Development of an intelligent e-commerce assurance model to promote trust in online shopping environment

Electronic commerce (e-commerce) markets provide benefits for both buyers and sellers; however, because of cyber security risks consumers are reluctant to transact online. Trust in e-commerce is paramount for adoption. Trust as a subject for research has been a term considered in depth by numerous researchers in various fields of study, including psychology and information technology. Various models have been developed in e-commerce to alleviate consumer fears, thus promoting trust in online environments. Third-party web seals and online scanning tools are some of the existing models used in e-commerce environments, but they have some deficiencies, e.g. failure to incorporate compliance, which need to be addressed. This research proposes an e-commerce assurance model for safe online shopping. The machine learning model is called the Page ranking analytical hierarchy process (PRAHP). PRAHP builds complementary strengths of the analytical hierarchy process (AHP) and Page ranking (PR) techniques to evaluate the trustworthiness of web attributes. The attributes that are assessed are Adaptive legislation, Adaptive International Organisation for Standardisation Standards, Availability, Policy and Advanced Security login. The attributes were selected based on the literature reviewed from accredited journals and some of the reputable e-commerce websites. PRAHP’s paradigms were evaluated extensively through detailed experiments on business-to-business, business-to-consumer, cloud-based and general e-commerce websites. The results of the assessments were validated by customer inputs regarding the website. The reliability and robustness of PRAHP was tested by varying the damping factor and the inbound links. In all the experiments, the results revealed that the model provides reliable results to guide customers in making informed purchasing decisions. The research also reveals hidden e-commerce topics that have not received attention, which generates knowledge and opens research questions for future researchers. These ultimately made significant contributions in e-commerce assurance, in areas such as security and compliance through the fusing of AHP and PR, integrated into a decision table for alleviating trustworthiness anxiety in various e-commerce transacting partners, e-commerce platforms and markets.College of Engineering, Science and TechnologyD. Phil. Information System

The Impact of Internet Consumption on China’s Economic Development

This thesis explores the impact of Internet consumption development in China through examining the causal relationship between Internet consumption and GDP under a bivariate VAR model, and between Internet consumption and traditional consumption, telecommunication industry, and express delivery industry under a multivariate VAR model using quarterly data from 2006-2013. The causal relationship between variables is investigated by the approach of Granger causality following Toda-Yomamoto procedure. The empirical results indicate a strong bi-directional causality between Internet consumption and GDP, between Internet consumption and traditional consumption, and between Internet consumption and telecommunication industry. Meanwhile, the results also show a unidirectional causality form Internet consumption to express delivery industry. All these test results support the hypothesis that the rapid development of Internet consumption has positive influence on China’s economic development, which is consistent with country’s current strategy to put domestic consumption as driving force for economic growth

An environment for protecting the privacy of e-shoppers

Privacy, an everyday topic with weekly media coverage of loss of personal records, faces its bigger risk during the uncontrolled, involuntary or inadvertent disclosure and collection of personal and sensitive information. Preserving one's privacy while e-shopping, especially when personalisation is involved, is a big challenge. Current initiatives only offer customers opt-out options. This research proposes a `privacy-preserved' shopping environment (PPSE) which empowers customers to disclose information safely by facilitating a personalised e- shopping experience that protects their privacy. Evaluation delivered positive results which suggest that such a product would indeed have a market in a world where customers are increasingly concerned about their privacy

