Partner und Internationale Organisationen
(Englisch)
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IBM France (F), Cryptomathic (DK), Stichting Mathematisch Centrum (NL), Digicash (NL), Fogra Forschungsgesellschaft Druck (D), GND Forschungszentrum Informationstechnik (D), Universität Hildesheim (D), Universität Freiburg (D), Intracom (GR), KPN Research Netherlands (NL), Maris (NL), Eurocom Expertise (GR), Europay International (B), IBM Zürich Research Laboratory (CH), France Télécom - CNET (F), R3 Security Engineering ag (CH), Otto-Versand (D), Systems Synthesis LTD (UK), Regionlink sc (B), Universität Dortmund (D), Sintef Telecom and Informatics (N), Commerzbank (D), Universität des Saarlandes (D)
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Abstract
(Englisch)
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Project SEMPER designed a model, and a generic and open security architecture of an electronic marketplace. It developed a prototype as a means to consolidate the architecture and the security services that it comprises. Based on that prototype, it evaluated the architecture and services by conducting a series of trials where customers of the trial partners used SEMPER services for secure electronic commerce on the Internet.
SEMPER has been a vertically integrated project addressing electronic commerce security from capture and specification of business, technical and legal requirements, through the definition and implementation of architecture and services, to representative trials involving end-users.
Several key results were obtained in the final year, 1998: Together with our external partners in France and The Netherlands we successfully operated and performed the SME trial, based on an improved version of Basic Trial software, and using real on-line payments. We fully integrated payment systems SET for credit cards, ecash for electronic cash, Chipper for stored value cards, and MANDATE for electronic cheques. We finalised the SEMPER Electronic Commerce Agreement (SECA), which offers a comprehensive legal and technical proposal how to limit liability in electronic commerce transactions in a controlled way. Most notably we developed a prototype of the Fair Internet Trader (FIT), a tool for secure and spontaneous person-to-person electronic commerce, capable of demonstrating the full set of security services and features supported by SEMPER. We continued to disseminate SEMPER results at international technical and business conferences, including several demonstrations. In November 1998 the consortium organised a public SEMPER-dedicated conference in Switzerland where the most important results were be presented.
SEMPER consolidated its technological advance with a unique set of security services that offer the flexibility, reliability, and reinforced security expected for commercial exchanges in the business-to-business and business-to-consumer markets, as well as among individuals: the main features of SEMPER include an enhanced trusted user interface providing control on critical aspects of electronic transactions, dynamic adaptation to an open-ended set of business practices, ubiquitous and comparative negotiations, signed offers and orders, contract signing, secure delivery of files and streams, a rich and open-ended set of payment methods, reliable transactions, support for multiple certification schemes, support of anonymity, trust management and dispute handling, completed by legal agreements designed to establish a legally predictable context.
The main showcase for this technology, the Fair Internet Trader, was implemented based on an analysis of typical scenarios in the context of SME-to-SME business. Offering an intuitive and simple user interface, the Fair Internet Trader supports a guided semi-automated negotiation of business context, terms and conditions, security services, the use of SECA, and the actual contract text. It allows to exchange signed offers and orders, to perform on-line payments using the full suite of payment systems, and to securely deliver the product. For dispute handling previous transactions can be reviewed, and signed documents can be extracted and verified. The Fair Internet Trader has already been used in several expert interviews. It will also be used in several demonstrations. The initial feedback confirmed our belief that the Fair Internet Trader is a perfect showcase for the results of SEMPER, and more importantly a promising, novel class of tools for electronic commerce.
Meeting so fundamental needs with SEMPER has significantly raised the project visibility and interest, and met considerable success before the diverse and broad audiences to which our results were discussed. Everyone agreed on the critical importance of SEMPER advances, which were deemed quite convincing, promising and sound. We received a large number of requests for information and for participation in international events. Several organisations offered to join SEMPER. Co-operation with SEMPER aroused significant interest in several ACTS, ESPRIT, and TELEMATICS projects for trial purpose.
In summary, we firmly believe that SEMPER has been the most global, comprehensive, and systematic approach among all initiatives addressing the problems of security in electronic commerce. We are convinced that our proposal for an architectural framework will give birth to a new generation of products offering friendly and secure access to electronic commerce, thereby triggering a competitive advantage for the European Union. The many very positive reactions that we received, the technical verification of the applicability of the architecture for developing services and support of existing and future business practices confirmed that the approach of SEMPER has been and still is the right one.
The structure of the consortium, its early exploitation of results, and the broad interest in our work from outside make us believe that the project results will have a definite and strong impact on the future of the networked economy, the perception of users regarding electronic business, the production of guidelines and international standards, and future research. SEMPER will be regarded as a major contribution of the European Union towards global electronic business.
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