: 1. Promote private-sector investment 2. Extend the universal service concept to ensure that information resources are available to all at affordable prices.

3. Promote technological innovation and new applications.

4. Promote a seamless, interactive, user-driven operation.

5. Ensure information security and network reliability.

6. Improve management of the radio frequency spectrum.

7. Protect intellectual property rights.

8. Coordinate with other levels of government and the other bodies.

9. Provide access to government information and improve government procurement.

The US government has taken the lead in funding several NII R & D programs to conduct research into technological issues such as standards for interoperability-security, demonstrating new applications such as digital libraries, Electronic Commerce, Medical diagnosis, medical record sharing and distance education.

The US government has taken steps to improve management of the radio frequency spectrum on the grounds that access to NII resources would be constrained unless adequate spectra were available. It is promoting private and public sharing of spectra and increasing the choices for use of the spectra by licenses.

It is clear that the US government is vigorously pursing that NII Agenda through all these actions which serve as a catalyst-promoting the NII vision, supporting R&D, accelerating technology application etc.

Self Assessment Questions IV 1.

The challenges to E-Commerce can be broadly grouped under ___________,________________ and ________________.

2. High bandwidth in communication has been realized through optical fibre. Yes or No. 3. What are the categories of network storage systems?

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------4. What are the key components of NII. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------5. NII players are divided into __________, _____________ and _________ 3:6 GII The Global Information Infrastructure is expected to affect every aspect of human life through the interconnection of NIIs comprising of wired and wireless networks with a whole range of information appliances connected. There is no single application which is least in the initial stages, that is Electronic Commerce. The GII is bound to modernize commerce by dramatically lowering transaction costs, while at the same time speeding up transactions and facilitating newer types.

A framework for Global Electronic Commerce, a document put out by the US government in July 1997, suggests the following principles for the growth of EC. 1. The private sector should lead this growth 2. Governments should avoid undue restrictions on EC. 3. Where government involvement is needed, its aim should be to support and enforce a predictable, minimalist, consistent and simple legal environment for commerce.

4. Governments should recognize the unique qualities of the Internet.

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5. Electronic Commerce over the Internet should be facilitated on a global basis.

This document also raises issues which fall under the following three categories: Financial Issues • Customs and taxation.

• Electronic payments.

Legal issues • • • •

Uniform commercial code for electronic commerce.

Intellectual property protection.

Privacy.

Security.

Market Access Issues • • •

Telecommunications infrastructure and information technology.

Content.

Technical standards.

3.7 SUMMARY UN/EDIFACT has been officially announced by the government to be the national EDI standard. Electronic Commerce is growing over the Internet. Both business-to-business and business-to-consumer EC are increasing. This is possible over the internet and web-enabled commerce. EAN International manages a worldwide system for identification and communication of products, services, utilities, transport units and locations. The coding standards developed by EAN is aimed at providing a common language for international trade. The challenges in establishing an NII lie in the provision of adequate bandwidth and in the emergence of standards to be able to sustain the myriad applications and services that such an infrastructure demands.

Answer for Self Assessment Questions I.

1. An EDIFACT message is a collection of information that is exchanged to convey information related to a specific transaction between the partners engaged in EDI. 2. Segment 3. The basic unit of communication between trading partners defined by UN/EDIFACT is an interchange.

4. Header section, Detail section and Summary section

II.

1. They are, •

Consumer to business

•

Business to business

•

Internal Procurement

2. EDI over the Internet and Web-based EDI. 3. An extranet is an extension of an intranet which makes the latter accessible to outside companies or individuals with or without an intranet.

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1. EAN means European Article Numbering Association 2. The EAN Numbering System guarantees unique and unambiguous identification of articles.

3. Bar coding is used to represent EAN numbers used for identifying items.

4. SSLC is Serial Shipping Container Code.

IV.

1. technological, legal and regulatory heads.

2. Yes 3.

The main or central server The local or distributed server The client storage on the workstation

4. The key components of NII are computing, communications, consumer electronics and content.

5. providers, users and regulators

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UNIT 4 SECURITY ISSUES, BUSINESS PROCESS REENGINEERING AND MANAGEMENT OF CHANGE UNIT STRUCTURE 4.0 Introduction 4:1 Objective 4:2 Security Solutions 4:3 Electronic cash over the Internet 4:4 Security and UN/EDIFACT Messages 4:4:1 Internet Security 4:4:2 Guidelines for cryptography policy Self Assessment Questions I 4:5 Business Process Engineering 4:5:1 Approach to BRP 4:5:2 Strategic Alignment Model (SAM) 4:5:3 BPR Methodology Self Assessment Questions II 4:6 Management of Change 4:6:1 The implementation plan Self Assessment Questions III 4.7 Summary

Answer for self assessment questions

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4.0 INTRODUCTION Security Issues: In the environment where these transactions take place on the basis of paper documents, it is generally easy to conflict the problems faced in the simple trading set up. A paper Purchase Order cannot be modified without leaving evidence. However, when the trading partners are operating on electronic documents the above problems are real. Not only can changes can be made in documents without leaving any visible signs, documents can also be ‘re-played’ and made to appear as valid transactions. In providing security in the Electronic Commerce environment, there should therefore be a successful integration of manual and technical controls appropriate to the risks that a business believes it is exposed to. With the introduction of Electronic Commerce, the new system should offer at least the same reliability as the paper system which it replaces.

Whatever the environment, paper or electronic, securing it necessarily implies the prevention of: • Destruction of information, and • Unauthorized availability of information.

The issues that deal with us in relation to securing electronic transactions are therefore: • Confidentiality • Integrity • Availability • Authenticity/ Non-repudiability • Auditability Confidentiality: Information should be protected from curious eyes of unauthorised internal users, external hackers and from being intercepted during transmission on communication networks by making it unintelligible to the attacker. The content should be transformed in such a way that it is not decipherable by anyone who does not know the transformation algorithm.

Integrity: On retrieval or receipt at the other end of a communication network the information should appear exactly as was stored or sent. It should be possible to generate an alert on any modification, addition or deletion to the original content. Suitable mechanisms are required to ensure end-to-end message content and copy authentication.

Availability: The information that is being stored or transmitted across communication networks should be available whenever required and to whatever extend as desired within pre-established time constraints.

Authenticity It should be possible to prevent any person or object from hidden as some other person or object. When a message is received it should therefore be possible to verify whether it has indeed been sent by the person or object claiming to be the originator. Similarly, it should also be possible to ensure that the message is sent to the person or object for whom it is meant. This implies the need for reliable identification of the originator and recipient of data.

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Non-Repudiability: After sending/authorizing a message, the sender should not be able to, deny it. Similarly, the recipient of a message should not be able to deny receipt at a later date. It should therefore it is possible to bind messages and message acknowledgements with their originators.

Auditability: Audit data must be recorded in such a way that all specified confidentiality and integrity requirements are met.

Implementing a security solution in an Electronic Commerce environment necessitates a Risk Analysis of the business scenario. In some cases, Confidentiality might be an extremely critical issue whereas in others it may only be data integrity that is of paramount importance. All possible threats should be considered and a security requirements policy drawn out for the organization based on a combination of some or all of the services.

4:1 OBJECTIVE To understand the security concerns and issues Knowing security solutions using Cryptography techniques.

To use digital signature and symmetric and asymmetric cryptosystem for security.

Electronic cash over the internet is well described to make of the internet Business process reengineering discusses the need and methodology available for looking afresh at the process within the organization Management of change brings out the needs and use of managing the changes 4:2. SECURITY SOLUTIONS Implementation of technology solutions for all the security services is based on cryptographic techniques. Cryptography comprises encryption – the process of making information unintelligible to the unauthorized reader and decryption – reversing encryption to make the information readable once again. Conventional cryptography uses a secret code or key to encrypt information. The same secret key is used by the receiver to decrypt the information.

A simple encryption scheme could be one in which all alphabetic and numerical characters are shifted by a fixed numbers of positions in the encrypted text, If the characters are to be shifted by say 5 places then the result would be as follows: Characters Represented as A F B G C H V A W B X C Y D Z E Using this encryption scheme, where the key is a 5-character shift, the plaintext message “THIS IS A BOOK” would be encrypted to read “YMNX NX F GTTP” which would not be very easily decipherable to the casual reader.

There are two basis types of Cryptographic Systems or Cryptosystems-symmetric and asymmetric. The symmetric system is based on a single secret key which is shared by the parties engaging in secure communication. The asymmetric system hinges on the possession by these parties of a pair of keys-one private and other public.

