Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) Messaging Security

The modern economy and the future wealth and prosperity of industry and commerce rely increasingly on the exchange of data and information , in electronic form, between business partners. The speed and reliability of the information exchanged coupled with the spread in the distributed use and application of IT are increasingly affecting the competitiveness of businesses and international trade. Electronic information exchanged in this way is growing in volume because of the increasing number of business partners that may be involved (suppliers, customers, manufacturers, bankers, carriers, and so on) and the numerous documents that need to be exchanged. The performance of the system handling these documents can significantly affect the economy and future prosperity of a business. The ability to process and exchange trade data as quickly as possible allows stocks to be reduced at a profitable rate, helps cut financial costs, and gives firms such as this an additional competitive edge by improving the service offered to their customers. In addition to the speed, the flexibility in responding to customers' changing needs and desires adds valu e to the service being offered and creates better commercial relationships. In response to the need for effective and efficient solutions to handle this way of doing business, Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) offers substantial advantages and opportunities. The EDI approach has been identified as the most important user base of open networks and likely to create one of the most fundamental changes in the way that future business is carried out. EDI is starting to be used in a growing number of market sectors, in a wide range of user applications. The use of EDI trading systems is underpinned in many respects by the need for security , and it is the use of commercially reasonable security features for EDI that will bring about its long-term success. This essay looks at a particularly important aspect of EDI — the security of EDI messages. In particular, it focuses on the secure communica