More generally, the anxiety about security is expected to increase in coming years as web-based applications are increasingly used for financial transactions. As the number of computers, networks, data and information multiply every day, the need for better security practices that protect information systems from malicious attacks and at the same time preserve the civil liberties, will increase in the future. Cryptography is put forward as a powerful technological solution to network fraud. At an international level it can be applied with the collaboration of governments, the business payment gateway for school community and trusted third parties.
The required use of public and private keys in cryptography methods raises several public policy issues surrounding the encryption of data and who should hold the keys that unlock the encrypted information. Policy makers can play an important role in the implementation of a security policy, acting as trusted third parties or defining the legal framework for such organizations. There are multiple models concerning the role of governments in security policy. At one extreme, public authorities may have ultimate access to information and at the other; they may leave the responsibility for security of the data to the information owner.
What seems to be urgently required today is better education and awareness of security of information systems and good security practices for companies and individuals. Computer technologies like the Internet facilitate the exchange of personal information that can be collected, aggregated and sold across the world. As companies can easily take advantage of personal information that becomes accessible on information networks, e.g., through direct marketing, several issues are at stake.
The most important concern is whether information is collected, aggregated or sold with the individual's explicit consent. There are several private organizations, Worldwide Web Consortium that try to address the issue by giving a privacy ‘seal’ to Web sites that are fulfilling some set criteria of privacy protection. These include the responsibility to make visitors to web sites aware of what data is collected and giving them choice about making this data available to third parties.
The Trustee white paper also emphasizes that Web sites bearing their Privacy Seal "must provide reasonable security to protect the data that is collected". Security is seen as the technological aspect of the broader social issues that are related to privacy. Privacy is particularly important for the protection of sensitive personal data such as medical records, credit records, government data and personal data about children.
The US government has taken an untied regulatory approach to protect such information. In other words the aim is to enable Internet users to choose for themselves what level of privacy protection they want. In Europe, in contrast, data protection is stricter and has been articulated at a pan-European level. In the United States, the EU directive has been perceived as being overprotecting for European companies, raising barriers to the free exchange of electronic data between Europe and other countries. Indeed, the European directive on data protection challenged electronic transactions payment gateway for college and data exchanges internationally, as it banned the export of personal data from the EU to those countries without strict federal data protection laws.