Electronic commerce and information security risks during the COVID-19 pandemic

Abstract

Covid 19 was a pandemic that forced people, institutions and companies to change the way they work and due to the restrictions that were imposed, the internet became the fundamental tool for everyone to continue carrying out their activities virtually. The applications and services offered on the internet were of great benefit, especially for small businesses who saw in commerce an opportunity to reach their customers with their products and these, in turn, a safe way of supplying themselves; but it is important to keep in mind when using these technologies that there are threats and computer security risks that could affect if you are not protected. The objective of this investigation was to analyze the main computer security risks to which the inhabitants of the El Carmen canton are exposed when carrying out electronic commerce activities in times of pandemic; A quantitative investigation was applied to analyze the possible risks and their level of severity, a MAGERIT Risk analysis methodology was used, considering the protection of personal information as an asset, a bibliographical investigation was carried out to select the most common online security risks and Instruments were designed based on the ISO 27001 standard focused on evaluating the controls to avoid the selected risks; For the study, a survey was applied using an online form to a sample of 384 people, who have made purchases over the Internet. From the results obtained, it stands out that the most used platforms for electronic commerce are WhatsApp, Facebook and online stores, finding a higher level of risk in transactions with online stores, the security risks with the highest probability of risks found were: adware, phishing and baiting.