Eyes narrowing, they quickly type commands that might catch an intruder from the ''demilitarized zone'' outside the network's hardened firewalls. With so much talk about the billions to be made in E-commerce, you would think the Net already was secure for business. While some transactions, including E-mail and simple home banking, can be protected through basic encryption, the secure environment that businesses need to carry out lots of confidential transactions still doesn't exist. Indeed, concerns about security run so deep that they are slowing use of the public Internet by corporations. The reality is that fewer than one in seven companies is willing to link its critical applications to the Net, according to a recent survey by the Open Group, a consortium of global companies pushing for security standards.
Most experts believe the delays are temporary.
E-commerce, after all, was developing well before the Internet's recent explosive growth and has been steadily building momentum. Promoters of the Internet and cyberspace in general view such private networks as perhaps necessary but backward. For one thing, these systems are expensive. Even cocky security consultants admit that in time, determined hackers can surmount any barrier. Private networks have higher walls, but they are not impregnable.