Development of a Secure Electronic Marketplace for Europe.pdfVIP

Development of a Secure Electronic Marketplace for Europe Michael Waidner IBM Zurich Research Laboratory CH 8803 Rüschlikon, Switzerland e-mail wmi@ Abstract: Backed by the European Commission, a consortium of partners from European industry, financial institutions, and academia has embarked on a re- search project to develop the fundamentals of secure electronic commerce. The goal of Project SEMPER (Secure Electronic Marketplace for Europe) is to pro- vide the first open and comprehensive solutions for secure commerce over the Internet and other public information networks. We describe the objectives and summarise the initial architecture of SEMPER. 1 Introduction Backed by the European Commission, a consortium from European industry and aca- demia has embarked on a research project to develop the fundamentals of secure elec- tronic commerce. The goal of the 9-million ECU project, SEMPER (Secure Electronic Marketplace for Europe), is to provide the first open and comprehensive solutions for secure commerce over the Internet and other public information networks. A wide range of businesses are rapidly moving to explore the huge potential of net- worked information systems, especially with the Internet-based WWW (World-wide Web). The Internet, which already connects more than 3 million computers and a sub- stantially larger number of users, is growing at a breathtaking pace with thousands of newcomers every day. Although the Internet has its roots in academia and is still dominated by free-of-charge information, dramatic changes are expected in the near future. For instance, the WWW will be used for a wide variety of electronic commerce such as on-line trade