ASOS

Discuss about the Cyber Security Challenge on Online Shopping.

The aim of this report is to enhance awareness on the cyber security while doing online shopping and making transactions or paying for any product. One of the popular shopping portals of UK has been chosen in this project to compare its cyber security system and comparison has been done by ten peer-reviewed journals based on the cyber security awareness on online shopping. Internet has become an integral part of the lives of citizens of UK, online shopping is attracting various internet users because of their easy and fast activity and responses on the product an individual want to buy. This has increase the probability of more cyber crime cases related to the finance and money transaction. This report emphases on the techniques or ways by which an individual come over such cyber crime issues with the reference of many experienced writer and their peer-reviewed journals.

Within its slogan ‘discover fashion online’ ASOS is one of the leading and favourite online portals for the citizens of United Kingdom (UK). ASOS sells cutting-edge fashion and offer varieties of products related to fashion which is making ASOS.com a hub of thriving fashion community. ASOS sell more than 80,000 branded products including its own-brand products to mobile and web users. It has expanded market in UK, US, China, Europe and many other countries in the world (ASOS.com, 2017). The mission of ASOS is ‘to become the world’s number-one online shopping destination for fashion-loving 20-something’. It has more than 21 million followers in the social media platforms who engaging with the organization every day.

It is the responsibility of the development team of an organization doing online business to be reactive and proactive towards the concern of security threats in online shopping and e-commerce where as shoppers should be vigilant while buying any online product (Damodaran & Helminen, 2016). According to Clarke, Thompson and Birkin (2015) E-commerce is growing in a very rapid manner due to the options of choosing wide varieties of products and many technologies which are new and innovative are being involved in the proliferation of e-commerce. An individual of UK should read and implement the guidelines about securing networks and systems available for securing online transaction during shopping online for any product (Clarke, Thompson & Birkin, 2015). They have proposed latest evidence of consumption patterns in the UK population by various relative graphs and pictured how fast online shopping is spreading in the UK economy.

Literature Review

Iqbal and Hunjra (2012) defined e-commerce which is completely same process as online shopping and stated that online shopping is a part of e-commerce. They have analyzed and compared market status and analysis of different developing countries including UK based on factual data. It was concluded in the paper that there is the need to increase expertise for the improvement of IT security among the organization and make databases more secured (Iqbal & Hujra, 2012). Reviewing the annual report of ASOS, various ups can be seen as they have strengthened their dedication through discreet IT security team (ASOS, 2017). This emphases on mitigating both internal and external data and IT security threats by increasing capability of team by involving expert and experienced IT members.

Relating this context a paper was written by Amer et al., (2013) which focus on the increment of online shopping practice by internet users and relative cyber security threats raised due to practicing online shopping for buying any product. This paper involved e-commerce, online shopper to make the topic much clear. Paper has reviewed habits of online shopping in UAE and identifies the gap. Paper implemented that majority of the population is not securing their network safely or there is very less awareness about the cyber security among the population. For this threat ASOS has made new improvement in the system which was stated in the annual report was that, their controlling and processing within the website was being regularly checked and enhanced to ensure the data of customer and their information are appropriate and complies with applicable laws and expectations of the customer. Amer et al., (2013) analyzes the existing policies and legal rules for the online shopping and also proposed new policies that should be implemented in the system to minimize threats of cyber crime.

Rahim et al., (2015) discussed that as cyber security is not a new topic thus various journal and researchers have already wrote various article related to this topic. This helps them to identify different and new techniques to make approaches in improving the cyber security. In this article youngsters were not the main area of discussion whereas whole group was focused and aimed at combating identity theft of any user (Rahim et al., 2015). Comparing annual report of ASOS it was stated that large investments have been made in enhancing the security system for the transactions using credit card with advanced encryption and regular testing of those encryption and to prevent any type of un-authorized access. New alert systems have also been implanted to alert if any un-authorized access is being attempted on the website.

As described in the article ‘online apparel retailing: roles of e-shopping quality and experiential e-shopping motives’, Online shopping is getting matured as the time passes and growth is slowing bringing a competitive environment for the retailers in the market. Ha and Stoel (2012) stated that in particular industries or organization observes call for better approaches of understanding of the effects of features of online shopping quality for consumer satisfaction and related securities while taking characteristics and information of the consumer in consideration. Writers does not reach to any conclusion but based on the evidences proposed in the article it can be concluded that awareness about cyber security is the need of the time, to improve the relation between the customers and retailers in order to set that mind towards good behaviours relating to online shopping and the retailers (Ha & Stoel, 2012).

