Where are customer details saved?

Question

Hi there, I have to do this assignment. Basically ive been asked to suggest suitable technologies for building a intranet for a small size business (40 employees) with connection to Internet.

The business is an internet travel agency - selling holiday packages. So far I have established...that The company will require a Ethernet using either a Star-bus topology, routers,a high speed internet connection, and could either host its webpage using a web host service, or purchase a webserver to host it in-house. The latter one is the dearer option, requiring expertise etc..but I have not been given any budget so I just might suggest it.

MY QUESTION - for the booking the packages..i guess I need a secure payment solutionthat customers can make their payment through. If I buy such a solution externally, how would the storage and transfer of customer details/booking work? And where would you suggest storing it - have a in-house database?

SOrry for the Long explanatioN!!

Answer 1

You could use a online payment method such as paypal to accept the payments. It is quite cheap to use and you pay fees on the amounts you recieve.



To store the users details you would need a DBMS such as MYSQL or MS Access. You would also need a scripting language to work with the DBMS such as PHP or ASP.



These could both be implemented with the use of paypal.

Answer 2

In the last few months it has become mandatory for any organisation that stores details of credit cards be verified for 3D secure. This requires an audit, certificate of compliance and a failure can result in a fine of upto £50,000 and the removal of the ability to use credit/debit cards.



You should suggest use of on online merchant, these take the responsibility of storing payment details, the will be responsible for ensuring they keep upto date with any security issues. Most will be able to give you a page that sits within your own website for payment and will take any details you need to send to them such as customer number, invoce reference etc. They then take the credit card details and send back to you a transaction reference number and details as to whether the payment failed or was successful thiscan be stored in any database you choose. Though in this instyance to reduce your costs a PHP/MySQL on Apache solution would be ideal. You will also get a secure website you can log into to review any payments taken by the provider and the ability to do refunds etc.

Answer 3

If you get an external solution, then you need a SSL certificate which is used to encypt the customer/transcation information over the net. So the information will not be compromised. For the storage, I would suggest using a mySQL database.