The world is dominated by commerce with billions of transactions taking place on a daily basis. To ensure ease of transactions, commerce has moved to paperless sales and purchases, mainly through the use of credit cards and the internet. The paperless commerce is also meant to reduce the risk of theft due to the temptation to thieves created by liquid cash. However, as reflected in the case study, paperless transactions have exposed the world of commerce to a new form of crime where criminals hack secured systems and access privileged information. This privileged information is used to steal or is abused in other ways for the benefit of the thieves (Baird, 2015) . It must, however, be noted that the advantages of using paperless money far outweigh the perils of the same as reflected in the case study. Criminals who access privileged information may steal money or abuse the information but the same pales in significance when compared to armed robberies that would result in injuries, harm or even fatalities.
As reflected in the case study, the criminal activities relating to paperless transactions are a creation of technological advancements that brought paperless transactions into being. Therefore, as the technology being used by banks and retail centers advance, so does the technology that the criminals are using. An evaluation of cybercrimes will show that breaking into a system is much easier than creating a secure system. Indeed, many technological advancements for breaking into secure systems are only known to exist after they have successfully been used in crime (Bhattacharyya et al, 2011). For example, in the Home Depot example given in the case study, the intruders chose to operate during normal working hours and hide their activities within the normal operations of the bank. The form of technology available to the security teams is also available to the criminal thus technological advancements cannot curb cybercrime.
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As reflected in the case study, credit companies and retailers are shifting to the Europay-MasterCard-Visa cards. The shift to this system involves a massive cost by all parties involved. The credit cards themselves need to be replaced and the retailers need to invest in new systems. Each of the two forms of advancements will cost millions of dollars but also save the parties much more than it will cost to make the changes. The shouldering of the cost for this cards should mirror the benefit that each party will get from the advancement. To the extent that retailers will benefit from the purchaser confidence that comes with a lower propensity for theft, retailers should shoulder part of the burden. On the other hand, to the extent that banks will not have their monies stolen through false credit card transactions, the banks should also shoulder the burden. The burden should thus be shared by all parties.
The internet, Information Technology and paperless are relatively new additions to the commercial world. The introduction of paperless transactions was, among others, meant to curb crime. When criminals began hacking into the secure systems and begun stealing data, it was easy for the parties involved to consider this as a teething problem and hope that as technology advanced, the problem would solve itself. Unfortunately, the more the process advanced, the easier it became for criminals to access the system (Bhattacharyya et al, 2011). The delay to resolve the issue before it became as bad as has been reflected in the case study may have arose from the expectation that things would get better. Further, any advancements to eliminate crime were bound to come at a major cost and none of the parties involved would have volunteered to shoulder the cost. Perhaps had the government intervened early enough, more so on cost sharing measures as early solution would have been arrived at.
Seeking to make work easier for the retailers is one of the causes of the cybercrimes relating to paperless banking. In most cases, information is not stolen when transactions are taking place but rather because retailers store client information (Baird, 2015) . The best way forward is for retailers to only handle client information when dealing with the client and not leave any trances after. With only little information being found in the servers at any moment in time, there will be little if any incentive for hacking. In the case a case of hacking and theft of customer information happens, honesty at the earliest would be the best way to reclaim customer confidence.
References
Baird, N. (2015, October 27). How much customer data do retailers really need? Retrieved February 11, 2018, from https://www.forbes.com/sites/nikkibaird/2015/10/27/how-much-customer-data-do-retailers-really-need/#14ef18c06787
Bhattacharyya, S., Jha, S., Tharakunnel, K., & Westland, J. C. (2011). Data mining for credit card fraud: A comparative study. Decision Support Systems , 50 (3), 602-613
