The Impact of the Internet

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Internet is considered one of the greatest human innovations throughout the history, as it has profoundly influenced all aspects of life. Email, distance learning and e-libraries are just few examples of services that have been created in this virtual world and have changed, in modern societies, to become, daily life necessity. This is manifested clearly in the economic context where online market sales increased between 2005 and 2010 by 158 billion dollars (Zhou, 2007). In spite of the bright side of this revolution, it should not be forgotten that, in 1988, first malware named Morris Worm spread over the networks, marking the beginning of using the internet as a battleground where computer viruses are used as intelligent weapons. Technically, they can be defined as malicious code attached to another program to execute destructive instructions without user permission. In fact, there are many forms of viruses, such as Spywares, Worms and Trojans, which can be categorized based on origin, attack and distribution strategies, purpose and kind of damage (Bishop, 1991). The adverse impacts of the increasing number of internet viruses are many. Recently, researchers have shown an increased concern about severe economic consequences resulted from this persistent activity. This is illustrated by the fact that, in 2003, the global financial loss by major cyber-attack incidents is estimated by around 12.5 billion dollars (Cashell, 2004). This essay, therefore, will attempt to evaluate the negative effects of internet viruses, focusing on customer trust in on-line shopping, and on stock market values. Finally, education as a main part of the solution will be discussed.

It is suggested that online shopping, which is the process of buying a...

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...nologies knowledge would also decrease, to certain extent, the confidence of users to do any activity involved exchanging personal information if companies did not pay attention to this issue which might be improved by spreading awareness and providing required knowledge. With regard to firm’s value in stock markets, the increasing number of viruses and security breaches will negatively impact investors trust in breached companies as it will be considered IT security failure. What should be mentioned here is that human factor has to be taken into account as it seems easy to mislead him in ordered break the security systems regardless how strong it is. Therefore, awareness-raising and knowledge-sharing tools have to be employed in companies in odder to decrease the effects of viruses. This also goes for remote buyers who will remain the first target of such attack.

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