The Glossary of Electronic Business Terms (стр. 1 )

The Glossary of Electronic Business Terms

By Georgy Moiseenko and Brian Taylor

Release 2.0

2000

Foreword

The Electronic Business has its own language.

This language is continuously enriched by introducing new terms (e. g., "telework"), assigning new meanings to some familiar terms (e. g., "shopping basket"), borrowing a number of terms from related areas (networking, banking, etc.), and, to a pity, by creating some slangy words known to a very close circle of professionals.

This Glossary is our first attempt to put together various terms used in electronic business area and to explain them both to our consultants and to our clients.

Leonid Boguslavsky

E-Business Partner for CEE/CIS

From the author

The rapid growth of interest to electronic business and supporting technologies has created a need to have a reference book explaining various terms used in this area. This task is especially important for Russian and CIS offices of PricewaterhouseCoopers, where the standard Russian e-business terminology is still to be established.

This Glossary is a first result of our effort. It contains about 400 terms used in electronic business and related areas, such as Internet and information security. The terms are in alphabetical order. Where appropriate the terms are cross-referenced to other identical, similar or related terms.

Any proposals and comments are welcome.

I would like to thank all the parties who has assisted me in this task, especially Julie Fewell (UK), David Moon (USA), Alexander Mosyagin (PwC, Moscow), Alexander Tukunov (PwC, Moscow), and Jahn Han-Magomedov (ROCIT, Moscow) who provided me with valuable information and help, and Sergei Uzhvi (PwC, Moscow) for his patience and attention to the work.

We will appreciate any comments and proposals that should be sent to: *****@***

Georgy Moiseenko

PwC, Moscow

Bibliography

1. E-business technology forecast. PricewaterhouseCoopers Technology Centre.

2. Glossary of electronic commerce terms in "Electronic commerce for the Boardroom 85". PricewaterhouseCoopers.

3. Art and science of electronic commerce. University of Texas at Arlington. http://www. uta. edu

4. Rod Newing. International consultants' Glossary. E-business.

5. Glossary of terms in the "Buyer's guide to electronic commerce". Electronic Commerce Strategies, Inc. http://www.

6. Michael Shamos. Hyperdictionary of electronic commerce law. http://www. ecom. cmu. edu

7. Secure financial transactions: E-commerce legal dictionary. Brown & Bain http://www.

8. New England e-Business glossary. http://www.

9. Wired Digital glossary on e-business. http://www.

10. PCMagazine Online. Glossaries: Electronic Commerce. http://search. /pcmag

11. Ted Haynes. The electronic commerce dictionary. http://www.

12. Jiri Weiss. 20 questions about e-commerce. http://www.

13. Roger Clarke. Electronic commerce definitions. Australian National University. http://www. anu. edu. au

14. The CommerceNet Internet glossary. http://www.c

15. Walt Howe. Glossary of Internet terms. Delphy Internet Services Corporation. http://

16. The information society glossary. ECSC-EC-EAEC, Brussels, 1995

17. The EdWeb dictionary. http://edweb. gsn. org

18. Matisse Enzer. Glossary of Internet Terms. http://www.

19. Intel small business computing – Glossary of terms. htttp://www. *****

20. Lucent Technologies glossary of network terms. www.

21. On-line computer glossary and Internet search engine. http://www.

A

Acceptable certification authority

A certification authority that meets certain statutory or regulatory requirements and therefore its certificates have legal effect. See certification authority.

Acceptance

With respect to a certificate, to manifest approval of a certificate, while knowing or having notice of its contents.

ACH – automatic clearing house

Ad – Ad clicks

The number of times a user "clicks" on a Web-page ad, often measured for a period of time ("ad clicks per day"). See click-through ratio.

Affiliate: Companies that sell other manufacturers' or retailers' (sponsoring merchants) products on their Web sites. Users select a product at the affiliate Web site, but the sale is actually transacted at the sponsoring merchant's Web site. Affiliates are similar in concept to industry-based manufacturer representatives that sell multiple manufacturers' product lines.

