a) You have just been appointed to the role of Strategy management and you are tasked to lead the Government parastatal BOFINET to greater levels (using electronic commerce) by assessing the current technologies that Botswana as a country has already invested in. It is obvious that electronic commerce is built on top of a number of different technologies that create a layered, integrated infrastructure that permits the development and deployment of electronic commerce applications. The fact of the matter is that each layer is founded on the layer below it and cannot function without it. To be specific these layers are five (5) in number and they are: National information infrastructure; Message distribution infrastructure; Electronic publishing infrastructure; Business service infrastructure; and finally, Electronic commerce applications. You are expected to describe to the rest of management what these five layers mean, taking into account how they depend on each other. (15 marks

b) Electronic commerce requires those that participate in it to have a secure means of transmitting the confidential data necessary to perform a transaction. A good example is that commercial banks prefer credit card numbers to be hidden from prying electronic eyes. Consumers also want assurance that the Web site they are dealing with is not a bogus operation. This directly talks to issues of security on transactions that are being carried out electronically. It is known that the two (2) main forms of protecting electronic transactions are; Secure sockets layer; and Secure electronic transaction.

Briefly discuss these 2 forms of protecting electronic transactions and provide examples where possible. (10 marks)