Battling Barriers to E-Commerce.

THE EMERGING WORLD of electronic business is fraught with potential impediments to profitability. How is the average business manager to make sense of all the technology and succeed in the next millennium while abiding by regulation and industry standards?

Enter the International Security, Trust, and Privacy Alliance (ISTPA)--a new organization currently led by 16 computer, communications, banking, semiconductor, and consulting companies, including IBM, Hewlett-Packard, Bank of America, and KPMG. The mission is to break down the barriers to electronic commerce, including: the lack of understanding about the capabilities, limitations, and risks of various technologies; the lack of product interoperability; and incomplete or inconsistent standards. In the coming months, ISTPA is expected to release position and white papers on its goals.

In addition, the group is considering how to build verifiable consent, such as parental consent, into Web page interactions and how to incorporate public key infrastructure into privacy initiatives. @ For more information about the group, go to www.securitymanagement.com and click on "Beyond Print."

But San Francisco-based attorney Jennifer Granick says there's another reason for weak prosecution and sentencing. "This is not a sign that [hackers] are not being brought to justice. It is a sign that far more people are being investigated than should be," says Granick, who has represented several high-profile hackers. "Low sentences may mean that the hype over the threat of hackers is just exactly that, hype."

"Businesses are right to pay a lot of attention to security concerns," says Granick, but distinctions need to be drawn between types of hacking. "I would like to see serious hacking crimes, malicious and large scale theft, and cyberterrorism prosecuted, hut the law should make a distinction between that and something like vandalizing a Web site and spamming. It is unwise for prosecutors and for the citizenry to think that criminal prosecution is the proper way to solve all these problems."