Transfer to cash – The money stored can be transfer into cash by Auto Teller Machine.


Pay for toll – Let’s take Touch n Go as example, it is prepaid cash card which is so popular in Malaysia. It is useful for all highways' tolls in Malaysia.


Shop anywhere – Debit card is one of the prepaid cash card, it is accepted for all retail shops.

Make phone call - I Talk is one of the prepaid cash card, it allows people make international or local call at lower rates.

Even prepaid cash card is making us life much easier in purchasing products and services; however, it includes several disadvantages like costs and fees associated with using them. To understand more about it, please refer to http://www.moneysupermarket.com/c/prepaid-cards/guide/2/

Phishing is a type of internet frauds that aim to steal the valuable information of the users such as credit cards, security number and password. It is a fake website that created similar to the original organizations such as bank. An email will send and request the user to access the fake website, and require the user to fill up their personal details and also the security number or password. Once the user fill up their personal details, fake website creator will use the information to steal the user’s money in the bank, ID of the games and so on.

Here are the links that teach you how to prevent the phishing.

http://www.wordspy.com/words/phishing.asp
http://kb.iu.edu/data/arsf.html

Here are the links to teach u how to spot a phishing scam
http://www.webopedia.com/DidYouKnow/Internet/2005/phishing.asp

Example of phishing website:



Bank Phishing Example


Ebay Phishing Example






Let’s all work together to prevent phishing scams. If you receive a suspicious e-mail, please report it. You can send it to the US Federal Trade Commission at spam@uce.gov or you can just click the ‘report as junk’ button on your e-mail program. This will help to reduce the phishing scams and provide a more safety environment for users of internet.

I'm here to share my post again. It is about the application of 3rd party certification programme in Malaysia..
3rd party certification
What is that? According to British Standards Institution (2009), it is an assessment carried out to ensure compliance with a publicly available technical specification.
More detailed information can be found at http://www.bsigroup.com/en/ProductServices/Fire/Fire-alarm-installations/About-the-scheme/Third-party-certification/m/en/ProductServices/Fire/Fire-alarm-installations/About-the-scheme/Third-party-certification/

Where Certificate Authority (CA) is a trusted third-party organization or company that issues digital certificates used to create digital signatures and public-private key pairs. If you still doubt about what is CA, you can go to this link as below
http://webopedia.com/TERM/C/certification_authority.htmla.com/TERM/C/certification_authority.html

MSCTrustgate.com Sdn Bhd
The most famous application of 3rd party certification programme in Malaysia. It is a licensed CA in Malaysia operating within the Multimedia Super Corridor which incorporated in 1999. The company offer SSL Certificate, Managed PKI, Personal ID, My TRUST, MyKAD ID, SSL VPN, Managed Security Services, VeriSign Certified Training and Application Development.
http://msctrustgate.com/about_us.htm.com/about_us.htm




Trustgate
It is a licensed CA in Malaysia which provided by MSCTrustgate.com Sdn Bhd. The diagram below shows the product and services which provide by Trustgate.



I'll be sharing few of the products and services which provided by Trustgate.
Verisign Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) Certificate
It is a technology that developed by Netscape. It is a technology that used to enhance the server security and allows users transmit document or having online transaction safely via the Internet.

More detailed information can be found at
http://www.verisign.com/ssl/ssl-information-center/how-ssl-security-works/
http://www.windowsecurity.com/articles/Secure_Socket_Layer.htmlrity.com/articles/Secure_Socket_Layer.html



Managed PKI (MPKI) for Enterprise Trust Services is designed to secure intranet, extranet and the internet. The diagram below shows how MPKI work.Digital ID is which is basically design for secure the online transactions, documents, and e-mails. MyTRUST gives user more convenient on mobile banking and other financial services which is using the users' SIM card in Mobile digital signature. MyTRUST provides 3 areas of services for government, banks and enterprise. Everyone knows about MyKAD which allow users to make online transaction with government and public sectors. For other products and services, kindly go to these few links:
http://www.msctrustgate.com/product/ssl_vpn.htm
http://www.msctrustgate.com/product/mss.htm
http://www.msctrustgate.com/product/training.htm
http://www.msctrustgate.com/product/app_dev.htm


Thanks for reading my post....please feel free to leave any comment. Have a nice day. =)

Safeguarding have been an important issue in nowadays. There have been more threats in the IT world compare to the history. Basically, the threats can be categorized to 3 category, which are hacker, malicious code(e.g. virus and worms) and vulnerability(errors when programming, attackers take advantage on these errors). Therefore, safeguarding our data is important these days.

