A Risk Analysis of E-Commerce: A Case of South African Online Shopping Space

Abstract

Globally, online shopping is on the rise with cybercrimes expected to rise. This study presents a risk analysis of the online shopping's e-commerce in South Africa using data collected through a variety of platforms where incidents and intelligence are reported and collected. Data was collected through a self-administered web-based online survey. A randomized sample size of 459 was used to analyze perceived risks associated with online shopping. This paper further outlines perceived risk results and findings by categorizing impact type, attack vector and threat type. Results of this study show that risks associated with finance losses impact the online shopping in the e-commerce space. This has not yet been fully realized in South Africa. Results analyzed in this study also look at the online shopping confidence across the retail industry, hospitality industry and other industries aggregated in this study. Financial loss is highlighted as the major perceived risk recording a highest confidence level in terms of the results which are further categorized in terms of impact type, attack vector and threat type. A conclusion has been drawn which indicate that there is a correlation around recognized risks, impact type, attack vector and threat type in the online shopping space in South Africa.