Symmetric Cryptosystems Major commercial use of symmetric cryptosystems began in 1977 when the Data

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Encryption Standard (DES) was adopted as a United States Federal standard. DES and other symmetric cryptosystems work on the concept of a single key beings shared between two communicating entities.

In the symmetric system, the secret key is shared between two persons or entities it is very important to be able to ensure the secure exchange of the secret key. However, if indeed such a secure channel existed, it would not be necessary to encrypt data in the first place.

Symmetric systems operate either in the block cipher or in the stream cipher mode. In the block cipher mode, data to be encrypted is broken up into fixed-size blocks. Each of these fixed-size block are encrypted and on decryption are again presented with data in blocks of the same size. The stream cipher mode can operate on data of any size and on encryption results in encrypted data of the same size as the plaintext data.

The DES cryptosystem operates in the block cipher mode. Data is encrypted in 64-bit blocks using a 56-bit key. After an initial permutation of the data bits, the result is passed through 16 rounds of processing using the 56-bit key. A final permutation generates the encrypted 64-bit data block. The decryption process is similar except that it is followed in the reverse order. The strength of the encryption key is directly proportional to the key length.

Sender Document

Encoded Document DES

Encoded Document

Receiver Document DES

Triple-DES essential follows the same algorithm using three 56-bit leys. ^4-bit data blocks are first encrypted using key1. The result is encrypted using key2 and again encrypted using key3.

While the solutions presented above only provide data confidentiality, symmetric cryptosystems can also be used to support the requirements of message integrity and data authentication. This is done through the secret-key based generation of a checksum from the contents of the original data. The checksum is sent along with the data. Any modifications made to the data en-route, will become known to the receiver since the new checksum created from the received data using the shared secret key will not match with the checksum which has been sent by the originator.

Asymmetric Cryptosystems Asymmetric or Public Key Cryptosystems are built around the possession of a pair of keys- a public key and a private key by each entity wishing to engage in secure communication.

The public key is known to everyone and the private key is known only to the owner. The algorithm used to generate these keys is such that if either of the keys is used to encrypt a message only the other corresponding key in the key pair will be able to decrypt it. Though these keys would then have to be related to one another, knowing the public key, it should be infeasible to obtain the private key within time and cost constraints. Public Key Cryptosystems are used to provide both the services of confidentiality and authentication/non-repudiation.

To send a confidential message to User B , User A encrypts the message using User B’s widely known public key PKB. On receiving the encrypted message from User A, the message is decrypted using User B’s private key SKB. Confidentiality is assured by the fact that the private key would have been carefully protected by User B. Any third party, without knowledge of User B’s Private key would not be able to decipher the encrypted message.

For User B to receive an authenticated message from User A, the message is encrypted using User A’s private key SKA. At the recipient end, the encrypted message is decrypted by User A’s public key PKA which is widely known. On validation, the message is assured to have been sent by User A since the corresponding private key is held securely by User A. Any third party would also be able to verify the authenticity since the public key is known to everyone.

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The RSA Algorithm One of the most popular and widely used public key cryptosystems is the RSA algorithm – developed in 1978 by Ron Rivest, Adi Shamir and Len Adleman of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Two large prime numbers p nad q randomly chosen and their product N= p * q is computed. From the product (p-1) * (q-1), a number e is chosen such that e is relatively prime to (p-1)(q-1) i.e. both (p-1) and (q-1) do not have any common factors with e. Similarly d is chosen such that d satisfies: De= 1 mod (p-1)(q-1).

The public key is then (N , e), while the private key is (N , d).

To encrypt a message M using the public key (N, e) the value of Me Digital Signatures Digital signatures are used not only to verify the authenticity of the message and the claimed identity of the sender, but also to verify message integrity. Using the RSA cryptosystem, a message is encrypted with the sender’s private key to generate the signature. The message is then sent to the destination along with this signature. The recipient decrypts the signature using the sender’s public key, and if the result matches with the copy of the message received, the recipient can be sure that the message was sent by the claimed originator and that the message has not been modified during transmission, since only the originator is in possession of the corresponding encryption key.

The size of the signature is the same as that of the original message thereby resulting in a 100 % increase in the data that is to be processed. To reduce this processing load, a hash function is employed. Hash function operate on large messages and generate message digests of fixed but much smaller length. These functions have the property that any change in the original message will cause the message digest to be different.

The RSA algorithm is widely used to implement digital signatures. The other popular algorithm is the Digital Signature Algorithm (DSA) developed by the US National Institute of Standards and Technology. The basic algorithm which provides the security features is different in DSA as compared to RSA, but the method of implementing digital signatures is essential the same.

The hashing functions being used include algorithm such as Secure Hash Algorithm (SHA) in conjunction with DSA and MD4 and MD5 Message Digest Algorithm from RSA Data Security Inc. 4:3 ELECTRONIC CASH OVER THE INTERNET Electronic or Digital Cash (e-cash) is a new concept to execute cash payment using computers connected over networks. Using software on the customer’s own computer, the customer can withdraw e-cash from his/her own account in a bank. The e-cash is stored in the hard disk of the customer’s computer in an electronic wallet which can be spent by the customer for purchase of items from any shop accepting e-cash.

Digital cash can be used for making/receiving payments between customer and merchant or persons or for any money transaction. The customer browsers through the web pages on the merchant/shop owner’s servers. After identifying the products the customer wants to buy he sends a request to the customer’s bank server for sending electronic cash from his account to his own system. The message is in enciphered form. The bank server sends back a secure e-cash packet which is stored in the electronic wallet of the customer’s hard disk.

Having obtained e-cash from his own computer, the customer sends an order to the merchant/ shop owner’s server along with billing and shopping address, quantity ordered and the

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exact e-cash required for the purchase. The merchant issues a receipt electronically to the customer and sends the e-cash to his account in the merchant’s bank. The merchant takes the desired steps fro delivery of items to the customer. The merchant’s bank sends the e-cash packet to the customer’s public key along with the secure packet received verifies and remits the actual fund to the merchant’s bank who transfers this money to the account. The customer gets the items dispatched by the merchant at the shipping address.

Security is provided using encryption, digital signatures and passwords. While paying in the form of e-cash, the customer has the option to reveal or conceal his identity.

Elements in Electronic cash flow Client software Software available from various solution providers works on Windows 95, Windows 3.1, Macintosh and Unix. Some of them make use of web browsers and e-mail reader and some require dedicated software for browsing encrypted information.

Merchant Server Software Some solution providers design custom application software for the merchant. Others integrate functions with web servers. In another solution, the server must have the Netscape Commerce Server whereas some provide a software library for free.

Payment by the Customer In debit-based transactions, the merchant gets payment immediately, from the customer’s bank in his account, through ACH, through a bank transfer, or within a day of the clearing period. In credit transactions, the merchant gets paid through a bank transfer or through a normal credit-card processing cycle.

Transaction Costs The cost per transaction varies for credit and debit transactions and with the service provider.

Risk The risk is the merchant’s for false transactions. In case of disputed debit transactions or if after payment a merchant is unable to deliver, the customer loses.

Applications Electronic cash applications include debit cards, transaction, telebanking, teleshopping, phone cards, parking systems, public transit systems and automatic toll collection.

4:4 SECURITY AND UN/EDIFACT MESSAGES Security issues have also been addressed under UN/EDIFACT by the UN-Security Joint Working Group (UN-SJWG). The UN_SJWG was established in 1990 to develop security methods, mechanisms or algorithms but sets out to: • Provide security services fro all UN/EDIFACT messages.

• Provide an open standard supporting all existing security mechanisms.

• Meet the requirements of all UN/EDIFACT groups.

Two approaches have been taken by the UN/SJWG to provide integrity, authentication and nonrepudiation of origin fro EDI messages. These are the integrated and the separated approach.

In the integrated approach special security structures are included as a part of the UN/EDIFACT message which is being secured. Security structures are conditional headers and

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trailers used within UN/EDIFACT messages. Using this approach, message content integrity, message origin authentication, non-repudiation of origin and sequence integrity can be ensured.

In the separated approach two special UN/EDIFACT messages have been developed to provide for non-repudiation of receipt, confidentiality and key management for security services. These are: AUTACK: Secure Authentication and Acknowledgement Message For authentication purposes, the AUTACK message is sent separately from the message to which it is being applied. It serves to ensure the receiver about content integrity, origin authentication and non-repudiation of origin for the message being authenticated. When used to securely acknowledge a message which has been received, AUTACK provides non-repudiation of receipt by the receiver to the sender.