Ways to safeguard our data
Firewall and Anti-Virus
The easiest way and common way to protect your data is through the use of firewall and anti-virus. This will enable the users to protect themselves from worms and trojans. It will be important for the users to update their virus definition file.

Scanning
Always scan the computer regularly with an anti-spyware program, to detect the spyware or adware hidden in the software program, as they will slow down the performance of the computer or give chances to the attackers to attack the computer's data.

Update your patches
Update patches of the program regularly, to patch the "hole" inside the program, to prevent attackers taking advantage on it.

Encryption
Encrypt your data to prevent hackers to steal your data. Encryption of data will ensure that unauthrozied people will not be able to gain access to the data, to prevent any loss of data.

Backup
Backup your data always, to prevent any loss of data and could not claim back the data.

http://www.us-cert.gov/cas/tips/ST06-008.html

The first extended use of electronic commerce (E-commerce) appears in the early of 1970s when the system call Electronic Fund Transfer (EFT) was introduced. The function of EFT is enables the bank and the financial institute to transfer the money over the secure network among themselves or with other associate business. The employers use the EFT to pay their employees’ salary by transferring money to their bank account or debit card.

In the late of 1970s, a new model of system was developed - Electronic Data Exchange (EDI) which enables inter-company exchanges of documents, such as order forms for suppliers, invoices, customs forms, reimbursement receipts, stock inventories and etc. EDI ran on a privately maintained network exclusively dedicated to this system. In parallel, many companies used EDI to run their own private networks which were open to their business partners and acted as information exchange highway. These networks are commonly called VAN (Value - Added Networks).

In the late of 1980s, there are two new applications were widely adopted in the business which are electronic mail (e-mail) and groupware.

In the 1991, there is a significant change for E-commerce due to the United State government allows the public access to the internet. The internet is a global network, which allows the business to search for the new market, this make the internet was quickly accepted in the business transaction. Besides, the World Wide Web that emerged in the years when the internet was liberalized rendered e-commerce both more accessible and more affordable. It enabled small business to sense for the first time the benefits that can be reaped from the technology of E-commerce.

As now, more and more businesses are using the e-commerce to conduct their business such as E-bay and Amazon. In the future, I believe that most of the business transaction will be conduct by the E-commerce due to the continuous development of the technology.

E-commerce has been familiar with the world nowadays. There are so many successful examples of e-commerce. Such as
1) Amazon.com which is an online store electronics, apparels, computers, books and so on.

2) E-bay.com provides a market place for customer to sell and buy products.


3) Expedia which is a company serve customer with cheap airfare, hotels, car rental, vacation and cruises.



However, there are also a numbers of e-commerce failures. One of the examples of an E-Commerce failure I found out is Pets.com.

It was an online provider for pets’ accessories and supplies directly to the customer over World Wide Web. It was launched in 1998 and went into liquidation for 268days. After that the site and domain was purchased in early 1999 and started to make advertisement through variety of media such as television, radio and eventually a Pets.com magazine. The Pets.com sock puppet is well known for everybody. In 2000, the company went into public as they expand their market and IPET was their former Nasdaq stock symbol.

However, in the early of November 2000, the company said it is going to sell off its assets, including its distribution center equipment, content and the stock puppet brand icon.

Larry Barrett reported in Cnet news that Pets.com was shutting down because it was unable to find a purchaser or financial banker. Pets.com was finally closed in 9th November 2000. For an Internet company to survive in an environment for business-to-consumer it is very hard.

One of reasons that caused pets.com to close down its business is lack of a workable strategy plan. They tried to build customer base by giving more discount and free shipping to their customer. In fact, the shipping fees were very high because of the products such as cans of pets’ food and bags of dog litter which could not generate high profit for the company. The company was selling one-third of the original price to the customer which means that the company did not make any profit from the selling of merchandise. For the first two quarter in the year 1999, the company had negative gross profit margin; while the third quarter, the company net sales before operating expenses was amounted to $1.62million which a significant amount. Besides that, the company was trading below $1 for the few months before they closed down the business. Furthermore, employees who resign from the company were not replaced which also caused the company could not work effectively and efficiently.

References can be found at the websites as below:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pets.com

http://news.cnet.com/2100-1017-248230.html

http://news.cnet.com/Pets.com-moves-part-of-litter-to-Midwest/2100-1017_3-245416.html

http://www.businessweek.com/careers/content/dec2000/ca20001213_830.htm

http://news.cnet.com/Pets.com-to-play-in-public-market/2100-1040_3-234303.html

http://news.cnet.com/Pets.com-goes-belly-up/2100-12_3-267376.html