Fighting The Crisis Of Confidence In Online Trade

The Age
28 March 2000
JENNY SINCLAIR

PROFESSOR Bill Caelli of the Information Security Research Centre at Queensland University of Technology says federal and state governments and the banking industry are not doing enough to foster confidence in Internet commerce.

Consumers are understandably worried about using their credit cards online, partly because it isn't clear what would happen if a fraud occurs, Caelli says.

``The Australian banking industry, finance industry, need leadership from our federal members and our states ... we need leadership from the Bracks Government, we need leadership from the Howard Government, to clarify this," he says.

``I think mum and dad today need strong leadership. They need to have it clear - what is their liability if they shop on the web? They need to trust their bank, so we need some very clear definition.

``People are holding off in Australia because of this Visa card problem, this fear of fraud."

In the US, Visa has promised shoppers they will not have any liability if their card is stolen online.

But small businesses going online are at severe risk if a stolen card number is used, says Caelli. ``The poor old trader cops it ... what trust has the poor old merchant got?"

Caelli was recently appointed chairman of the technical advisory committee for security and Internet company, Senetas. He says Senetas will pursue a strategy of providing multiple levels of security, ranging from PIN numbers for online shopping to high-level methods such as fingerprinting for access to sensitive information.

E-commerce security must address four kinds of trust - technical, brand, legal and ``societal", he says.

The proposed SET (Secure Electronic Commerce) structure is great because it does not require credit card numbers to be held by traders, but it is not scalable because it requires complex infrastructure in the form of a public key system, says Caelli.

Senetas has released the prospectus for its subsidiary company, Kusp. Kusp will specialise in developing 3-D retail websites using technology bought from one of Senetas's US partners.

The company is asking the market for $10million, which would leave it with a market capitalisation of $16million. Senetas will retain a 40 per cent stake in Kusp.

Kusp has no signed contracts as yet, but has an agreement with haberdashery retailer Spotlight to develop its retail site.

LINKSwww.senetas.com.au

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