KEYMAN: Key Management Message The KEYMAN message is used to provide key and certificate management function such as request for issue of keys and certificates, distribution of keys, revocation of keys and certificates etc.

4:4:1 Internet Security Firewalls are built to protect the internal network of an organization from attacks originating from the Internet. Firewalls can be implemented in many ways. Some of these are •

Establishing rules to decide which packets, depending on the originating IP address should be allowed to pass into the organization’s network.

• Establishing of proxy servers, so that internal client requests for accessing external services are routed through the proxy server.

• Establishment of an additional network as a buffer between the internal and external networks..

Web communication also requires additional levels of security to protect against situations such as compromise of credit-card numbers when transmitted across the network.

The Secure Sockets Layer (SSL), protocol was developed by Netscape Communications to provide security during a communication session. SSL operates on TCP layer and provides protection to applications such as FTP, TELNET and HTTP. Secure HTTP (SHTTP) was developed for CommerceNet a consortium of companies promoting the establishment of Electronic Commerce on the Internet.

4:4:2 Guidelines for cryptography policy In March 1997, the organization for Economic Cooperation and Development(OECD) adopted the guidelines for cryptography policy identifying eight principles for national legislation .

These are: • The cryptography methods should be trustworthy in order to generate confidence in their use.

• Users should be free to choose any cryptography method based on their security requirements.

• Cryptography methods should be developed in response to the needs of business, individuals and governments.

• Technical standards and protocols for cryptography should be developed and promulgated at the national level.

• Fundamental rights of individuals to privacy should be protected.

• National policies may allow lawful access to plaintext, cryptographic keys and encrypted data.

• Liabilities of individuals and entities that offer cryptographic services should be clearly stated.

• Governments should cooperate in coordinate of cryptographic policies.

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Similar consideration exists in the framework for providing Electronic Commerce services on the GII. According to the framework for Global Electronic Commerce a secure GII requires: • Secure and reliable telecommunications networks.

• Effective means fro protecting the information system attached to those networks.

• Effective means for authenticating and ensuring confidentiality of electronic information to protect data from unauthorized use.

• Well-trained GII users who understand how to protect their systems and data.

Self Assessment Questions I 1. What is the need for security?

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------2. Cryptography comprises ______________ and _______________ 3. What are the two basic types of Cryptographic systems?

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------4. Define e-cash.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------5. Firewalls are built to protect the internal network of an organization from attacks from the Internet. Yes or No. 6. Define SSL. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------4:5 BUSINESS PROCESS ENGINEERING Introduction Hammer and Champy define a business process as a collection of activities that takes one or more kinds of input and creates an output that is of value to the customer. Some of the business processes are: procurement, order fulfillment, product development, customer service and sales. In the existing, traditional department/hierarchical structures of companies, business processes are often fragmented and hidden. They are divided into a number of tasks which often fall under different department.

The following forces are driving companies to hold IT and other related technologies of EC and EDI, as well as BPR for absolute survival: the four C’s are – Customers, Competition, Change and Cost. Business Process Reengineering (BPR) uses IT to radically alter the business processes within organizations to severely increase their efficiency and effectiveness.

4:5:1 Approach to BRP Induction of EC and EDI has to be used as an opportunity to examine the existing business practices and procedures to move organizations into fully electronic environments.

Analysis of business procedures helps in reengineering them from the viewpoint of achieving a higher level of efficiency, reduced turnaround time, lower inventory level. We can review an example where reengineering has resulted in dramatic gains.

Case 1 The process identified for reengineering was procurement, with the following stage: 1. An internal unit of the company generated a purchase order to a supplier outside the company – copy sent to the account payable.

2. The receiving department received the items against the purchase order from the supplier along with a delivery notice. Account payable received the receiving document from the receiving clerk.

3. The supplier sent an invoice to account payable.

The account payable department receives three documents: purchase order, receiving document and invoice.

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The reengineering process comes close to eliminate the Accounts Payable department.

4:5:2 Strategic Alignment Model (SAM) In developing SAM Henderson and Venkatraman have viewed business and IT in terms of strategy and infrastructure. The components of this model are: • • • •

Business Strategy IT Strategy Business Infrastructure IT Infrastructure

1. Business Strategy as the Driver: Technology Transformation Business Strategy – IT strategy _ IT Infrastructure According to this perspective Business Strategy drives the IT Strategy which in turn dictates the required IT Infrastructure and processes.

Business Strategy

Business Infrastructure

IT Strategy

IT Infrastructure

The role of executive management in this perspective is to provide the technologies vision to suit the chosen business strategy. The performance criteria are based on the technological leadership of the firm in the IT marketplace.

2. Business Strategy as the Driver: Strategy Execution Business Strategy- Business Infrastructure – IT Infrastructure According to this perspective, Business Strategy drives the Business Infrastructure, which in turn drives the IT Infrastructure. The role of management is critical in making this perspective succeed, since the top management has to act as the strategy formulator, whereas the IT manager is the strategy implementer. This is the traditional BPR model.

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Business Strategy

Business Infrastructure

IT Strategy

IT Infrastructure

3. IT Strategy as the Driver/Enabler: Competitive Potential IT Strategy – Business Strategy – Business Infrastructure According to this perspective, IT Strategy drives the Business Strategy which ion turn drives the Business Infrastructure. The top management has to play the role of the business visionary. IT has to understand and articulate the impact of emerging IT competencies and functionality on the business strategy.

Business Strategy

Business Infrastructure

IT Strategy

IT Infrastructure

4. IT Strategy as the Driver/Enabler: Service level IT strategy – IT Infrastructure - Business Infrastructure According to this perspective IT strategy drives the IT Infrastructure, which in turn drives the Business Infrastructure. The role of top management in this model is that of prioritiser in allocating the scarce resources.

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Business Strategy

IT Strategy

Business Infrastructure

IT Infrastructure

4:5:3 BPR Methodology BPR seeks to radically redesign business processes and to change organizational structures in conformance with new processes. It leverages technology and empower people.

The following issues are considered as the biggest obstacles in the success of reengineering projects: • • • • •

Lack of sustained management commitment and leadership.

Unrealistic scope and expectations.

Resistance to change.

Not helping people think in terms of business processes.

Neglecting to align measures and rewards with the new business process thinking.

BPR methodologies have developed in two ways. They are.

1. Gateway’s Rapid Re Methodology for BPR devised by Klein.

2. Process Reengineering Life Cycle (PRLC) devised by Guha, Kettinger and Teng.

3.

The following instruments should carry out the reengineering process: 1.

2.

3.

4.

Top management initiates and motivates the reengineering project.

A BPR project manager to drive the analysis of specific processes.

A core BPR team who bring broader experience and objectivity to the process.

A Steering Committee to develop BPR strategy for the organization and to monitor its progress.

5. Individual Task Teams for Analysis, Design and Implementation in specific area.

6. A reengineering guru responsible for BPR techniques.

A BPR project involves analysis, design and implementation phases.

The analysis phase establishes understanding of customer requirements, markets, current process flow in the company, benchmarking of best industries practices, target performance objectives. It helps determine the core business processes which are immediate candidates for BPR. The design phase of BPR ha to deal with design principles in these categories: Service quality

: design processes as they relate to customer contact

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Workflow

: manage flow of work through a series of steps.

Workspace

: economic issues and layout options

Continuous improvement

: incorporate continuous learning for improvement

Workforce

: keep people in view at the design stage of workflow

Information Technology

: state-of-the art IT to be kept in view as an enabler of reengineering processes

The implementation and transformation phase of BPR is to plan training, logistics, facilities modifications and to manage the transition. People have to be carried along by the BPR team through persuasion and the promised gains, in order to minimize their resistance to change.

Rapid Re Methodology This methodology is taught in American Management Association seminars. There are five stages to the methodology: 1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

Preparation Identification Vision Solution Transformation

This methodology requires very few tools. A flowcharting template and paper forms may suffice as manual tools. If required, the following six categories of BPR tools can be used in this methodology: 1. Project Management: Tools fro planning, scheduling, budgeting, reporting and tracking projects.

2. Coordination: Tools like E-mail, bulletin boards, shared spreadsheets; groupware may be used to distribute plans and to communicate updated details of projects.

3. Modeling: Integrated Computer-Aided Software Engineering (CASE) tools are used for integrated analysis, design and development of computer systems.

4. Business Process Analysis: CASE tools can be used fro business process analysis too.

They help in the systematic reduction of a business into its constituent parts and their interactions.

5. Human Resource Analysis and Design: Some tools may be available for this purpose, basically for tracking candidate position and history.

