The explosive growth in the use of the Internet by organizations and the virulent drive to develop, outsource and provision e-commerce solutions to participate in the unavoidable e-commerce world has created unprecedented opportunities for business to seek new profitability and, very often, to preserve competitiveness in the dynamic cyber world.

However, the recent attacks suffered by prominent e-commerce companies such as Yahoo, E-Bay, EBuy, CCN News, and even American On-line have made management, all the way to the President of the US, keenly aware of the dangers of and the vulnerability of the Internet and web commerce to business disruptions. These attacks come at a time when e-business is increasingly dependent on the reliability and availability demands by customers for an on-line 24x7x365 service operation. The recent hacker attacks on e-commerce businesses attest to the vulnerability of the Internet and e-commerce which have already incurred costly denial of service to customers. The loss experienced by the companies attacks are not likely to be publicized and the costs of resolving the crisis are in the millions.

Despite the fact that the Internet has become a crucial element of infrastructure to operate in the modern high tech world, no one is really in charge and no one is totally accountable for Internet operations. The Internet operates in a worldwide open and highly distributed and uncontrolled environment. This means that no single enterprise can control all the elements required to do their e-commerce. Preventive strategies alone will never eliminate the risks attendant to the Internet, since the potential threats are unpredictable, especially when it comes to preserving availability and business continuity.

The time is now for your organization to start developing e-commerce-oriented contingency plans and expand the very limited view that most prevailing IT contingency plans now encompass.

This manual is addressed to the needs of:

• Senior management,
• Administrators,
• Risk managers,
• Regular employees responsible for operating the critical e-commerce business processes in every business unit,
• Contingency planners,
• CIOs, CFOs and information system professionals who need to take an urgent look at how the changes derived form the Internet and e-commerce should be risk managed, and
• Anyone that needs to overhaul the existing contingency planning provisions which very likely are not set up to protect e-commerce business programs.

The approaches, methodologies and best practices presented in this manual are intended to save you person-years of development time as they are based on extensive research and development efforts and consulting and training experience by the consulting staff of the Contingency Planning & Recovery Institute.

1.     MASSIVE GROWTH AND PROLIFERATION OF INTERNET AND E-COMMERCE

2.    THREATS, RISKS AND EXPOSURES TO BUSINESS CONTINUITY

3.    JUSTIFICATION FOR A COMPREHENSIVE PROTECTION AND BUSINESS CONTINUITY PROGRAM FOR E-COMMERCE

4.    FRAMEWORK FOR RISK MANAGEMENT, CONTINGENCY PLANNING AND E-BUSINESS CONTINUITY

5.    RISK MANAGEMENT AND IMPACT ANALYSIS METHODOLOGY FOR E-COMMERCE (A Detailed Methodology)

6.    PLAN OF ACTION FOR E-COMMERCE BUSINESS RISK MANAGEMENT, CONTINGENCY PLANNING AND BUSINESS CONTINUITY

7.    METHODOLOGY FOR DEVELOPING AN E-COMMERCE CONTINGENCY PLAN

8.    BEST PRACTICES FOR INTERNET AND E-COMMERCE RISK MITIGATION AND CONTINGENCY PLANNING

APPENDIX

A. REFERENCES

B. TERMINOLOGY

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