AML/CFT regulations of EU in the age of virtual currency

Dissertação de mestrado em European and Transglobal Business LawGlobal consideration on money laundering has its origins in narco-trafficking of 1980s which raised public awareness and took international regulatory body’s attention. Throughout time, due to the socio-economic and political context, legislations on money laundering were transformed in order to introduce an efficient response to new issues. As a need in the aftermath of 9/11, counter-financing of terrorism (CFT) was included in the scope of anti-money laundering (AML) legislations, due to the intertwined nature of these two criminal matters. A new challenge to the AML/CFT legislations was introduced by the technological developments and the emergence of virtual currency. Appearing as an alternative, fast, easy and cheap non-cash payment method, its relation with criminal activities, widespread usage and unregulated operations raised concerns. When traditional approaches to the fight against money laundering and financing of terrorism were circumvented by pseudo-anonymous and decentralized nature of new transaction methods, existing legislations were forced to be transformed once more. European Union, taking its powers for regulating criminal matters from the Treaty of the Functioning of European Union (TFEU), proposed an amendment to the 4th AML, with the purpose of reducing anonymity of virtual currency. Not being accepted yet, its ability to produce an adequate respond to challenges, due to the special nature of virtual currency, is questionable. This thesis analyse European Union’s current Anti-Money Laundering legislation and its responsiveness to the characteristics of virtual currency that are attributable to the risks, with particular attention to crypto-currency, through a critical perspective. It aimed to raise awareness of the subject matter and contribute to the future of AML/CFT reuglations of the EU.A preocupação internacional com o branqueamento de capitais está ligada ao narcotráfico da década de oitenta. Ao longo do tempo e devido ao contexto sócio económico e político, a legislação relacionada com o branqueamento de capitais foi sendo adaptada, permitindo introduzir uma resposta mais eficiente aos novos desafios. Isto foi particularmente visível na sequência dos ataques de 11 de setembro, momento a partir do qual a prevenção do financiamento do terrorismo passou a estar incluída no domínio do branqueamento de capitais, atendendo à ligação próxima entre estes dois fenómenos. Um novo desafio à legislação sobre branqueamento de capitais surgiu como desenvolvimento tecnológico, nomeadamente com o aparecimento de cripto-moedas. As moedas virtuais surgiram como uma alternativa rápida, fácil e pouco dispendiosa, para realizar pagamentos. Porém, a sua associação a atividades criminosas, uso generalizado e ausência de regulamentação própria conduziram a fortes preocupações por parte das entidades reguladoras. As abordagens tradicionais de combate à lavagem de dinheiro e financiamento do terrorismo tornaram-se obsoletas perante a natureza descentralizada e pseudoanónima destes novos métodos de transações, demandando uma reforma célere da legislação existente. A União Europeia, utilizando o Tratado sobre o Funcionamento da União Europeia como forma de fundamentar os seus poderes, propôs uma alteração à diretiva 4.ª AML, com o objetivo de reduzir o anonimato das cripto-moedas. Não tendo sido ainda aprovada, a capacidade desta alteração produzir a resposta adequada aos desafios apresentados pela natureza especial das moedas virtuais é, no mínimo, questionável. O trabalho aqui apresentado analisa a atual legislação europeia contra o branqueamento de capitais e a sua capacidade de responder às características das moedas virtuais, às quais se atribui um elevado risco. Tem também como objetivo salientar questões relativas a esta temática e despertar maior interesse, assim como contribuir para o futuro da regulamentação AML/CFT da União Europeia

The First 25 Years of the Bled eConference: Themes and Impacts

The Bled eConference is the longest-running themed conference associated with the Information Systems discipline. The focus throughout its first quarter-century has been the application of electronic tools, migrating progressively from Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) via Inter-Organisational Systems (IOS) and eCommerce to encompass all aspects of the use of networking facilities in industry and government, and more recently by individuals, groups and society as a whole. This paper reports on an examination of the conference titles and of the titles and abstracts of the 773 refereed papers published in the Proceedings since 1995. This identified a long and strong focus on categories of electronic business and corporate perspectives, which has broadened in recent years to encompass the democratic, the social and the personal. The conference\u27s extend well beyond the papers and their thousands of citations and tens of thousands of downloads. Other impacts have included innovative forms of support for the development of large numbers of graduate students, and the many international research collaborations that have been conceived and developed in a beautiful lake-side setting in Slovenia

E-commerce and small and medium enterprises (SME) in least developed countries : the case of Tanzania

Includes abstract.Includes bibliographical references.The purpose of the study was to investigate the E-Commerce phenomena in Tanzania with the goal of understanding how E-Commerce is typically made sense of by Tanzanian SMEs and how the sense making is produced, sustained and affected by environmental and organisational conditions. Structuration theory was used as a theoretical lens from which the social construction of the E-Commerce phenomena could be understood. The study primarily adopted a subjective interpretive stance. A preliminary quantitative study using questionnaires and interviews was done to gain an initial understanding of the E-Commerce status quo in Tanzania. The main study was qualitative in nature and used interviews with 33 Tanzanian SMEs as the data collection method

