A Secure and Trustful E-Ordering Architecture (TOES) for Small and Medium Size Enterprises (SEMs)

Although various European Union (EU) directives have established the proper legal framework for the provision of a trustful, legally accepted cross border transaction via electronic means, the consumers are still hesitant to use e-commerce. Lack of confidence with regard to the protection of privacy and security of electronic transactions is among the main reasons. This article attempts to form the appropriate confidence framework describing a set of privacy and security requirements that must be taken into account for e-ordering systems. In addition, it presents a trustful e-ordering architecture (TOES) that achieves to address these requirements based on extensible markup language (XML), XML cryptography, public key infrastructure (PKI), Web services policy language (WSPL), and Web services. TOES is an open, secure, interoperable, and affordable e-ordering system that respects the EU legislation.