Agent: Software that acts as an intermediary for a person by performing some activity. Agents can "learn" an individual's preferences and act in the person's best interest and may even negotiate and complete transactions. A purchasing manager's agent may learn corporate specifications, determine when inventory is low and search the Internet for the lowest-cost supplier.

Aggregator

The e-commerce Web site that sells products or services offered by other providers (sellers).

Enables buyers within a market to select among various competitors by aggregating information about the market and its suppliers and providing this information via a Web site. Aggregators may provide decision-support applications that integrate supplier information with third-party information and with user requirements or preferences to allow users to differentiate services and features of the various competitors. Content aggregators aggregate information and match it to user preferences. These preferences may be declared actively (user explicitly specifies) or passively (software discerns preferences from user behavior or interest) and are used to filter aggregated content and deliver only what matches user preferences.

Application Service Provider (ASP): ASPs aggregate, facilitate and broker IT services to deliver IT-enabled business solutions across a network via subscription-based pricing.

Approved list of certification authorities

A list of certification authorities approved by the appropriate governmental entity to issue certificate for digital signature transactions. See certification authority.

Asymmetric cryptography – See asymmetric cryptosystem

Asymmetric cryptosystem

An encryption system also known as public key encryption that uses a pair of related keys – a public key for encrypting messages, which is freely distributed and can be seen by all users; and a corresponding unique private key for decrypting messages, which is known only to the recipient of the message, kept secret and not shared among users. The keys have the property that, knowing one key, it is computationally infeasible to discover the other key. These keys can be gained from certification authority (CA). The certification authority vouches for the authenticity of a public key either by storing it in a centralised, online database or by distributing it with a certificate, which is basically a copy of the user's public key that has been digitally signed by the certification authority. Users wanting to receive confidential information can freely announce their public key, which then is used by the sender to encrypt data to be sent to them. The data can be decrypted only by the holder of the corresponding private key. It is virtually impossible to deduce the private key and decrypt a message if you know the public key. Thereby one can ensure privacy and verify the identity of the sender without exchanging secret keys. One great advantage of a public-key over a private-key algorithm is that using a public-key algorithm eliminates the complexity of handling the large number of secret-key pairs needed for single-key algorithms; however, it requires a process to ensure the public keys are authentic and really belong to their announced owner. Public key cryptography was invented in 1976 by Whitfield Diffie and Martin Hellman. For this reason, it is sometime called Diffie-Hellman encryption. Public-key systems, such as Pretty Good Privacy (PGP), are becoming popular for transmitting information because of their potential to facilitate electronic commerce using the Internet, in particular because they do not require an out-of-band process for secure exchange of private keys before sending encrypted messages. The most commonly used public-key mathematical algorithm RSA, which is based on the difficulty of factoring large numbers, was invented by Ron Rivest, Adi Shamir, and Leonard Adelman at MIT and published in 1978. One drawback of public-key algorithms is that they are considerably slower to execute than symmetric-key algorithms. See certification authority, Pretty Good Privacy, symmetric cryptography.

Asymmetric key -- See key pair, asymmetric cryptosystem.

Auction: An electronic market, which can exist in both a business-to-business and business-to-consumer context. Sellers offer products or services to buyers through a Web site with a structured process for price-setting and fulfillment. Web auctions may follow English, Dutch, reverse-bid or sealed-bid processes.

Audience

Any party (an individual or a group) that receives information from the sender.

Audit trail

Information on the significant steps of a transaction, which allows an auditor to determine that there are no errors and discrepancies in information on the transaction recorded by its parties.

Authentication

A process used to verify (ascertain) the identity of a person or a device, or the integrity of specific information. For a message, authentication involves ascertaining its source and that it has not been modified or replaced in transit. Authentication methods are based on something users know (such as a password), something users possess (such as security tokens or smart cards), or some user physical characteristics (biometrics). Two-factor authentication, using two of the foregoing methods, provides a higher level of security. The complexity of the authentication process should be related to the level of business risk associated with an unauthorised disclosure or modification of the data being protected. See authentication certificate, data integrity, biometrics.

Authentication certificate – See digital certificate

Authentication key

A key that consists of a short string of characters, such as unique information from the message, and is used to ensure that the electronically sent data remains unaltered. An authentication key can also be used as a form of digital signature to verify the identity of the sender. See message digest.

