Compared to last year's $10.5 billion, e-merchants have more to gain in terms of revenues, but also more to lose when it comes to e-fraud. New data from Cyber Source indicates while credit card information and most identities are stolen in the offline World, often that information is used in the online World to perpetuate fraud. Cyber Source concludes business that sell online should employ good business practices to help protect themselves and their customers against online fraud.

• Develop and publish a comprehensive privacy policy.
• Ensure your employees are trained on the policy and follow it.
• Monitor the privacy policy and your compliance.
• Only ask customers for information that is absolutely necessary to complete a transaction.
• Store only absolutely necessary data elements; once a payment is complete, there is no reason to maintain payment information in readable form.
• Verify the payment system that you implement deletes temporary data files with payment records.
• Make certain server log files do not inadvertently store customer payment information.
• Limit employee access to payment systems and monitor those who have access to sensitive data or payment systems.
• Use technology tuned for the Internet to detect potential fraud.
• Follow up on suspicious transactions and immediately report any security breach or loss of computer systems to police.