Abstract
M.Comm.
The development of electronic commerce resulted in the development of EDI and the use of the Internet to transact these data. This led to the question of whether a security technology existed that could ensure the validity and integrity of transactions. The development of the GII which will not only be used for EDI and other financial transactions, but also in the medical and educational fields, has emphasised this concern of business. Encryption is one of the technologies available which can ensure the validity of transaction during transmission and even during storage. Cryptology entails the encoding and decoding of transaction data before and after transmission through the use of secret and public keys. The following questions should be addressed: The most cost effective solution to business' security concerns; The legal and regulatory issues concerning privacy;
Transmission of keys through digital and electronic media resulting in the possible breach of security in the keys themselves; Standards and infrastructures which must be agreed upon and implemented to secure the development of the Gll; and Existing internal and external audit methodologies can cater for the audit of the completeness, accuracy, validity and continuity of transactions but the methods
and tests to substantiate these objectives will have to change. All of the above points are addressed in the research, except those on the legal and regulatory issues. Each of these points can, however, still be the topic for detailed future research. The objective of this dissertation is to research encryption technology to provide a questionnaire to the auditor ensuring the validity of transactions on the GII. A questionnaire or checklist is presented that could be serve a guideline for auditors
when addressing risks in a GII environment.