6. System Development: These tools help automate the reengineered processes.

PRLC The PRLC approach as a BPR methodology identifies the following six stages in a reengineering project: 1. Envision

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Secure management commitment Identify reengineering opportunities Identify enabling technologies Align with corporate strategy

2. Initiate • •

Organize reengineering team Set performance goals in terms of time, cost, quality, etc.

3. Diagnose • •

Document existing processes Uncover pathologies

4. Redesign • • • • •

Design the new process Design the human resources architecture Develop prototype Select an IT platform Explore alternate design

5. Reconstruct • •

Install IT Reorganize

6. Monitor • •

Measure performance Link to quality improvement

There are three dimensions to a process – entities, objects and activities. Processes entities are: • • •

Interorganizational processes Interfunctional processes Interpersonal processes

Business processes deal with objects which may be physical or informational.

Activities could be classified as operational or managerial.

The following elements may be considered in reengineering processes: • • • • • • •

Breaking unwritten, age-old rules of the company.

Aligning with performance goals.

Redefining jobs of people around a process, instead of within a department.

Eliminating hierarchies in favour of self-organized teams working in parallel.

Eliminating work fragmentation and non-value-added paths.

Improving productivity through task compression and integration Embedding IT as an enabler to support and enable the reengineered processes.

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Self Assessment Questions II 1. What is a process?

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------2. Mention the components of Strategic Alignment Model.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------3. A BPR project involves _________, ______________ and ____________ 4. What are the stages of Rapid Re Methodology --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------5. Mention the dimension of a process.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------4:6 MANAGEMENT OF CHANGE Change management Management of change in the wake of induction of EC systems and reengineered procedures is an important element in realizing the targeted levels of performance, productivity, profitability and efficiency in an organization. Management has most likely been hierarchical, based on departments and divisions. Suddenly people are asked to convert to teams, organized around business processes, with managers taking on the role of coaches. They are presented with an end-to-end view of a given business process, in its entirety, so that the benefits of reduced delivery time, better design, reduced transaction cost etc. actually materialize to justify the use of EC. Change has to be consciously planned for and made to happen, to deliver tangible and intangible benefits. It has to be embedded in the work culture. Individuals in organizations resist change because of a perceived loss of power, threat to skills, end of monopoly pf knowledge or power, loss of opportunity, loss of security, status loss etc. This can be traced to a mental model which has not changed with time. The change strategy has therefore to focus on altering the mental model which has become frozen because of lack of insight. Some of the Change Management Strategies are as follows: • • • • •

Education and communication: This method is often used when lack of information is perceived as the cause of resistance. But it is time consuming.

Participation and involvement: The entire department or unit of an organization is enrolled. More empowerment is given to people.

Facilitation and support: This approach is recommended when an organization suffers from decline in morale. It deals with adjustment problems.

Manipulation: This method is used to manage when time is of the essence. It result in staff reaction Explicit coercion: If the change agent has the power and time is of the essence, this method works.

Change Management has to overcome the following three classes of barriers: 1. General: related to the organizations history, culture, style etc.

2. Role: specific current positions create trouble 3. Individual: specific individuals object.

The most difficult barrier is organizational politics.

Various interest groups can be seen to be active during the change debate. They attempt to control the issues to be debated manner of division of resources, legitimacy of the proposed change etc. Change management strategy has to deal with organizational politics, in a political

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and diplomatic way. Change management plans must study the existing politics groups in the organization as to their present power, authority, budget, importance, security etc and their profile on these same parameters in the proposed situation. Since Change management is a result of induction of IT tools and BPR, the compounded barrier comprises both these: 1. The technological revolution is making obsolete the competencies of the IT staff. They therefore resist new technologies.

2. The embedded behavioral systems in an organization. They thus resist any change in the status.

Change Management in Public Administration Public administration in developing countries is highly bureaucratized and centralized. It is also based on an authoritarian legal system which is the legacy of colonial systems which sought to control the local population. Bureaucratic controls from a highly centralized system still characterize the present government. It views people with suspicion. It has no real concept of providing services to people. Development for the people was not on the agenda of colonial government. It is the same administration that is charged with the task of planning and implementing the process of development. Its performance has to improve through innovative and cost effective processes based on IT in general, and EDI/EC in particular. The concept of NII includes delivery of government services to citizens as one of its key pillars. Change management strategy for reengineered processes in government has to keep in view the following characteristics of public administration: • • • • • •

It has a highly bureaucratic structure Budget allocations are not based on the result and performance Salaries of public employees are not related to their performance Political interference in the working of department is common Changes called for in organizations.

Total replanning are essential

A change management plan depends upon whether there is process improvement, process redesign or complete organizational transformation.

4:6:1 The implementation plan Paper documents do not move from one stage to another, instead electronic documents moves from one stage to another. The entire workflow has been redone. Frequent person-toperson interaction inside and outside becomes drastically reduced. Suddenly the scenario changes, from handling paper documents, people are now dealing with electronic documents on their workstations. They are not interacting with people but with keyboards and a screen.

Electronic documents travel back and forth across the newly created structure with a turnaround time which is much faster. People have to get tuned.

The scenario is as follows. Documents from customers or users arrive at an office electronically over EC/EDI links, be it the Internet or a VAN, electronic documents get acted upon automatically by the organizations computers and or human intervention from their respective workstations. There may be various stages of processing or clearance for a given service.

Interpersonal communication and interaction stands reduced to a minimum. The work culture changes. To manage this change from a paper based hierarchical organizational structure to an electronic environment. Some of the methods are followed to implement the plan.

Self Assessment Questions III 1. Individuals in organization resist to change. Yes or No. 2. Name some of the Change Management Strategies.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------3. Mention the three classes of barriers.

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--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------4. Interpersonal communication and interaction stands reduced to a minimum through EC. True or False.

4:7 SUMMARY Users will need to apply security services at the lowest layer above which there is a trusted functionality. A security policy would have to be developed by organizations so that the most effective security can be established. Nations will need to work out their position in the form of policy statements and white papers on cryptography and encryption for promoting EC. Globalization has put increased pressure on organizations to operate at entirely new levels of effectiveness. Induction of EDI and EC as part of an organization’s infrastructure while providing many benefits can also result in resistance to change that is brought about by the new ways of working.

ANSWER FOR SELF ASSESSMENT QUESTIONS I.

1. To prevent destruction if information.

2. encryption and decryption 3. symmetric and asymmetric 4. Electronic or Digital cash (e-cash) is a new concept to execute cash payments using computers connected over networks.

5. Yes 6. The Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) protocol was developed by Netscape Communications to provide security during a communications session.

II.

1. Process is defined as a collection of activities that takes one or more kinds of input and creates an output that is of value to the customer.

2. The components of this model are, •

Business Strategy

•

IT Strategy

•

Business Infrastructure

•

IT Infrastructure

3. analysis, design and implementation phase.

4. There are five stages to the methodology. They are, •

Preparation

•

Identification

•

Vision

•

Solution

•

Transformation

5. Entities, objects and activities.

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1. Yes 2. Some of the Change Management Strategies are as follows: •

Education and communication

•

Participation and involvement

•

Facilitation and support

•

Manipulation

•

Explicit coercion

3. General, Role and Individual are the three classes of barriers.

4. True

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UNIT 5 LEGAL ISSUES, RISKS, E-COMMERCE IN INDIA AND GETTING STARTED UNIT STRUCTURE 5:0 Introduction 5:1 Objectives 5:2 Legal Issues 5:2:1 Risks: Paper Document Versus Electronic Document 5.2.2 Technology for Authentication an Electronic Document 5.2.3 Laws for E-commerce 5:2:4 EDI Interchange Agreement 5:2:5 Legal Issues for Internet Commerce Self Assessment Questions I 5:3 E-Commerce in India 5.3.1 EDI in INDIA 5:3:2 The Internet in India 5:3:3 Laws for E-Commerce in India Self Assessment Questions II 5:4 Getting Started 5:4:1 Getting Connected: What do you need?

5:4:2 Setting Up a Website 5:4:3 Web Servers 5:4:4 Business-To-Business EC 5:4:5 Payment for goods and services 5:4:6 Bottlenecks Self Assessment Questions III 5:5 Case studies 5.6 Summary

Answer for self assessment questions

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5:0 INTRODUCTION Two millennia of commerce has been based on the written document with its value ‘authorized’ by the signature of duly authorized officer. The legal issues of EC have generated tremendous interest among technologists, traders and legal experts. Induction of IT, EDI and EC technologies to reduce paper work, increase efficiency and competitiveness through paperless transactions. To start with Electronic Commerce can be broadly divided onto two segmentsbusiness-to-business and business-to-consumer.

