This website was created by Group 3 of the Spring 2007 SRA 211 class.

• Nicholas Leghorn, ARES/RACES, web design


• Joel Boucher, web design and group support and private citizens


• John Miglore, commerce and military


• Jeffrey Reyes, poster and proposal

What is commerce?

The dictionary defines commerce as the trade of something of economic value for goods or services between two entities.

Commerce

Telecommunications has a vast impact on commerce. The industry produces about 3% of the revenue of the gross world product(The Council of Economic Advisers). Much of this comes from communicating through telephones, radios, and the internet. The use of these telecommunication tools, especially the internet, in order to make financial transactions is rapidly growing. Due to this telecom is a growing critical infrastructure which will prove to be extremely vital to the United States and the world as a whole. As the amount of financial transactions through these tools, especially the growth of the internet, increases telecommunication will only become more vital as a critical infrastructure to our nation, and the world as a whole.

The US census Bureau reported an increase in e-commerce sales as a percentage of total retail sales for the United States from about .6% in 1999 to 2.2% in 2005. These sales, as well as the enormous increase in instant messaging and emailing shows the rising importance of the internet as a form of telecommunications. Commerce is changing as traditional techniques disappear and people schedule appointments, make payments, track sales and inventory, and make general communication through telecommunications (U.S. Department of Commerce).

As this impacts commerce several threats and risks also arise. For example a study conducted by Symantec showed an increase of over 1,600% on instant messaging threats in industry. It is very important for companies to understand the increasing technology and the security risks associated with them. Some shocking results were found by Symantec who conducted a survey on 400 CIO finding 57% did not have any security policy set up for their instant messaging systems. It also found only 22% of the organizations archiving instant messages. This is very important as valuable data and high security information may be shared(Fisher).

This will be very important for businesses to focus on. As businesses become more technical cellular devices are being used to download and send files, text messages and cellular phone calls are being relied on for vital communication, use of the internet is unprecedented, and telecommunication as a whole is changing the way business is operated today.