Online Privacy, Vulnerabilities, and Threats: A Manager’s Perspective

There are many potential threats that come with conducting business in an online environment. Management must find a way to neutralize or at least reduce these threats if the organization is going to maintain viability. This chapter is designed to give managers an understanding, as well as the vocabulary needed to have a working knowledge of online privacy, vulnerabilities, and threats. The chapter also highlights techniques that are commonly used to impede attacks and protect the privacy of the organization, its customers, and employees. With the advancements in computing technology, any and all conceivable steps should be taken to protect an organization’s data from outside and inside threats

Website Usability: A Re-Examination through the Lenses of ISO Standards

The original conceptualization of usability was ease of use, this was later expanded into a multi-dimensional construct in ISO standards and usability literature. Such an expansion is seen as an improvement, since cross-study comparison or benchmarking cannot objectively be done without a common set of usability components being defined. The current issue lies in how these components are operationalized, measured and validated. Although ISO standards ties usability to contextual situations, recent research has started to also recognize psychographic and demographic variations within the same context. The purpose of this study is to review web site usability as it relates to ISO standards (more specifically ISO 9126, ISO 9241 and ISO/IEC 25010) and existing usability studies. Implications for researchers and practitioners are provided

Atmospherics in the Cyber World

The field of study which addresses the store environment and its impact on retail sales is known as atmospherics. Store atmospherics impact emotional reactions, which in turn affects consumers ’ attitudes towards the store. Ultimately, these elements have direct influence on the popularity and success of the store. This paper explores how the ideas of retail atmospherics may be applied to website designs. In the 12 plus years since the introduction of commercialism to the Internet (1994) the nature of atmospherics has only been limitedly addressed. Physical stores provide the yardstick (and context) for studies on retail environmental atmospherics. However, there are substantial differences in the way that people behave in the physical and in the virtual world. This paper includes an investigation of the attributes in the physical world (Brick and Mortar) which can be directly translated to the web and offers the Cyberspace Atmospherics Model (CAM) as a method to facilitate design decisions