5:1 OBJECTIVES To know clear idea about the legal issues and the risks that takes in the paper document versus electronic documents.

Learning about the technology authenticating an electronic documents How the E-commerce in India is in progress To learn what we need for setting up a website Payments for goods and services are also done using EC 5:2 LEGAL ISSUES The world is used to conduct business and commerce on signed paper documents.

Trade still wants to be assured that the electronic world is safe. The EC offer at least the same level of reliability. Signatures can be forged, paper documents can be tampered. There must be a way to prove that a messages existed, that it was sent, was received, was not changed between the sending and receiving and that it could not be read and interpreted by any third party intercepting it or deliberately receiving it. The message can be stored on a floppy, a magnetic disk, or an optical disk. It may be transmitted over a Local Area Network, a Wide Area Network, a Private Value Added Network or the internet. No laws for EC existed.

5:2:1 Risks: Paper Document Versus Electronic Document Wright draws attention to the risks that trouble the traditional signing of a paper document. There is no standard method for signing in ink, signatures could anyway be strange, no readable scribbles with different signatures for every transaction. Moreover, they are seldom compared against specimen for authentication. There are many risk associated with a paper document and these risks are distributed across a number of acts performed by various players in a commercial transaction: • • • • • •

The style of signing by the originator The choice of the originator to change his/her signature The content of the signed document The facts external to the document but in historical context to it.

Competence of experts who lecture on the authenticity of signatures and pages of document The views of courts on the issues in case of a argument

The paper world has legally enforced documents, through the evidence of a ‘document’, ‘writing’ and a ‘signature’. In the electronic equivalent, it amounts to the following: ‘Writing’ requires that a record is created, ‘signature’ reflects the desire foe a legal and ritualistic symbol of finality, assent and authenticity. In EC, there is concern that in the absence of proper controls, it is relatively easy to change an electronic record. Proper controls need to be enforced in EC transactions. Some of the techniques for ensuring integrity of messages during communication include: • • •

A professionally-operated network supported by disaster recovery methods.

Communication protocols, network control and management software.

Data checking and preservation techniques.

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Cryptography.

Use of auditors.

Since message authentication is linked to technical methods, if one has to prove to a court the source and integrity of a message, the security issues of EC are intimately related to legal issues.

Authenticity, integrity, confidentially and non-repudiation of origin and receipt of electronic transactions conducted over network are essential for authenticating electronic messages in case of dispute.

5.2.2 Technology for Authentication an Electronic Document Techniques have now been developed which can ‘authenticate’ EC transactions with a degree of certainty. Cryptography and digital signatures are the pillars of this technology. In fact, a digital signature is much more reliable than handwritten signatures since it is not subject to the originator’s will or intention to deliberately change his/her own signature.

Cryptography techniques based on symmetric and asymmetric methods of generating keys which are used to transform the message to encrypt it. The sender binds his unique identifier onto a message in such a way that the message cannot be forced by the receiver and cannot be denied by the owner of the secret key. A combination of public and private cryptographic keys supports digital signatures.

The State of Utah, USA was one of the earliest to adopt a Digital Signature Act, which is known as the Utah code. This act envisages the global use of public key cryptography based on government licensed CAs. The originator of a document has to keep his private key secret which would be confirmed by a Ca in a given transaction. In EC transactions, it is the private key that becomes the object of fraud. The risk is completely shifted to the private key and concentrated there. The development and use of authentication technology is a dynamic process. It is not a destination, it is an endless journey in which the good people hurry to stay a step or two ahead of the bad people.

5.2.3 Laws for E-commerce The UNCITRAL Model EDI/EC Law defines an electronic message as follows: “Data message means information generated stored or communicated by electronic, optical or analogous means including but not limited to, electronic data interchange (EDI), electronic mail, telegram, telex or telecopy.”

This law proposes legal recognition of data messages, and defines, ‘writing’,’signature’ and their admissibility and evidential value. Individual countries have been advised to enact this law with suitable modifications that may be necessary in the national context. Rules and guidelines also need to be framed for those maintaining electronic records, providing value-added network services. Internet service providers, electronic notaries, TTPs, CAs etc to take care of general record keeping and control requirements, confidentiality and control of data, privacy controls, access of business software, use of digital signatures etc.

In order to prevent fraudulent change of electronic records, civil and criminal liabilities for misconduct are necessary to deter criminals, whether corporate insiders or hawkers, through appropriate promulgation of the Computer Misuse Act or amendment of the existing criminal code. This would help protect against unauthorized use of, or access to computers as well as unauthorized alteration or destruction of data. Similarly Digital Signature Act also exists. The legal issues revolve around protection of copyrights, trademarks and patents and electronic controls on the web. The privacy of individual’s stands threatened, since data could be downloaded from various sites and collated.

5:2:4 EDI Interchange Agreement

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In the EDI world of electronic documents some kinds of discipline has been created through a set of rules that have developed in the form of interchange agreements within a number of user groups, national organizations and regions. At the international level, the UN has adopted The Model Interchange Agreement for the International Commercial Use of Electronic Data Interchange, Which applies to the interchange of data and not to the underlying commercial contracts between the partners. It addresses the need for uniformity of agreements so that there are no barriers to international trade on account of different solutions for various problems being adopted by countries.

An interchange agreement may be made between trading partners. It establishes the rules they will adopt for using EDI/EC transactions. Many national laws also introduce uncertainty regarding the legal validity of electronic documents. There are still very few national and international judgements ruling on the validity of electronic documents, messages or signatures.

The issues which were addresses by the working party which prepared this model Interchange Agreement are as follows: • • • • • • • • • • •

selection of EDI messages, standards and methods of communication responsibilities for ensuring that the equipment, software and services are operated and maintained effectively procedures for making any systems changes which may impair the ability of the trading partners to communicate security procedures and services the points at which EDI messages have legal effect the roles and contracts of any third-party service providers procedures fro dealing with technical errors the needs for confidentiality liabilities in the event of any delay or failure to meet agreed EDI communications requirements the laws governing the interchange of EDI messages and the arrangements of the parties and methods for resolving any possible disputes.

5:2:5 Legal Issues for Internet Commerce Internet commerce raises legal issues through the provision of the following services: • • • • • •

Online marketing Online retailing Financial services Online publishing Exchange of electronic messages and documents EDI, electronic filing, remote employee access, electronic transactions.

Trademarks and Domain Names Domain names have traditionally been assigned by the InterNic Registry in the USA. The .com domain used by commercial entities, uniquely identifies them in cyberspace. A company takes a domain name from the Registry in its name. The company which registers its name first as the domain name eliminates all others from cyberspace. A person or a company not entitled to the trademark, but using it as a domain name is guilty of trademark violation. The violation of trademarks by the use of domain names is essentially on two grounds: that of confusion, and that of dilution. In the US, the Lanhan Act of 1984 defines a trademark as “any word name, symbol or device or any combination used or intended to be used to indicate the source of the goods.”

Liability for violation when violation uses a mark that may be confused with the trademark of another, whether deliberately or through negligence, when seen to be used in the context of similar goods or services is strictly on the infringer.

Copyright and the Internet

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Copyright developed in the printed world to protect the economic interests of creative writers. Copyright law protects only the expression of an idea and not the idea itself. Copyright Designs and Patent Act, 1988 in the UK, allow protection of the following subject matter: • • • • •

original literacy, dramatic, musical and artistic works the typographical arrangement of published editions of literacy, dramatic or musical works sound recordings broadcasts cable programs

These have been broadly classified into two groups as ‘author works’ and ‘media works’ by Hector L. Macqueen. The multimedia capability of websites enables all types of works to be published on the internet in the sense that copies can be distributed to user/customers. The problem, however is that unlike a paper copy, this copy can be readily duplicated and distributed further by the recipient. It has been established in a number of disputes so far that a website is likely to enjoy copyright protection.

Jurisdiction Issues The internet allows anyone to set up a website anywhere in the world. Its location could, however be interpreted to decide the jurisdiction of disputes especially in EC. A court of law may rule that the location of the website determines the jurisdiction for that business. This is based on accepted legal practice. Jurisdiction determines which laws would be applicable.

Service Provider Liability Many ISPs provide user access to shared websites, Usenet news, E-mail distribution lists etc. An ISP could be held liable for the bulletin boards and for aiding and abetting the commission of an offence such as the distribution of pornography. Similarly third-party liability for defamation is also a cause for serious concern of ISPs, online service providers, websites etc.

