Wahmpreneur News Magazine: Website Security Heads Up For Small Business
August 20, 2001 -- Small businesses had better wake up and smell the coffee when it comes to their website security solutions, if a recently published article in Interactive Week is anything to judge by. Credit card fraud and identity theft have consumers concerned not only about perpetrators but also about the privacy practices of the merchants transacting business online.

According to the report, there is apparently growing sentiment among consumer advocacy groups and among politicians about the lack of consequences to online merchants whose shoddy security practices make it easy for hackers to steal sensitive information. The sentiment is understandable, to a degree. It is much easier to sue a business for its privacy practices than it is to catch the Romanian hacker that actually committed the theft of personal information.

And the issue gets hotter every time some high-profile company or institution gets their servers hacked into. Just this month, there was the highly publicized case of RegWeb.com. A hole in their security systems revealed more than 300 customer credit card numbers.
http://www.wahmpreneur.com/articles/Aug2001/security.html