) sent to the web server along with a cookie which identifies the particular browser. A series
of scripts held by the web server interprets the details and calls an application (legacy, COTS, or new).
The application in turn interrogates a database or a banking application (for payment and credit card
details), and then returns data to the web server. The web server creates a page and returns it with a
cookie to the browser.
Variations of this approach will include closed internets for suppliers to (say) car companies or clients
of private trading systems.
5.2 Website Risks and Problems
Not all websites carry the same level of risk. Table 5.1 attempts to identify a hierarchy of risks. Level 5
seems improbable but see [Birman].
Who cares? Well, getting the risk level wrong can be fatal. [Carr N] (
IT doesn??™t matter
) writes that
what makes a resource unique is not ubiquity but scarcity: the core functions of IT are available to all
companies. Thus when a resource is central to competitiveness but inessential to strategy, the risks it
creates are greater than the advantages it confers. If your site fails, you??™re dead. If your competitors??™ sites
fail you have an advantage. Take electricity: no one today builds a plant so as to be near an electricity
source, but if the electricity fails??¦
Where Carr is wrong is in assuming that all computer systems are broadly similar and thus commoditizeable
and replicable.
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