Formation of an Enforceable Online Contract The growth of EC on the Internet depends to a large extent on the confidence of traders in forming legally enforceable contracts online. The key activities associated with the formation of an enforceable contract do take place on the internet, viz offer is communicated by the offeror and acceptance is received by the offeror from the acceptor. An offer can be communicated orally or in writing and in the EC environment through the Internet. Electronic acceptance of the contract through E-mail, E-form is valid, much the same way a fax message is. The offeror can display terms and conditions as a legal notice, on his website. Visitors to the site who choose to proceed further, even after reading the notice may be construct as accepting the conditions imposed by it.

Self Assessment Questions I 1. ___________ and _______________ are the pillars of authenticating technology.

2. An interchange agreement may be made between trading partners. Yes or No. 3. .com domain is used by _______________ entities.

5:3 E-COMMERCE IN INDIA 5.3.1 EDI in INDIA Induction of IT, EDI and EC technologies to reduce paper work, increase efficiency and competitiveness through paperless transactions. The government of India established an EDI Council under the Ministry of Commerce as the nodal agency for implementation of EDI in India.

The India EDIFACT Committee has set up a number of Message Development Groups to

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promote the use of EDIFACT standards in the exchange of international trade transactions. An education and Awareness Group also has been set up with the responsibility for creating EDI awareness workshops throughout the country. The following organizations have been conducting training programmes: • • • •

All India Management Association Federation of Indian Export Organizations Indian Institute of Foreign Trade and National Informatics Centre.

The Ministry of Commerce has been conducting regular reviews on the status of implementation of EDI in all these agencies. In addition to the two government networks namely, VSNL of DoT and NICNET of the National Informatics Centre (NIC), there are a number of private sector EDI service providers in the country such as: • • • • • •

Mahindra Network Services Global Telecom Services Ltd Satyam Info way Network Manipal Control Data IBM Global Network Services GE Information Services

The level of implementation of EDI projects in the government regulatory agencies with a view to make them EDI capable is as follows: 1. Customs Indian Customs EDI System (ICES) is one of the first EDI projects in the country. This is the first large-scale EDI project in a government agency. ICES has been designed, developed and implemented by NIC. Reengineering has been largely achieved through workflow automation, which is an integral part of ICES. The customs operations have become nearly paperless.

2. Directorate General of Foreign Trade Automation of processing of import licence applications in the DGFT has been completed in over half a dozen offices in the country. The organization is thus EDI capable.

3. Apparel Export Promotion Council AEPC is currently automated to handle only data processing with respect to quota release of apparels.

4. Reserve Bank of India It can accept the trade declarations which are forwarded by customs after due processing.

5. Banks Some of the banks which are specific to custom houses in different cities have been connected for duty collection and drawback payments with appropriate linkages with customs.

6. Port Authorities Different ports are at different levels of automation for their functions. For example, Jawaharlal Nehru Port Trust, New Mumbai has a very high degree of internal automation including container tracking.

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7. Airport Authority of India AAI has created its Cargo Management System at IGI Airport, Delhi. It has yet to be fully linked with its user community with air cargo agents and airlines.

5:3:2 The Internet in India India was connected to the Internet through a networking project, Education and Research in Computer Networking (ERNET), sponsored by the government of India and UNDP in 1985-86. Seven leading academic and research institutions are: • • • • • • •

Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur Indian Institute of Technology, Madras Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore and National Centre for Software Technology, Bombay

The following services are available on the ERNET network: • • • • • • • • • •

Electronic mail File Transfer Remote login Mailing lists Network Bulletin Board Service Database access Directory enquiry Archie Information retrieval tools Conferencing

Internet mail was first implemented in India by Project ERNET in 1989. ERNET supports Internetstyle (RFC 822) mail over two transport services: IP and UUCP. Nodes with leased line connectivity use either SMTP mail or x400 mail whereas nodes with dial-up access can use only UUCP mail. File transfer and Remote login services are available to those modes that have IP connectivity. ERNET supports Network News Bulletin Board service.

The government of India has recently decided to allow private Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to provide Internet services. EC over the Internet has become a reality. Videsh Sanchar Nigam (VSNL) was the only ISP for the public at large. For the government sector, National Informatics Centre’s Network (NICNET) providers the full range of Internet services.

The IT Action Plan formulated by the Task Force and approved by the government has recommended a number of measures to accomplish the reference through goals of the InfoInfrastructure Drive, and IT for all by 2008.

• •

Info-Infrastructure Drive IT for all by 2008

DoT is already in the process of setting up the Internet backbone. It is introducing optical fibre technology, STM-16/STM-4/STM-1, from 1997-98 onwards. It proposes to set up information highways of 19,500 km microwave and 35,000 km of optical fibre as part of the National Backbone network during 1998-99 itself. DoT is also operating DoT’s gateway for Internet Access Service (DIAS).

5:3:3 Laws For E-Commerce in India

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There are no EC laws in the country yet. The relevant acts such as the Indian Evidence Act, The General Clauses Act, The Indian Penal Code, The Customs Act, The Income Tax Act etc need to be modified to accept electronic documents. The Ministry of Commerce has set up an expert group to examine the existing commercial laws and to draft EC laws. The recommendations of the Shere Committee include the following bills: • • • •

Reserve Bank of India Regulation, 1996 Model Customer Agreement.

Amendment to the RBI Act,1934 Amendment to the Banker’s Books Evidence Act, !981

The Government of India had set up a Cyber Law Committee in early 1998, to examine the existing laws with a view to suggesting a Cyber Law for EC in particular and information society in general. Indian legislation in the form of existing acts has been examined in detail with a view to amending them, in addition to creating a comprehensive EC law. The Indian Telegraph Act, 1885 supplemented by Telegraph Rules, 1950 and the Indian Wireless Telegraph Act, 1937 have to be suitably amended to allow transmission of cipher signals.

Self Assessment Questions II 1. Name the two government network.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------2.

India was connected to the internet through a network project ________________________________________ 3. VSNL was the only ISP for the public at large. Yes Or No. 4. DoT is also operating DoT’s gateway for Internet Access Service (DIAS). Yes or No. 5. The Government of India had set up a Cyber Law Committee in ___________.

5:4 GETTING STARTED Electronic Commerce broadly be divided into two segments. They are business-tobusiness and business-to-consumer. There are two different business models possible for implementation of E-Commerce. One is the direct selling model that involves interaction with customers. This model can be applied in the retail sector. The other is the business-to-business corporate model. This model requires a high degree of trust between the companies involved so that transactions can be conducted over EC. In the business-to-business situation, Things are somewhat different. Most large organizations would already have their own application systems for meeting their business requirements. Communication between two such organizations would need to be done in an automated manner using established EDI standards to convey the content of documents being exchanged.

5:4:1 Getting Connected: What do you need?

Whether it is a VAN or Internet that a company wants to connect to a mailbox has to be obtained for messaging requirements. While in the case of a VAN, the mailbox will be created by the VAN service provider on its messaging server, to connect to the Internet the organization needs to contact an Internet Service Providers (ISP). Once an account has been created on the network, the other basic infrastructure components such as a computer, a modem and connection to the telephone network have to be established. Using modem, digital signals generated by computers are transmitted over analog telephone lines (modulation) and converted back to digital form on receipt at the destination computer (demodulation). Modem can be either internal to the computer or installed externally to the desktop model. Fast modems available operate at the speed of 56 Kbps.

The emergence of the Integrated Services Digital Network (ISDN) has facilitated the enhancement of services that an organization can provide. ISDN makes possible the digitization

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of voice, data, graphics, text, music, video and other source material and the ISDN service can be provided to end users from a single end-user terminal over existing telephone wiring. The major components for network access over the ISDN line are: • •

ISDN BRI line and a network terminal (NT) ISDN customer premises equipment.

5:4:2 Setting Up a Website Domain Name Registration When a business organization decides to set up its own website, it needs a unique domain name so that it can be identified in the Internet world. Preferably, this domain name should reflect the name of the organization. One of the most well-known domain name registration services for the top level domains .com, .net, .org and .edu is offered by the Inter NIC. APNIC (Asia Pacific Network Information Centre) provides domain name registration in the Asia Pacific region.

To register a domain name one first needs to ascertain whether the proposed domain name is still available or ahs already been registered some other organization. This can be done by searching. Domain name can be up to 26 characters long, including the top level and cannot contain any characters other than letters, numbers and hyphens. A domain name cannot have any spaces and cannot begin or end with a hyphen.

