a. E-commerce sites and their security – is there any impact of the cost of their security on the prices they charge?
             As more and more consumers make purchases online, e-commerce continues to grow. With this growth comes an increased prevalence of threats to e-commerce sites. As such, security is a significant issue for organizations that operate an e-commerce site, specifically security protecting the site's online payment system. "Some of these attacks have utilized vulnerabilities that have been published in reusable third-party components utilized by websites, such as shopping cart software. Other attacks have used vulnerabilities that are common in any web application, such as SQL injection or cross-site scripting" (Mookhey, 2004). For this reason, security must be built into the web application, beginning with the design phase.
             This added focus on creating secure and impenetrable e-commerce sites requires significant additional costs during the site's development phase. These additional costs must be figured into start up costs and offset by increased pricing to the consumer. In addition, as threats are continually developed to work around security measures, e-commerce owners must continue to revamp their site to address these new threats. This continued development adds additional costs to site maintenance, which is then passed onto the consumer as increases to pricing.
             b. Impact of automatic reordering of inventory/monitoring inventory levels - Inventory shortages/shrinkage for a company who uses self-checkouts, has large inventory, etc.
             Fraudulent activity can also negatively affect automatic reordering of inventory. One of the more recent innovations is the use of self-checkout. Self-checkout involves consumers scanning and paying for their items, without the assistance of a cashier. Primary challenges to inventory and monitoring of inventory levels, occur when items are either acci...