How the Internet Revolutionizes Business Operations

The internet, a global network of interconnected computers using a standard protocol for information exchange, has revolutionized business operations. By merging computing and communication capabilities, the internet enhances every aspect of the business cycle. It facilitates seamless interaction and data exchange across marketing, sales, customer support, and logistics, driving efficiency and innovation.

When a computer network infrastructure is properly aligned with a company's goals, it becomes a foundation for key applications and innovations. This alignment contributes to competitive advantage and sustainable growth. Technologies like cloud computing, big data analytics, and the Internet of Things (IoT), which rely on the internet, have transformed industries by enabling real-time data processing, predictive analytics, and automated processes. These advancements enable businesses to respond quickly to market changes and customer demands, enhancing their competitive edge.

Significant cost savings can be achieved through internet-based technologies such as intranets and extranets, which are generally less expensive to develop, operate, and maintain than traditional systems. For example, cloud services reduce the need for physical infrastructure and maintenance, lowering operational costs. Additionally, Software as a Service (SaaS) models offer scalable solutions that can be tailored to a company's needs, ensuring cost efficiency.

Many organizations have underestimated the internet's potential as a new kind of technology-mediated value proposition. As technology drives rapid commoditization, businesses must adapt to remain competitive. The rise of e-commerce is a prime example of the internet's impact. Online platforms have democratized market access, enabling even small businesses to reach a global audience with minimal investment.

The internet's primary business value includes attracting new customers through innovative marketing and products, and retaining existing customers with improved customer service and support. E-commerce websites are central to this strategy. They reduce costs through online sales and customer support, attract new customers via web marketing and advertising, and increase customer loyalty with enhanced web-based customer service. Moreover, they facilitate the development of new web-based markets and distribution channels for existing products, as well as new information-based products accessible on the web.

In summary, most companies are building e-commerce websites to achieve key business objectives: reducing costs, attracting new customers, increasing customer loyalty, developing new markets and distribution channels, creating new products, and enhancing convenience and effectiveness in customer interactions. By integrating business goals with technology strategies, companies can build shareholder value and meet organizational needs. The true value of technology lies not just in providing support functions but in being a strategic tool that drives a company's success. The internet is reshaping traditional business patterns, establishing new paradigms for fast, borderless commerce.
How the Internet Revolutionizes Business Operations

Business Use of the Internet: A Strategic Evolution

The business landscape has witnessed a transformative journey with the exponential growth of the internet, evolving from a simple information exchange platform to a cornerstone of strategic business operations. Today, leveraging the internet is not just advantageous but almost imperative, whether for traditional brick-and-mortar establishments or digital-first enterprises.

Leading corporations have embraced internet technologies for multifaceted applications, particularly in marketing, sales, and customer relationship management. Internet marketing has shifted focus from broad outreach to personalized engagement, with database-driven practices enabling precise targeting and one-to-one interactions .

Moreover, the internet's influence extends beyond marketing into core business functions such as engineering, manufacturing, human resources, and accounting. Companies are adopting internet-based solutions for cross-functional applications, enhancing efficiency and integration across diverse business operations .

One significant advantage of internet adoption is the facilitation of enterprise communications, collaborations, and electronic commerce. Through online platforms, businesses can promote, advertise, and market themselves cost-effectively, reaching a global audience with minimal investment .

Furthermore, the internet offers an alternative platform for managing relationships and facilitating electronic intercompany activities. The transition to electronic transactions has streamlined processes, reducing costs and risks associated with traditional paper-based methods. Modern computer servers can handle thousands of transactions per second, enhancing efficiency and security in business operations .

In conclusion, the internet has evolved from a supplementary tool to a transformative force in modern business strategies. Its pervasive influence spans marketing, operations, and customer engagement, empowering businesses to adapt, thrive, and forge ahead in the digital age. As technologies continue to advance, the internet will remain a cornerstone of innovation and efficiency in the global business landscape.
Business Use of the Internet: A Strategic Evolution

What is cyberstalking?

The Internet has undergone rapid growth in this millennium in that it has promoted advances in just about every aspect of society and is available and accessible in practically every corner of the globe. The Internet has literally become a fertile breeding ground for an entirely new and unique type of criminal offender hereafter known as the cyber stalker.

