According to a Gartner report released today retailers lost almost $2 billion because of consumer security fears in 2006 alone! About half came from consumers that avoided seemingly less secure sites and the other half was lost because of consumers who were too afraid to conduct e-commerce business at all.
NetChoice has long viewed security concerns as a key barrier to the continued growth of e-commerce and these new numbers justify those fears. The e-commerce industry clearly needs to continue improving its own security measures, working with the information technology industry to create new solutions, and giving consumers the tools they need to have confidence in e-commerce.
However, there are also steps that governments and ICANN need to make. Law enforcement agencies must be given the resources to track down cyber criminals and bring them to justice. In addition, ICANN must get off the ball and make DNSSec a reality. DNSSec will go a long way to preventing a new tactic of cybercrime known as pharming.