Automated clearing house (ACH) – automatic clearing house

Automated crime

Use of a software program for penetration into system, committing a crime (e. g. illegal transfer of funds) and erasing traces of the crime.

Automatic clearing house (ACH)

Association of financial institutions providing electronic funds transfer.

Available to Promise (ATP): The uncommitted portion of a company's inventory or planned production. ATP is maintained as a tool for promising orders to buyers.

B

Bank

The institution, participating in electronic commerce, which underwrites the value of its electronic money. A bank issuing electronic cash is called an Issuer. An Issuer runs a computer to produce electronic coins. This computer and its electronic cash software are referred to as the Mint. See Mint, electronic cash, electronic money.

Banner

A graphic element (static or animated), usually horizontal, on a Web page, used to title the Web page, to start or separate different sections, and as a hyperlink to other (advertised) Web page.Banner: An advertisement that appears on a Web site. The ad format is a "banner," a combination of graphic and textual content entreating the Web site user to "click through" for further information on the advertised product or service.

Banner advertising

Advertisements on a Web page. See Banner.

Basket – See shopping basket

Bill presentment

The delivery of a bill or invoice to a client or customer for payment.

Biller direct

A merchant that prepares and presents bills directly to customers on the merchant's Web site, thus retaining a direct channel of communication to the customers and having an opportunity to provide additional products and services and to integrate electronic billing with conventional billing systems.

Biometric authentication – see biometrics

Biometric identification – see biometrics

Biometric verification – see biometrics

Biometrics

A study of measurable biological characteristics. In computer security, biometrics refers to techniques that rely on measurable unique physical characteristics that can be automatically checked (fingerprints, voice, retina, face, iris, hand geometry, odour, signature or signature dynamics) and used for authentication, identification or verification, e. g. to allow using credit card information to make electronic purchases. See authentication.

Bit tax

A tax on electronic commerce, the sum of which depends on the absolute volume of digital information transmitted electronically, or its volume per unit of time.

Blind certificate

A digital certificate, which does not contain the identifying information about the user to whom it is issued. Such a certificate can be used to verify some limited information about the user or to associate a user with a series of anonymous communications or transactions (e. g., revocable cash transactions) without revealing the user identity. Blind certificates allow marketing departments to trace consumer's spending habits without invading a customer's privacy. See digital certificate.

Browser – see Web-browser"Brick and Mortar": Describes a traditional company with no Web channels as a sales outlet for its products or services.

Browser: A software program used to locate and display information on an intranet, extranet or the Internet. Browsers are most often used to access Web pages. Most browsers can display graphics, photographs and text; multimedia information such as sound and video may require additional software called “plug-ins.” See also Web Browser

Business-to-Business Commerce (B2B): Using electronic interactions to conduct business among enterprises, typically as a result of formal, contractual arrangements. B2B functions include sophisticated Web authorization and control (WAC) for delivery of sensitive price, contract and content information for each partner; catalogs that provide custom views based on access control and parametric search for serious business buyers; and order entry functions such as standardized “ship to” locations, dynamic order recalculation and payment options.

Business-to-Consumer Commerce (B2C): Using electronic interactions to conduct business with consumers. B2C may include formal relationships (e. g., customers with assets under care or with subscription services or content) and ad hoc relationships (formed in real time to enable a new user to buy, sell or access information).

Business Intelligence (BI): An interactive process of analyzing and exploring structured, domain-specific information (often stored in a data warehouse) to discern trends or patterns, thereby deriving insights and drawing conclusions. The BI process includes communicating findings and effecting change. BI domains include customers, products, services or competitors.

Business Process Re-Engineering (BPR): Fundamental analysis and radical redesign of business processes and management systems to achieve dramatic change or performance improvement. BPR uses objective, quantitative methods and tools to analyze, redesign and transform business processes including their supporting organization structures, information systems, job responsibilities and performance standards.

Buying organisation -- see OBI

Buy Side: Processes for companies to purchase products. Includes requisitioning, product catalogs, approvals, user identification, purchase order creation, payment processing and integration to other systems. Processes occurring upstream from the company with trading partners, suppliers, etc.