You are an information technology (IT) consultant to Materials Equipment, Inc. (MEI), a major     industrial equipment distributor. Its products include materials-handling machinery for assembly lines and product-packaging areas. Although a number of MEI customers have product lines that require moving fluids, MEI has not expanded into that business. Instead, it works with another supplier that specializes in fluid-related products. MEI has been in business for more than 70 years and sells more than $200 million worth of parts and equipment each year to its 3000 customers. MEI’s customers are located all over the world, but most are in the United States, Mexico, Malaysia, China, and Singapore.

Joe Everson, MEI’s director of sales, has hired you to help him as he begins planning for a new Web site that MEI would operate with two other companies that sell products (such as bearings, seals, hoses, and hose fittings used in moving fluids) and services  (design, layout, and installation of materials-handling equipment) that are complementary to MEI’s products. The Web site would provide MEI customers a single destination where they could buy MEI products along with the products and services of the MEI’s strategic partners. The site would also offer information about current trends in industrial equipment technologies and the application of those technologies along with a used equipment marketplace in which MEI customers could list equipment for sale. Joe believes that giving customers a convenient way to liquidate old equipment will make it easier for his sales representatives to sell new equipment to those customers Joe has put together an internal team to examine the feasibility of the Web site, including key employees from MEI’s Sales, Finance, Product Engineering, and IT Services departments. The team has identified several security issues that they want to resolve before they move forward with the Web site design. Joe would like you to help the team understand encryption and digital certification technologies and how they might be used in the new Web site.

REQUIRED:
1. Write a 200-word briefing report on how Web sites use encryption. Explain the technology, how it is used, and describe one or two common applications.  

2. In a report of about 200 words, outline how and why MEI might use encrypted e-mail in communicating with its strategic partners and with its customers.

3. In about 300 words, explain what digital certificates are and how they might be useful to MEI, its strategic partners, and their customers if they were to be used in the operation of the new Web site. Be sure to discuss which parts of the site or communications among MEI, its strategic partners, and their customers might benefit from extended validation certificates and consider the potential cost of acquiring digital certificates of any type in your evaluation of their benefits.