How Secure Are You? Consumer Perceptions of Cybersecurity

Abstract

<p>U.S. online sales totaled $194.3 billion in 2011, up 16.1% from $167.3 billion in 2010, and accounted for 8.6% of total retail sales during the year, up from 7.6% in 2010 (Enright, 2012). Although e-commerce has become popular, internet privacy violations and cyber attacks to the ecommerce systems are also on the rise with violations such as failing to protect sensitive customer and employee data, which have put these individuals at high risk of being victims of personal-identity and credit-card thefts (Farrell, Sheer, & Garrison, 2009). In fact, industry estimates of losses from intellectual property to data theft in 2008 range as high as $1 trillion (Harrison, 2011). Thus it can be stated with a high degree of conviction that cybersecurity is detrimental both to the business as well as the consumer and needs to be investigated</p>