International Business | E Business Cases

International Business : The Challenge of Global Competition, 8/e

Donald Ball
Wendell H. McCulloch, California State University Long Beach
Paul L. Frantz, California State University Long Beach
Michael Geringer, California Polytechnic State University
Michael S. Minor, University of Texas Pan American

E Business Cases

Students:

Included here are some internet/case assignments relating to E-Business that you can use to review or that your instructor may give as assignments. Your instructors have been given the answers to these questions and may choose to give them out to you or not.

Cyber Crime: A Threat to International E-Business?

This case is designed to:

Familiarize you with the current business climate related to cyber crime;
Provide you with information about specific incidences of cyber crime; and
Give you insight into how businesses are reacting in an effort to protect themselves from cyber crime.

As the twentieth century ushered in a new millennium, the so-called Y2K bug took the center stage as the main concern surrounding computer vulnerabilities. Past programming practices that used six-digit dates (dd/mm/yy) as opposed to eight-digit dates (dd/mm/yyyy) spawned the Y2K bug. The six-digit date format could wreck havoc with programs that utilized date mathematics or for systems that used date checks to test for date validity. Simply stated, is 01/01/00, January 1, 1900 or is it January 1, 2000? Businesses around the world spent huge sums of money trying to eradicate the Y2K bug and then braced themselves for possible mayhem as the clock struck twelve on December 31, 1999. There were isolated incidences of computer glitches. However, for the most part, businesses moved into the new millennium with few, if any problems.

February 2000, however, was not so tranquil, as cyber crime reared its ugly head. As BusinessWeek put it:

The scenario that no one in the computer security field likes to talk about has come to pass: The biggest e-commerce sites on the Net have been falling like dominoes. First it was Yahoo! Inc. On Feb. 6, the portal giant was shut down for three hours. Then retailer Buy.com was hit the next day, hours after going public. By that evening, eBay, Amazon.com, and CNN had gone dark. And in the morning, the mayhem continued with online broker E*Trade and others having traffic to their sites virtually choked off.

What makes cyber crime so threatening to businesses is the ease with which it can be perpetrated, its global nature and the difficulty in tracking down the offenders.

Case Instructions:

Answer the following questions:

The type of attack that crippled e-Commerce sites in February, 2000 is known denial-of-service attack. What exactly is a denial-of-service attack? (Hint: try surfing the net using "denial of service attack" as the search string.)
What can a company do to protect itself from a denial of service attack? Go here to find out: http://www.cert.org/tech_tips/denial_of_service.html#4
Read the February 21, 2000 BusinessWeek article entitled "Cyber Crime" located at http://www.businessweek.com/2000/00_08/b3669001.htm . Other than denial-of-service attacks, what are some of the other types of cyber crimes that are being committed?
According to the BusinessWeek article referenced in number 3 above, what percentage of a corporation's property is in digital form?
According to the BusinessWeek article referenced in number 3 above, cyber attacks from what overseas countries are on the rise?