There are two sides to security issues for the Internet, the Consumer side,
and the Merchant side. Most security issues are actually a matter of
perception. However, as marketers we recognize that perception is reality
and therefore have addressed both the preceived issues and the less thought
of real issues of Ecommerce security.

Consumer Issues

Security of data passed over the Internet - USTBA employs industry
standard SSL technology as implemented by Netscape for Secure
Web Service. Our certificate is from Verisign, the defacto standard for
Digital ID's. Exchanging data with USTBA members is completely secure.
Security of data received by USTBA Brokers - All order information of a
personal nature or in any way related to payment information (checks,
purchase orders, credit cards) is encrypted by USTBA servers before it is
saved. USTBA uses a private key system for our internal temporary
storage. Further, the data is only decrypted as it is read for relay to the
Ticket Broker who picks up the data through a secure Web session.
USTBA NEVER exposes unencrypted information to the Net.
Merchants may optionally include Internet Secure real time credit card
processing on the back end of  USTBA orders to further increase Consumer
confidence and security.

Merchant Issues

Data protection - As noted above all information that is held for our
Merchant's retrieval is encrypted with private keys. All transaction data
is secured.
Server Protection - Every server on the Internet is a potential target for
hackers so the appropriate precautions are taken to ensure service is
not interrupted. No Merchant has ftp or telnet access to any of our
systems. In fact, only the USTBA administrators can access the servers
by any means other than Web browser. Our systems are monitored
around the clock for attempted intrusion, and our systems not only
protect themselves by filtering, but will actually fight back. In the worst
possible attack the USTBA servers will send out a final call for help
before terminating all non Web access and if necessary will actually
shut themselves down. There are additional proprietary systems in
place to ensure the safety of the USTBA servers.
Price Fraud Protection - A common way for customers to rip off
Merchants is to adjust the price of items prior to adding them to a
shopping cart. It's a simple HTML adjustment. The USTBA cart relies on a
local price lookup database so such hacking is out of the question. Further,
throughout the entire transaction the "back Office" server relies on internal variables
not seen by the public. This offers further protection against price
hacking.
Administration Security - Access to your broker listing screen is password
protected. If you enter the wrong password more than twice our system
administrators are notified and we investigate immediately. This is a
sound way to ensure that there is no unauthorized access to your
USTBA administration broker settings. All brokers use unique ID #s.

Summary

Those are the primary security issues and how we address them. To some
these are common sense, and if not, now you know something new about
Web security. Your web transactions are safer than any real world counterpart.

Buy only from USTBA members, not classifieds or auctions, where your dealing with individuals who aren't monitored for trust or delivery.