The cyber stalker is one who uses the Internet as a weapon or tool of sorts to prey upon, harass, threaten, and generate fear and trepidation in his or her victims through sophisticated stalking tactics, which for the most part, are largely misunderstood and in some cases, legal.

The action is to annoy, alarm, and emotionally abuse another person. Perpetrators utilize social media accounts, publicly accessible information and sometimes illegally accessed information to learn more about their targets. The perpetrators may also spread rumors and misinformation to discredit or intimidate them.

It is also worth pointing out that many of the techniques used by cyberstalkers were not possible until quite recently. Identity theft, for example, involves impersonating another person in order to carry out various acts, such as making fraudulent purchases.

The term cyber stalking generally refers to the use of the Internet, email, or other electronic communication device to create a criminal level of intimidation, harassment, and fear in one or more victims.

Cyberstalkers may obtain personal information about their victims (e.g.,home address, phone number) from the Internet and utilize this information to meet their victims in person. They can use any of a number of methods available online to assist them in their endeavors, including downloading keystroke logger software to capture the information necessary to obtain private information from their intended victim and using social media to monitor and/or harass their victims.

The motivations behind cyberstalking can be very different to those behind offline stalking. Corporate cyberstalking involves an individual, a group or an organization pursuing another individual, group or organization. Sometimes, the motive behind corporate cyber-stalking can be political, for profit or for competitive advantage.

What is cyberstalking?

Internet Commerce

Nowadays shoppers can buy online at their convenience at any time and from anywhere. The World Wide Web provides the basic communication infrastructure or framework for supporting consumer oriented e-commerce,

E-commerce can be defined as a means of conducting business electronically via online transaction among trading partners.

While e-commerce encompass business activities that is conducted electronically, such as using the world wide web, the multimedia interactive component of the internet, telephone lines, leased lines and wireless, e-business can be understood as a superior set which extends the understanding of e-commerce to reflect the vision of the organization.

E-commerce can be between two business transmitting funds, goods, or services or between a business and a customer.

The goods or services are ordered over the internet, but the payment or ultimate delivery of the good or service may be conducted on or off line.

Internet or the information superhighway has been well understood as the enabler or the enabling technology. E-commerce sites nowadays expose variable degrees of sophistication, functionality, and complexity. Most e-commerce sites lists of available products, usually organized in category.
Internet Commerce

Trend of E-commerce

The internet makes it very easy for people to find goods, and it should therefore be just as easy for them to buy the products or services from a website. New technologies are being introduced into the market almost on a daily basis, which in turns opens up new territories and new possibilities in e-commerce. Today, Business to Business (B2B) and Business to Consumer (B2C) are the leading markets of E-commerce.

The emergence of wireless and mobile networks has made possible the introduction of e-commerce to a new application and research subject: mobile commerce. Mobile commerce is a promising trend of commerce because internet-enabled smartphones such as iPhones are becoming very popular these days.

B2C E-commerce moves from simple Web store fronts to interactive marketing capabilities that provide a personalized shopping experience for customers and then toward a totally integrated Web store that support a variety of customer shopping experience.

Previously, websites meant to be informational, just to provide details about products and services, but now the trend is to carry out transaction and money transfer over the internet.

B2C E-commerce also moving toward a self-service model where customers configure and customize the products and services they wish to buy aided by configuration software and online customer support as needed.

E-commerce in social networking involves customer driven online transaction. Usually, these social networking sites integrate across a number of online portals to promote sales.

The need for the integration of several portals is to connect customers to one another such that they can share, recommend products and services which will improve company’s business.
Trend of E-commerce

Important internet privacy issues

In business and government, many important issues are being debated, as Internet technologies accelerate the ubiquity of global telecommunications connection in business and society.

Due to the web is increasingly important in people’s lives, one of the issues users raise is their desire to known that their privacy is being protected when they go online.

Use of the internet consists of the use of e-mail websites, social networking sites, organizational and institutional websites and browsing of other websites. Internet privacy refers to the control a person has over the information related to him or her and can be considered as part of computer privacy.

*Accessing individuals’ private E-mail conversations and computer records and collecting and sharing information about individuals gained from their visits to Internet websites and newsgroups (violation of privacy).