For Indian organizations who want to have the top-level domain .in, domain name have to be registered with the National Centre for Software Technology (NCST), Mumbai. The Top level domains in the Domain Naming Scheme are edu, com, gov, mil, org, int, and net and all the 2letter country codes from the list of countries in ISO-3166. The second level sub-domains registered under the in domain are the following: • • • • • • • • •

nic for the government network ernet for the academic and research network net for Internet Service Providers res for the research community ac for the academic organizations co for commercial organizations mil for military organizations gov for government offices and org for organizations which do not get covered under any of the above sub-domains.

At the third level the sub-domain provides space for registering the organization names or acronyms such as hub.nic.in and vsnl.net.in.

The Domain Name Registration Agreement of InterNIC requires that two domain name servers be listed for each domain name. These domain name servers are used to determine IP numbers from domain names. So that the registered domain name may be contacted over the Internet. Domain name registration requests will be entertained by NCST only if the organization has a valid IP address or has already applied for an IP address.

5:4:3 Web Servers Once the proposed domain name has been registered with the appropriate authority, the organization has to ready itself for establishing its presence on the Internet. To make information available on the internet, the organization has to set up a Web server. These Web servers have appropriate software which allows production of Web pages and their subsequent round-the-clock accessibility over the Internet. Internal decisions have to be taken regarding what information and services will be made available over the Internet. This information has to be made available in Web pages which are generated using HTML. The option of using a third party for hosting an organizations website also exists.

Registering the Website with Search Engines

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Once a website has been set up and all desired content created on it, the organization wants people to come and look at it. There are different ways in which a website can be promoted. These include mechanisms such as registering with search engines, advertising, newsgroup announcements and e-mail announcements. One way to feed traffic to an organizations site is to get other sites to link to its website. Generally these other organizations will want a reciprocal link back.

Search engines on the web will register websites along with their URL and keywords from the content of the Web pages. A user connects to search engines such as those offered by Netscape, Altavista and Yahoo and submit the query. In case the query information matches the keywords registered for a website, that website will be identified. The site will then find a place in the results that will be displayed by the search engine as a result of the original query.

5:4:4 Business-To-Business EC In the business-to –business segment, two organizations will have to decide, based on their business relationship, what is the information that will be exchanged electronically and the action that will be taken on receipt of any business document. While each of these communicating organizations may have their own website to cater to their customers, largevolume business documents exchanged between business partners will have to be done by the use of standard version of these documents.

Exchange of standard UN/EDIFACT messages can only be carried out after negotiations between prospective trading partners within the trading community, during the course of which, the nature of information being exchanged is thoroughly discussed and implementation guidelines developed for the selected business documents. Based on these implementation guidelines, business documents will have to be mapped to the standards and the ‘map’ input into the EDI Translator for conversion of a company-specific data formats to a representation as a standard EDI message. The same mapping has to be available with the EDI Translator at the receipt end.

EDI User Agent (EDIUA) will comprise an EDI translator and a communication module.

While some organizations may want to carry out creation of EDI messages internally and use the services of a VAN or an ISP purely for message communication, others may decide to avail the EC services offered by network service providers.

5:4:5 Payment for goods and services A business transaction is completed only when the payment has been made by the consumer and received by the supplier. In the ideal situation in EC, Payment can be authorized by credit-card payment or actual debiting on stored-value cards. In the case of credit-card payments, pilot projects are on in various countries for testing the SET protocol for securing credit-card transactions over networks. Stored-value cards are also provided adequate security depending on the amount that is stored. Once the use of credit-cards and stored-value cards reach aviable stage in the country, such organizations can move on to electronic payments very smoothly. For corporate payments comprising large value transfers, one of the critical links in the chain will be the establishment of the national EFT system. These would involve integration of the in-house financial system with the larger EFT network.

5:4:6 Bottlenecks While the technology components are all available for conducting EC, the constraining factors are the inadequacy of the existing communication infrastructure in the country and the lack of a suitable legal environment in which business transactions can be electronically conducted – safely and securely. While access controls can be implemented through routine, methods of password verification and the installation of Firewalls, cryptographic products help in maintaining confidentially, integrity and authenticity of data being transmitted. In addition, nonrepudiability of message submission and message delivery can be implemented along with digital signatures. The use of these security products have to be negotiated between the end-users and a sufficiently high degree of security can be achieved without the involvement of the network service provider.

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Export of security products from the US is governed by the Department of Commerceâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s export laws. Any organization wishing to implement EC therefore must carry out a security requirements analysis. CAs which functions as the trusted repository of public keys, need to be established to provide public key management services to users who need them. VeriSign digital certificate servers as an electronic substitute for a sealed envelope containing the certificate holderâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s signature for sending messages across the Internet.

Self Assessment Questions III 1. Modem can be either __________________ or ________________.

2. What are the major components for network access over the ISDN line?

3. Name some of the top level domain.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------4. What are the different ways in which a website can be promoted?

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------5. Payment for goods and services is made by the supplier and received by the consumer. True or False.

6. ________________ serves as an electronic substitute for a sealed envelope.

5:5 CASE STUDIES 5:5:1 EDI in Indian customs The Indian Customs EDI systems (ICES) designed, developed and implemented jointly by the National Informatics Centre and the Customs Department heralds an era of paperless trade in the country. ICES has transformed the custom house into a paperless office. The working of the office has been redesigned according to reengineered procedures through appropriate application software in ICES with a view to link the same with EDI transactions from across the organizational boundaries of the custom house. The pilot EDI project implemented at Delhi Custom House in May 1995 facilitated online clearance of import documents filled electronically by the importers and/or their clearing agents over NICNET. ICES were extended to white shipping bills in May 1996, and to duty drawback shipping bills with effect from November 1996.

The importers, custom house agents and exporters transmit Bills of Entry, Shipping Bills, and other related documents such as invoices, licences etc over dial-up links to the NICNET EDI Server which, in turn, submits them to the customs computer system for clearance.

ICES comprises two main sub-systems namely , ICES/I for processing of Bills of Entry, and ICES/E for processing of Shipping these Service Centre modules have been incorporated in both these sub-systems which allow entry of documents from the Service Centre located in the Custom House.

Electronic Submission of Documents The CHAs can use the Remote EDI system (RES) which is a standalone software package fro preparation of Bills of Entry (BEs) and Shipping Bills (SBs) and other related documents. It has been developed by NIC as part of the ICES project. It runs on PCs equipped with a modem and a telephone connection for connectivity to NICNET.

Customs Clearance These documents are reviewed by different officers of the custom house at various stages of processing and final clearance is according on the computer system after all the formalities, including physical examination of the goods at the Air Cargo Sheds are over.

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Service Centre CHAs, who do not have access to computer systems, use terminals in the service centre for having their documents entered into the computer system for processing. They are able to see the status of their documents from the enquiry counter terminals positioned in the Service Centre.

EDI Partners In addition to CHAs, importers and exporters, ICES provides for integration of other agencies involved in the customs clearance through EDI technology over NICNET VAN. THE Customs EDI Community System includes the following : • • • • • • • • • • •

Directorate General of Foreign Trade Punjab National Bank and other banks Airport Authority of India Apparels Export Promotion Council Reserve Bank of India Custom House Agents Importers/Exporters Airlines Port Authorities Shipping Lines Shipping Agents etc

In the very first stage of implementation, the computer system of PNB which is within the premises of New Custom House was integrated with ICES. The AAI is also a part of the Customs EDI Community system.

Drawback Payments to Exporters Made Hassle-free ICES facilities payment of duty drawback without the exporter having to submit a large number of documents for the purpose. No separate account numbers or ledger numbers are to be maintained for the exporter for the purpose of making drawback claims. The work related to analysis of SBs for drawback claims has been integrated with appraising in ICES. The assessing officers verify the claims and pass the bills for payment at designated levels of Superintendent /Assistant Collector. The drawback payments are thus automatically generated for each Shipping Bill unlike the earlier practice of consolidating a number of Shipping Bills and making the payments only once a month.

BPR Introduced in ICES ICES has eliminated a number of processes which were part of the previous manual system. Some of the stages have been merged while a few have been eliminated altogether.

Imports The import declaration was assigned a unique number in the Noting Section, in a register. At all stages of processing viz. Appraising, Audit, Cash etc entries would be made corresponding to the BE No. of the document being processed. The workflow software implemented in ICES keeps track of the movement of the BE. All registers stand eliminate. The Noting Section has been eliminated since ICES allocates the BE No. automatically. ICES has provision for a system appraisal of the import declarations. The documents need not be appraised on the screen by assessing officers. ICES has facilitated a Green Channel clearance for a number of importers with a good track record. Finally, a scheme of fast track clearance has recently been introduced which there is no appraising and no examination. There is an automatic system appraisal of the BE after which it directly goes fro duty payment.

