B2B Integration : A Practical Guide to Collaborative E-commerce

316 B2B Integration — A Practical Guide to Collaborative E-commerce
and maintains a comparable mode of verification of each party's consent,
B2B transactions cannot be enforced.
10.9.1. Need for trusted third party entities
In B2B e-commerce transactions, which can run into millions of dollars
without ever involving a piece of paper, companies cannot trust new
business partners simply on the basis of an e-mail address or a password
or a Website address. There is a need for the involvement of a financial
institution that can validate and facilitate all the financial aspects of a
transaction. Their involvement will give participating companies the
assurance they require to conduct negotiations, reach agreements and
make payments in a trusted and secure manner.
The trusted third party entity should:
• Issue digital certificates;
• Provide guarantee of these digital certificates;
• Have a global presence and a large clientele;
• Support open standards and provide technology interoperability, so
that the participant companies can use security solutions that best fit
their needs;
• Provide transactional integrity and assurance that can bind all the
participants to contracts that are enforceable across all countries; and
• Maintain the audit information in the form of electronic paperwork to
trace back any transactions or communications. This audit can be
used to resolve any dispute between two parties using their services.
Without the audit information, which is a comparable mode of
verification of the concerned party's consent, it will be difficult to
enforce an electronic transaction.
Identrus is a typical example of such a trusted third party entity,
which brings together several leading financial institutions (FIs). The
partner FIs issue guaranteed digital certificates that enable their customers
to participate in B2B e-commerce. In addition, FIs also act as payment
intermediaries and offer their traditional financial services securely over
the Internet.
As an example of a transaction through Identrus Network (see
Figure 10.19), a manufacturer receives a request for a proposal over