Dress your E-security in layers

Earthweb IT Management: “According to a new white paper on e-commerce security entitled “An Electronic Citadel — A Method
for Securing Credit Card and Private Consumer Data in E-Business Sites,” military fortification
designers in the early 1800s used layers of barriers to weaken and stop attackers, while creating an
impenetrable stone fortress at the heart of the citadel.

The white paper was written by Tom Arnold, chief technical officer at online security firm CyberSource
Corp., for the technology working group of the e-business division of the Software and Information
Industry Association, which is the principal trade association of the software code and information
content industry.

“Unfortunately, many of today’s e-businesses implement the direct opposite of a citadel,” Arnold
writes. “This can be viewed as an ‘eggshell’ security model: hard outer shell, soft in the center.”