*Always knowing where a person is, especially as mobile and paging services become more closely associated with people rather than places (computer monitoring).

*Using customer information gained from many sources to market additional business services (computer matching).

*Collecting telephone numbers, E-mail address, credit numbers, and other personal information to build individual customer profiles (unauthorized personal files). In certain websites which provides online shopping facility users are asked to give their credit card details, passwords and PINs.

Privacy issues arise because very internet transaction leaves an important artifact of every transaction the individual did when searching for information, shopping or banking. This audit trail has caused many people to be concerned that this data may be inappropriately used.
Important internet privacy issues

Wireless internet

The wireless internet is the network of radio-connected devices and servers using voice, information and other internet services.  Its origins and its services cover both the computer and telecommunications industries.

With the birth of the wireless internet, the telecommunications industry has definitely accelerated the access points to the internet.

The three mains benefits of wireless internet communications are as follows:
*Wireless technology allows people to solve the problem of mobility, which in turn has huge implications. A user doesn’t have to be shackled to a desktop to get time –sensitive information; a user doesn’t have to carry computers and network paraphernalia, whenever he or she goes. Merely carrying simple, convenient network-enabled phone, IPod or Ipad or tablet would do.

*Information can be made available to users who don’t have PCs.

*It supports exciting applications such as sensor networks, smartphones, telemedicine and automation. The early wireless technology is primarily used in the military, emergency services and law enforcement.

In some industrial applications, wireless has key competitive advantages. These include logistics, defense, emergency health care, and mobile workface management.
Wireless internet 

The benefits of E-Government

Governments are embracing the internet to provide services to business (G2B) and citizens (C2C), as well as government to government (G2G), citizen to citizen (C2C), government to supplier (G2S) and government to employee (G2E).

What is e-government? Electronic government is the process of transformation of the relationships of government with its constituents - the citizen, the business and between its own organs, through the use of the tool of Information nd Communications Technology (ICT).

The aim is to bring about enhanced access, transparency, accountability and efficiency in the delivery of government information and services.

The benefits of e-government usually include improved: quality of citizen services, internal efficiencies, law enforcement, education and information, promotion and outreach activities, safety and security, health care services and management, and  involvement of citizens in the democratic process.

Theoretically, e-government can result in significant cost reduction. This premise rests on the belief that the automation of processes reduces manpower costs, besides costs of accounting, compilations, reporting and review.

Product procurement and delivery, key elements in the supply chain, can be seamlessly integrated into e-government platform. Many believe that e-government can provide seamless services to draw agencies together, leading to more citizen- centric services.

It also increases trust in government.
The benefits of E-Government

Terrorist in the Internet

In the years since the first WWW applications were developed, there has been an explosion in the global use of the internet. With this growth has come an increasing usage of the medium by criminal and terrorist groups.

The internet is used by international insurgents, jihadist and terrorist organizations as a tool for radicalization and recruitment, a method of propaganda distribution, a means of communication,  and ground for training.

The World Wide Web is home dozens of site that provides information on how to build explosive and chemical weapons, providing maps, photographs, directions, codes and technical details of how to use explosives.

The internet is very helpful for a terrorist organization is in collecting information. The internet also can serve as a virtual training camp.

The internet also is used to recruit and mobilize supporters to play a more active role in supporting terrorist activities or causes.

Many Arabic-language websites are said to contain coded plans for new attacks. Some reportedly give advice on how to build and operate weapons and how to pass through border checkpoints.

The term terrorist or terrorism is a highly emotive term. Generally it is use t0 denote “revolutionists who seek to use terror systemically to further their views or to govern a particular area”.

‘Cyber-terrorism’ is a different form of terrorism since physical systematic terror does not usually occur (although it can if it causes disruption to a critical system), but a widespread destruction of information resources can.

Cybercrime has increased in past years and several recent terrorist events appear to have been fined partially through online credit card fraud. Extremist hackers have reportedly used identity theft and credit card fraud to support terrorist activities.
Terrorist in the Internet

Google analytics

Web analytics is a process through which statistics about website use are gathered and compiled electronically. Marketing managers especially need the information about their marketing campaigns so they can see what works and what doesn’t.