Towards a framework to promote the development of secure and usable online information security applications

The proliferation of the internet and associated online activities exposes users to numerous information security (InfoSec) threats. Such online activities attract a variety of online users who include novice computer users with no basic InfoSec awareness knowledge. Information systems that collect and use sensitive and confidential personal information of users need to provide reliable protection mechanisms to safeguard this information. Given the constant user involvement in these systems and the notion of users being the weakest link in the InfoSec chain, technical solutions alone are insufficient. The usability of online InfoSec systems can play an integral role in making sure that users use the applications effectively, thereby improving the overall security of the applications. The development of online InfoSec systems calls for addressing the InfoSec problem as a social problem, and such development must seek to find a balance between technical and social aspects. The research addressed the problem of usable security in online InfoSec applications by using an approach that enabled the consideration of both InfoSec and usability in viewing the system as a socio-technical system with technical and social sub-systems. Therefore, the research proposed a socio-technical framework that promotes the development of usable security for online information systems using online banking as a case study. Using a convergent mixed methods research (MMR) design, the research collected data from online banking users through a survey and obtained the views of online banking developers through unstructured interviews. The findings from the two research methods contributed to the selection of 12 usable security design principles proposed in the sociotechnical information security (STInfoSec) framework. The research contributed to online InfoSec systems theory by developing a validated STInfoSec framework that went through an evaluation process by seven field experts. Although intended for online banking, the framework can be applied to other similar online InfoSec applications, with minimum adaptation. The STInfoSec framework provides checklist items that allow for easy application during the development process. The checklist items can also be used to evaluate existing online banking websites to identify possible usable security problems.Computer ScienceD. Phil. (Computer Science

O impacto da inteligência artificial no negócio eletrónico

Pela importância que a Inteligência Artificial exibe na atualidade, revela-se de grande interesse verificar até que ponto ela está a transformar o Negócio Eletrónico. Para esse efeito, delineou-se uma revisão sistemática com o objetivo de avaliar os impactos da proliferação destes instrumentos. A investigação empreendida pretendeu identificar artigos científicos que, através de pesquisas realizadas a Fontes de Dados Eletrónicas, pudessem responder às questões de investigação implementadas: a) que tipo de soluções, baseadas na Inteligência Artificial (IA), têm sido usadas para melhorar o Negócio Eletrónico (NE); b) em que domínios do NE a IA foi aplicada; c) qual a taxa de sucesso ou fracasso do projeto. Simultaneamente, tiveram de respeitar critérios de seleção, nomeadamente, estar escritos em inglês, encontrarem-se no intervalo temporal 2015/2021 e tratar-se de estudos empíricos, suportados em dados reais. Após uma avaliação de qualidade final, procedeu-se à extração dos dados pertinentes para a investigação, para formulários criados em MS Excel. Estes dados estiveram na base da análise quantitativa e qualitativa que evidenciaram as descobertas feitas e sobre os quais se procedeu, posteriormente, à sua discussão. A dissertação termina com as conclusão e discussão de trabalhos futuros.Due to the importance that Artificial Intelligence exhibits today, it is of great interest to see to what extent it is transforming the Electronic Business. To this end, a systematic review was designed to evaluate the impacts of the proliferation of these instruments. The research aimed to identify scientific articles that, through research carried out on Electronic Data Sources, could answer the research questions implemented: a) what kind of solutions, based on Artificial Intelligence, have been used to improve the Electronic Business; b) in which areas of the Electronic Business Artificial Intelligence has been applied; c) what the success rate or failure of the project is. At the same time, they must comply with selection criteria, to be written in English, to be found in the 2015/2021-time interval and to be empirical studies supported by actual data. After a final quality evaluation, the relevant data for the investigation were extracted for forms created in MS Excel. These data were the basis of the quantitative and qualitative analysis that evidenced the findings found and on which they were subsequently discussed. The dissertation ends with the conclusion and discussion of future works