Most e-commerce transactions currently are secured by the SSL (secure sockets layer) protocol, which is designed to encrypt data exchanges over the Internet. While SSL is generally viewed as effective, an increasing number of vulnerabilities and other issues have spurred some e-commerce players to think about more secure standards.
E-commerce is evolving toward using XML (extensible markup language) technology, which not only will serve as the foundation of many Web services, but also will secure transactions between machines, relying on complex trust hierarchies to do so. But even though technological advances may make e-commerce more bulletproof, no security tool is fail-safe.
"People need to keep things up-to-date and patched, because you"re going to see vulnerabilities even in security software," Giga Information Group research director Michael Rasmussen told NewsFactor. "And it"s not just SSL. SSH (secure shell) and PGP (pretty good privacy) ... have security holes, and those are renowned security tools."