There are three main tasks very business must tackle when doing web analytics:
*Measuring quantitative and qualitative data
*Continuously improving website
*Aligning measurement strategy with business strategy

An analytics program can be used as a tool to help known the users - who they are, where they are coming from and how they use the site.

The origins of web analytics are coming from commercial website design, where tracking users’ behaviors and actions directly relates to consumers’ purchasing behavior.

In case of Google Analytics, it is essential for understanding which marketing initiatives are working and are not.

Google Analytics would tell how people found, navigate and covert on the website so the website owner can turn more visitors into buyers.

It tracks many standard website metrics, like visits, unique visitors, page views, bounce rate and abandonment rate. But more importantly it can track business outcomes.

In addition to tracking goals, Google Analytics also can track AdWords and also type of paid search, email-marketing, display advertising, social media and any type ads.
Google analytics

Amazon internet business

Amazon.com works as a virtual retailer because it is more convenient, and the product itself it suited for the internet, and because the business model is different, it can sell at lower cost and still offer more selection.

Amazon used its early understanding of the internet to build partnerships with internet serves and popular websites.

Amazon also got authors and others involved through its associate program, which linked Amazon to individual websites and offered the associated a small commission.

The Amazon business model assumes that the expanding number of internet users will create a new mass market who value low prices and convenience and sill shop for a large number of their needs using the computer.

An online business is available to a much larger set of customer than would be possible if the customer had physically visits the business establishment.

By removing the overheads of a traditional bricks-and-mortar store Amazon.com is able to reduce the cost of supplying a product to a customer and so charge lower prices.

Furthermore, the business actually can improve customer service for example though online help desks.
Amazon internet business

Features of Electronic Mail

The first thing many people do at work all over the world is check their e-mail. Electronic mail has changed the way people work and communicate.

E-mail is electronically transmitted mail via computer and hand phone. Depending on its size, which is weighed in bytes, the transmission of data takes places within a few seconds or minutes.

Based on history, E-mail is a byproduct of the US military Defense System. Before the usefulness of E-mail was perceived, the internet was widely employed initially for military and academic use.

Millions of end users now depend on E-mail software to communicate with each other by sending and receiving electronic messages via the Internet or their organizations’ intranets or extranets.

E-mail is used in businesses, government department, universities, schools, homes, kiosks and on mobile laptops, hand phone, pagers and personal digital assistants.

E-mail is the fastest, most flexible, cost efficient, personalized and targeted communication medium in the world today.

Full featured E-mail software like Microsoft Exchange E-mail can route the messages to multiple end users based on predefined mailing lists and provide password security, automatic message forwarding and remote user access.

They also allow us store messages in folders with provisions for adding attachments to message files. E-mail packages may also enable us to edit and send graphics and multimedia as well as text, and provide bulletin board and computer conferencing capabilities.

People have two fundamental communication needs that various forms of technology can aid: speed and regularity.

While the telephone provides rapid, real time communication, electronic mail provides a regularity that is lacking in telephone communication.

E-mail became popular because of its relatively low cost, high reliability and most instantaneous delivery as compared with regular mail.

E-mail provides a high level of informality, a sense of community and sharing, wide tolerance of selling and typographical errors and brevity of expression.
Features of Electronic Mail

What is cyber theft?

Cyber theft can be defined as the use of computer networks for criminal profits, Infringement of copyright, identity theft and internet securities fraud are example of cyber theft.

Many computer crimes involve the theft of money or goods or intellectual property. In the majority of cases, they are “inside jobs” that involve unauthorized network entry and fraudulent alternation of computer databases to cover the tracks of the employees involved.

This category includes cyber intrusion, but is also sometimes used to refer to any criminal theft, where a computer system or the internet is used as a means of perpetrating the crime.

One of the examples was involve the use of internet, such as the widely publicized theft of $11 million from Citibank in late 1994, Russian hacker Vladimir Levin and his accomplices in St. Petersburg used the Internet to electronically break into Citibank’s mainframe systems in New York.

They then succeed in transferring the funds from several Citibank accounts to their own account at banks in Finland, Israel, and California.

The new computer based technology allows criminals to operate in a more efficient and effective manner.

Cyber thieves now have the luxury of remaining anonymous, living in any part of the planet, conducting their business during the day, working the evening, working alone or in a group, and at the same time reaching a much wider number of potential victims than ever before.