It is the need of the time to protect confidential data and information of an individual regarding the cyber security breaches that held in last few years (Franke & Brynielsson, 2014). A literature review found on ‘Cyber situational awareness’ in which a review on cyber situational awareness have been proposed which was based on systematic queries relating four leading scientific databases. Franke & Brynielsson (2014) had focused on different ‘Cyber’ issues rising in the world including UK. Paper was full of evidences that this threat has become a serious issue related to the privacy of an individual practicing online shopping. This paper concluded that there are many actions taken and plenty of works were dedicated towards the awareness of cyber situations (Sasse, Bada & 2014). They also concluded that various security exercises of different kind, offers particular interest on increasing security of personal information and various cyber situational awareness.

Another article found which was relative towards the awareness of cyber security among older and younger adults named ‘Online Shopping Intention in the Context of Data Breach in Online Retail Stores’ (Chakraborty et al., 2016). This article emphases on the decisions taken based on the hacking events that recently takes place around the world. This paper also builds a research model on the engagement of individuals in e-commerce in context with the security threats and data breach. Various age groups were selected in this article and approaches were made about the threats and how much awareness needed related to the cyber crime and cyber security. Chakraborty et al., (2016) concluded that incorporation of personal actions like monitoring bank account details they have put forward richer understandings on the privacy and security of an individual taking into account online shopping made by them.

Sidi et al., (2013) also put forward their thought on this awareness in a paper in which facilities of online shopping and internet banking were concerned topics to deal with in matter of online shopping pointing out their relative consequences and threats. Based on various evidences like graphs and statistics, they have concluded that cyber crime is increasing in rapid manner and greater promotional efforts are needed to increase awareness among each group of people of the community (Sidi et al., 2013).

Conclusion

Based on the above report it can be concluded that, as number of internet users is increasing with rapid speed because of its easy access and lots of benefits, there are lots of consequences of using internet. Online shopping is the most common activity an individual of UK mostly do when connected to the internet but there may be several threats related to the cyber crime. Each age group of people are using internet for shopping and making payment for the products without having proper awareness about what loss they can suffer. There may be exposing of personal information which may be very sensitive like credit card details and bank account t details which may result in serious loss to the individual. Various peer-reviewed journals have been proposed in the report to emphasis on how much cyber security awareness is important among the citizens of UK in order to protect their personal information and be safe from cyber crime activities

References:

Amer, F., Abdulrahim, H., Juma, S., Rajan, A. V., & Ahamed, J. (2013, December). Shopping online securely in UAE. In Current Trends in Information Technology (CTIT), 2013 International Conference on (pp. 153-160). IEEE.

ASOS. (2017). Retrieved 12 August 2017, from https://www.asosplc.com/~/media/Files/A/Asos-V2/2016-in-review/financial-review/28-10-2016-ar.pdf

ASOS.com. (2017). About Us | ASOS. ASOS. Retrieved 12 August 2017, from https://www.asos.com/about/

Bada, M., & Sasse, A. (2014). Cyber Security Awareness Campaigns: Why do they fail to change behaviour?.

Chakraborty, R., Lee, J., Bagchi-Sen, S., Upadhyaya, S., & Rao, H. R. (2016). Online shopping intention in the context of data breach in online retail stores: An examination of older and younger adults. Decision Support Systems, 83, 47-56.

Clarke, G., Thompson, C., & Birkin, M. (2015). The emerging geography of e-commerce in British retailing. Regional Studies, Regional Science, 2(1), 371-391.

Damodaran, D., & Helminen, F. (2016). The Impact of Strategy to Real Time Chat Process: A Qualitative Multi-Method Study in the E-commerce Context.

Franke, U., & Brynielsson, J. (2014). Cyber situational awareness–a systematic review of the literature. Computers & Security, 46, 18-31.

Ha, S., & Stoel, L. (2012). Online apparel retailing: roles of e-shopping quality and experiential e-shopping motives. Journal of Service Management, 23(2), 197-215.

Iqbal, S., & Hunjra, A. I. (2012). Consumer intention to shop online: B2C E-commerce in developing countries. Middle East Journal of Scientific Research, 12(4), 424-432.

Rahim, N. H. A., Hamid, S., Mat Kiah, M. L., Shamshirband, S., & Furnell, S. (2015). A systematic review of approaches to assessing cybersecurity awareness. Kybernetes, 44(4), 606-622.

SIDI, F., JABAR, M. A., MUSTAPHA, A., SANI, N. F., ISHAK, I., & SUPIAN, S. R. (2013). MEASURING COMPUTER SECURITY AWARENESS ON INTERNET BANKING AND SHOPPING FOR INTERNET USERS. Journal of Theoretical & Applied Information Technology, 53(2).