[3] E-commerce focuses on the use of ICT to enable the external activities and relationships of the business with individuals, groups, and other organizations, while e-business does not only deal with online commercial operations of enterprises, but also deals with their other organizational matters such as human resource management and production.
This system replaced traditional mailing and faxing of documents with a digital transfer of data from one computer to another, without any human intervention.
In 1979, the entrepreneur connected a television set to a transaction processing computer with a telephone line and called it "teleshopping", meaning shopping at distance.
In 1994, IBM, with its agency Ogilvy & Mather, began to use its foundation in IT solutions and expertise to market itself as a leader of conducting business on the Internet through the term "e-business.
[8] However, this proved to be too successful and by 2000, to differentiate itself, IBM launched a $300 million campaign about its "e-business infrastructure" capabilities.
[8] Since that time, the terms, "e-business" and "e-commerce" have been loosely interchangeable and have become a part of the common vernacular.
[10] The transformation toward e-business is complex and in order for it to succeed, there is a need to balance between strategy, an adapted business model (e-intermediary, marketplaces), right processes (sales, marketing) and technology (Supply Chain Management, Customer Relationship Management).
[11] A business model is defined as the organization of product, service and information flows, and the source of revenues and benefits for suppliers and customers.
E-commerce (short for "electronic commerce") is trading in products or services using computer networks, such as the Internet.
Modern electronic commerce typically uses the World Wide Web for at least one part of the transaction's life cycle, although it may also use other technologies such as e-mail.
[12] Electronic commerce may be responsible for consolidation and the decline of mom-and-pop, brick and mortar businesses resulting in increases in income inequality.
Customers, suppliers, employees, and numerous other people use any particular e-business system daily and expect their confidential information to stay secure.
[17] E-business transactions pose greater challenges for establishing authenticity due to the ease with which electronic information may be altered and copied.
Messages must be delivered in a reliable and timely fashion, and information must be stored and retrieved as required.
Examples to address this include data backup, fire-suppression systems, Uninterrupted Power Supply (UPS) systems, virus protection, as well as making sure that there is sufficient capacity to handle the demands posed by heavy network traffic.
[17] The business internet which supports e-business has a cost to maintain of about $2 trillion in outsourced IT dollars just in the United States alone.
The second group are businesses that provide services or products outside of the digital world, like online shops, for those costs are much harder to determine.
[20] When it comes to security solutions, sustainable electronic business requires support for data integrity, strong authentication, and privacy.
Starting off with basic things like switch to HTTPS from old outdated HTTP protocol which is more vulnerable to attacks.
Furthermore, the other things that require full attention are securing servers and admin panels, payment gateway security, antivirus and anti-malware software, using firewalls is also a must, regular updates, and back up our data.
Businesses that use Wi-Fi need to consider different forms of protection because these networks are easier for someone to access.
Some companies set up traps or "hot spots" to attract people and are then able to know when someone is trying to hack into that area.
[17] Encryption, which is actually a part of cryptography, involves transforming texts or messages into a code that is unreadable.
They do this in order to assure the authenticity of the documents as well as confidentiality and data integrity which always accompany encryption.
The benefits of implementing e-business tools are in the streamlining of business processes and not so much in the use of technology.