In most case, the scope of such financial losses is much larger than the incidents reported. Most companies don’t reveal that they have been targets or victims of computer crimes.
What is cyber theft?

End User Applications: Web Browser

The most important software component for many component users today us the once simple and limited, but now powerful and feature rich, Web browser.

A web browser enables a user to interact with websites through the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP). It is a software program used to retrieve and display webpages and to navigate them.

With the development of browser technology, a number of features were added to HTML, primarily related to rich content presentation and user interaction, such as the use of client side scripting using JavaScript.

A browser like Microsoft Explorer, Safari or Mozilla Firefox is the key software interface you use to point and click you’re your through the hyperlinked resources of the World Wide Web and the rest of the Internet, as well as corporate intranets and extranets.

There are many browsers on the market now, most of them currently available for download from internet.
End User Applications: Web Browser

What is internet protocol?

The network edge consists of those objects using the internet such as clients, servers and application. To communicate, objects must adhere to the same networking protocol.

A protocol is an agreed-upon set of rules governing a data transmission.

The Internet Protocol is the primary protocol at the internet layer of the TCP/IP stack. It is the governing protocol in charge of the exchange of packets to a remote host. This protocol is responsible for determining the source and destination IP addresses of every packet.

The network administrator assigns every host on a network a unique IP address. Whereas the hardware address refers to the physical network card, the IP address refers to a logical address that the network administrator has assigned to the host.

IP not only provides a standardized ‘envelope’ for the information that is sent; it also contains ‘headers’ that provide addressing, routing and message handling information that enables a message to be directed to its final destination over the various media that compose the internet.

It is important to note that IP is completely independent of hardware used, which means it needs own addressing scheme inn order to transmit data.

Originally, the IP were not developed by any international standardization organization. They were developed by the US Department of Defense research project to connect a number of different networks designed by different vendors into a network of networks.
What is internet protocol?

Cyber crime in E-Business

Cyber crimes are on the increase bringing untold distress. It is a growing threat to society caused by the criminal or irresponsible actions of individuals who are taking advantage of the widespread use and vulnerability of computers and Internet and other networks. It thus presents major challenges to the ethical use of information technologies.

It has become one of the major security issues for the law enforcement community, industry, e-business judiciary and the academia.

Attacks on online banking customers and business by cyber criminals have brought about new security concerns and subsequent legislation to protect both business and the private individuals.

The most distinct nature of cyber crime from traditional one is borderless and anonymous. By the help of pervasive network technology cyber crime is ramping over areas, regions and countries.

Cyber crime is becoming one of the Net’s growth businesses. Today criminals are doing everything from stealing intellectual property and committing fraud to unleashing viruses and committing acts of cyber terrorisms.

Personal information and account details have been stolen over the internet. Illegal transactions have siphoned money from personal and business accounts to foreign third party accounts.

The most popular form of fraud, and one that is difficult for auction website operators to controls, is called shilling. This is the process of bidding up the price of an auction item by people who have no intention of buying it.

Cyber crime poses serious threats to the integrity, safety, and survival of most E-business systems, and thus makes the development of effective security methods a top priority.

In the past, business created private networks, which were secure LAN systems that were closed to outside access. Only computers that were actually connected to the private networked by wires could access the information.

The only real concern was that someone with access to the system, such as employee, might violate the system’s security, copy information and remove it from the business’s premises without authorization. 

Typically, e-business security has focused on protection from cyber crime via a broad range of security means, namely the implementation of firewall, authentication, encryption, antivirus software, intrusion detection and penetration testing.
Cyber crime in E-Business

E-commerce: Business to Business or B2B

Business to business e-commerce or B2B business model is based on selling to business customers electronically.

This category involves both electronic business marketplace and direct market links between businesses. For example, many companies offer secure Internet or extranet E-commerce catalog websites for their business customers and suppliers.

All B2B firms do not look alike. One form of B2B strategy emphasizes sales transactions. By using online capabilities, a B2B from can achieve greater efficiency in its selling and buying.

B2B covers any purchase made by one company form another – be it just office supply from local vendor or a major component or raw material outsourced from across the globe.

It can include functions that provide the exchange of information, facilitate business transaction and completely integrate the shared business processes for a company. 

