The most fundamental technologies in support of commerce are technologies for authentication. It should be next to impossible for a person to pretend to be someone else when logging in to a system, to alter e-mail addresses or the content of any document without detection, or to fake the Internet address of a computer when connecting to another computer. Next come technologies that ensure the integrity of the Internet itself, the medium for all transactions. These include technologies for protecting against disruptive attacks, detecting criminal acts, resisting viruses, and recovering from computer and connection failures. Third come technologies that ensure the privacy and security of confidential and proprietary information traversing the Internet.
Encryption is the principal technology for message secrecy.
Fourth come technologies for commerce coordinators. Their purpose is always to enable the participants in transactions or business processes to know exactly the state of the transaction at any given moment and how far from completion it is. The same technologies can enable data collection that can be used to guide future process improvements. These technologies are intimately related to a firm's ability to deliver customer satisfaction and guarantee quality at every stage of a process. Fifth come technologies for payments.