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Exports ICES has introduced more radical procedural changes in exports processing. In the case of drawback exports, the exporter is not required to file any separate application fro release of duty drawback. The benefits of ICES can be summarized as follows: • • • • • • • •

Transparency of the system No physical movement of document thereby reducing processing time Faster clearance of consignment Minimum interaction with customs officers Online enquiry Uniform assessment Precedent search Truly a trade facilitator.

5:5:2 US Electronic Procurement In a movement dated 26 October 1993 President Bill Clinton of the US government issued a directive to simplify and streamline the acquisition process by moving the government onto an EC government. An interdisciplinary task force, the Federal Electronic Commerce Acquisition Team (ECAT) developed a comprehensive plan for a standardized EC capability for procurement throughput the US federal government.

EC initiatives recognize that the business community is made up of businesses of various sizes ranging form very small to the largest corporations with technical capabilities also in the same range. To address the entire range of businesses, EC program uses EDI and E-mail, as well as Electronic Bulletin Boards. It aims at creating fully electronic organizations which automate their manual processes, eliminate paper transactions and also fundamentally change the way they operate.

ECAT recommended the following 3-step integration process: • •

Review and improve processes and enhance those improvements where appropriate Integrate across the improved business functions, carefully identifying the information needs for each process.

• Integrate common business functions, application program interfaces and databases across executive department and agencies.

The electronic federal procurement programme has established the following imperatives: • The federal government must present one face to industry • The transactions must be standardised, timely, accurate and reliable • THE federal government must use established commercial practices and procedures where effective • Federal, international and national standards must be used.

• Business processes must be automated.

The federal government has eliminated procedural ambiguities and provided efficiency opportunities to all trading partners by adopting the following: • • • • • • •

A single method and time for a supplier to register for doing business A standard minimum set of electronic acquisition transactions.

A standard set of guidelines defining the data to be used in electronic transaction exchanges A standard trading partner agreement for use with all trading partners A single method of providing Request For Quotations (RFQs) to trading partners and allowing access to all federal government RFQs through one entry point using VAN. A standard VAN agreement and certification testing A consistent outreach programme to industry.

Technical Infrastructure

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The government uses commercial VANs and the Automated Clearing House (Ach) systems to reach its suppliers. The VAN carry procurement information and the ACHs carry payment information. The EC technical architecture is based on the principles of a single face to industry, standards-based open systems, best commercial practices, security and cost considerations. It is a ‘Virtual Network’ based on the existing agency networks and commercial VANs interconnected using standards-based communications software. The federal-wide technical architecture provides gateways, network entry points (NEPs) that serve as high speed telecommunication links with commercially operated VANs which ensure universal and equitable access to appropriate information and data for all agencies and trading partners alike.

Benefits to the government • • • • • • • •

Increased buyer productivity Paper handling, filing time, and time spent making photocopies will be reduced Lower prices Reduced transaction cost Process in time Better inventory control Just-in-time inventories Better management information

Benefits to Suppliers • • • • •

Increased operating efficiencies Improved payment process Reduced direct cost Invoice elimination Increased opportunities throughout the government for small supplier

5:5:3 Banks The Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial telecommunication SWIFT was set up by a consortium of US and European banks in 1973 to set up data processing and computing standards for inter-bank communication. SWIFT now operates the largest cross-border system in the world for exchanging banking messages electronically over the SWIFT network. SWIFT developed its own envelope and content formats for sending banking messages with a high degree of reliability and security. With the introduction of UN/EDIFACT in many banks and financial institutions. EDIFACT messages are also being sent within SWIFT envelopes to their destinations. SWIFT has however been primarily operational for Electronic Funds Transfer (EFT) in the bank-to-bank segment.

One of the first pilot projects taken up for conducting Financial Edi between consumer and bank on the internet is that of the Lawrence Livemore National Laboratory (LLNL) and Bank of America, Payment orders related to the purchase made by LLNL, were translated to standard X12 Edi messages, and sent as signed and encrypted Internet mail built at each end to integrate these messages with the business processes. In India, the first attempt at implementation of EDI for banks was taken up by the Indian Banks Association under the aegis of the Financial Message Development Group set up by the EDI Council of India.

The messages were converted to EDIFACT and routed through NICNET’s EDI mail boxes to the destination branch. Once implemented, these advices will not only serve a statistical function, as is presently happening in the manual system, but provide a cross-checking facility before payments are made for the Demand Draft that is presented for encashment.

The Reserve Bank of India proposes to set up a VSAT-based network to be used exclusively by the banking sector.

5:5:4 EDI Pilot Project in the Automotive Industry

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It is the automotive industry which has been in the forefront of JIT manufacturing. The technologies which have made this possible include EDI, EC and the Article Numbering system as part of the supply chain. The US auto industry has effectively used EDI and EC technology to realize significant benefits both for the customer and supplier. It set up a neutral body, the Automotive Industry Action Group (AIAG) to establish uniform guidelines for the industry, as also to provide consulting and education to the participants. It reengineered the process to completely eliminate one specific document the invoice which forms the basis for making payments in the paper world. It was found that the invoice did not give any additional information from that already available in the document exchanged between the supplier and customer: • • •

Purchase Order from customer to supplier Shipping Notice from supplier to customer Receiving Advice from customer to supplier

In India, an EDI pilot project has been launched for the auto industry. AIAM, ACMA and the Ministry of Commerce have joined hands to initiate this project. It includes the automobile manufacturers, OEMs, auto component manufacturers and others in the supply chain. The pilot uses EDIFACT standards for making the order schedule and invoice. The messages have been mapped and the automotive industry has agreed to use them. These have been tested by the industry with a number of EDI Service Providers. Trial runs have been conducted by auto component suppliers with the service providers.

5:6 SUMMARY The role of government is to provide a legal framework for electronic commerce so that while domestic and international trade are allowed to expand their horizons, basic rights such as privacy, intellectual property, prevention of fraud and consumer protection are all taken care of.

Electronic commerce makes it possible to achieve level playing fields in the fiercely competitive world of business. Large multinationals and small businesses can all take advantage of the available EC tools and technologies to enhance productivity and use them innovatively to maintain a competitive edge.

Answer for Self Assessment Questions I.

1.Cryptography and digital signatures.

2. Yes 3. Commercial

II.

1. There two government network namely, VSNL of DoT and NICNET 2. Education and Research in Computer Networking (ERNET) 3. Yes 4. Yes. 5. Early in1998

III.

1. Internal or External 2. Major components for network access over the ISDN linen are: •

ISDN BRI and a network terminal (NT)

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ISDN customer premises equipment

3. edu, com, gov, mil, org, int and net 4. Different ways in which a website can be promoted include mechanisms such as registering with search engines, advertising, newsgroup announcement and e-mail announcement.

5. False 6. A VeriSign digital certificate

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UNIT QUESTIONS UNIT 1 1. Explain EDI concepts.

2. Describe different types of topology in Networking.

3. What is VSAT? Explain the function of VSAT. 4. Discuss in detail ISOâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Open System Interconnection Model.

5. Describe neatly the X.400 Message Handling System.

6.Explain Internet Mail in detail.

7.Describe the X.500 Directory Services.

UNIT 2 1. Explain Internet Communication Protocol.

2. What are the ways for communicating with Internet? Explain 3.Describe the major tools of the internet 4. Discuss the major issues of the Internet.

5. Explain Intranet services in detail.

6. Describe in detail components of EDI system.

7. Explain Intranet implementation.

UNIT 3 1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

Explain about an EDI message.

Discuss briefly UN/EDIFACT message directories.

Describe in detail commerce over Internet.

Explain Identification and tracking tools for Electronic commerce.

Describe bandwidth issues in detail.

Explain Technology issues in Detail Explain briefly about NII.

UNIT 4 1. Describe in detail security solutions.

2. Discuss about electronic cash over Internet.

3. Explain the guidelines for Cryptographic policy 4. Explain Strategic Alignment Model in detail.

5. Discuss about BPR Methodology.

6. What are the change management in Public Administration? Explain.

UNIT 5 1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

Explain the risks in paper document versus electronic document.

Discuss the law for E-Commerce Describe the legal issues for Internet Commerce in detail.

Explain the level of implementation of EDI Discuss in detail the internet in India Explain about setting up a website .

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