For this reason, this type of B2B e-commerce is also called e-marketplaces or B2B exchanges.

These are the places where corporate buyers and seller in an industry virtually meet to communicate, negotiate and transact online.
E-commerce: Business to Business or B2B

E-Commerce: Business to Consumer or B2C

There are numerous terms and definitions relating to electronic commerce. Terms such as electronic business, e-business, internet business, e-commerce, internet commerce and new economy are all treated as synonyms for electronic commerce.

In the Webster’s Dictionary defines e-commerce as ‘the conducting of business communication and transactions over networks and through computer technology’.

E-commerce can be done between businesses (business to business or B2B) or between business and consumers (business to consumer or B2C). Business-to-consumer (B2C) e-commerce focuses on direct transactions between businesses and end consumers.

B2C e-commerce can involve electronic transactions in marketing, ordering, and paying, after sales and service and in the case of intangible or virtual goods and services, even delivery.

In this form electronic commerce, business must develop attractive electronic marketplaces to entice and sell product and services to consumer.

B2C e-commerce is used by customers for the convenience of purchasing products or services over the web.

Many companies offer E-commerce websites that provide virtual storefronts and multimedia catalogs, interactive order processing, secure electronic payment system, and online customer support. 

B2C e-commerce reduces transaction costs particularly search costs by increasing consumer access to inflation and lowering consumers to find the most competitive price for a product or service. 

B2C e-commerce also reduces market entry barriers since the cost of putting up and maintaining a web site is much cheaper than installing a ‘brick and mortar’ structure for a firm.

Some of the key differences between B2C e-commerce and the other common form of e-commerce, B2B, include the volume of money traded and the transactional relationship of the parties involved.

B2C involves smaller amounts of money in each exchange compared with B2B and its objective is more to satisfy customer preferences and shopping habits.
E-Commerce: Business to Consumer or B2C

What is mobile internet?

The internet era started in 1969. The key driver for the internet protocol (IP) – based network is a common application and service environment across multiple types of networks.

The internet is to continue playing a prominent role in shaping the future of the computing over the next decade. So, it is not surprise that major technology players are formulating their strategies around the internet and the mobility factor.

By definition the internet is a network of millions of users who communicate by means of standard internet protocol. Therefore, mobile internet refers to the acces of the mobile terminal including mobile phone, PDA, netbook, IPod, IPad, tablet to the internet and its services though the mobile communication network.

The internet, the web and the mobile terminal form a powerful combination of technologies that are transforming the ways in which the people interact with each other and with information.

The internet has absorbed all types of media, video, pictures, music and other forms of creative content. While a lot of things have changed, still a lot remain the same. More and more people are enjoying content on line such as reading blogs and sharing photos.

Whether they are looking for fun, information, entertainment or social connection, they want to experience everything to the fullest.

Mobile is the perfect example since more consumers are soon expected to come and go from the Net via their mobile devices rather than desktop. By providing compelling services to consumers, developer, publishers and advertisers, the plan might just bear fruits.
What is mobile internet?

How does ‘Denial of Service’ attack works?

A denial of service attack is an act of sabotage that attempts to flood a network server or Web server with so many requests for action until it crashes simply cannot handle legitimate requests any longer, causing legitimates users to be denied service.

The attack overwhelms the system’s ability to process web traffic and eventually crashes it.

Denial-of-service attacks can compromise the computers in a network. They can disorganize an organization’s functioning, depending on the nature of the attack.

University security experts were the first to discover the threat of denial of service attacks hiding in the university computer systems. For example, David Dittrich of the University of Washington discovered denial of service program files stored on the university servers’ months before the first widely publicized attacks on E-ecommerce web sites.

Denial of service attacks can be very costly in terms of business lost such as when an e-commerce site is shut down.

The attack, which would typically come from several compromised machine at once, would consumed network bandwidth and use up processing unit cycles on the target machine.

The goal is to stop hosts or networks for communicating in the network or to disrupt network traffic.

The concern would be what is called distributed denial of service attack where take a lot of compromised end systems and flood a server with the intent of making many request or delivering so much traffic to it that it falls off the network.

One of the reasons it takes so long to stop a denial-of-service attack is the hacker sends the bogus traffic using fake IP addresses.
How does ‘Denial of Service’ attack works?