• E-Business

The traditional business environment is changing rapidly as customers and businesses seek the flexibility to change trading partners, platforms, carriers and networks at will. Many companies are looking outside their organizations as well as within when shaping their business strategies.

These activities include establishing private electronic connections to consumers, suppliers, distributors, industry groups and even competitors, to increase the efficiency of business communications, to help expand market share, and to maintain long term viability in today's business environment.

The Information Superhighway has been able to expand this trend to another level altogether. It allows businesses to exchange information among  constantly changing sets of customers, suppliers and research collaborators in government and academia on a global basis. It will indeed become a powerful business tool that no organization can do without.

The whole issue of security in an e-business environment has evolved to encompass issues of privacy and trust. Security does not always entail privacy, but privacy requires security. Keeping information confidential requires much more than a technology solution. It is about business policy and the processes they support. Data privacy is about choice: the freedom of individuals to choose how they wish to be treated by organizations that control data that describes them. Data privacy has emerged as a major societal issue as individuals have begun to question the levels of technological intrusiveness they will tolerate.