Much has been written about B2B e-commerce, but little has been set down about the preparation and protection of these same enterprise systems for mobile e-commerce. This section examines the history of remote access to enterprise e-commerce systems and attempts to identify particular issues and challenges mobile B2B e-commerce presents.

Mobile e-commerce has some specialized issues relating to the separation of wireless user access from Internet latency and secure data because of multiple air interfaces in use. In the United States, particularly, this is a problem because there are three air interfaces in use on the public networks: GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications), CDMA (Code Division Multiple Access) and TDMA (Time Division Multiple Access), as well as three packet networks, ARDIS, Mobitex and CDPD. Apart from slow speed, GSM in particular has significant latency implications from an enterprise standpoint.

The issue of speedier and more secure transmission of corporate data over comparatively slow wireless links is being addressed by a new group of tool builders who are developing applications which are network resident, or especially designed to be accommodated on small handheld wireless phones. However, the issue of developing an audit trail for billing and non-repudiation of transactions appears to be more complicated than in traditional remote access over wire line networks. A way to address this shortcoming is through enhanced user authentication and location profiling which is a byproduct of real-time call rating.

As wireless devices become smarter, faster and more powerful, they will undoubtedly pose a new enterprise security risk. It is anticipated that these devices will exchange not only voice and data, but also executable code. Distributed object frameworks support remote invocation of code. As mobile IP, distributed object frameworks and mobile code technologies, such as Java and Jini, merge in the future, it is safe to assume that we will have new security and privacy risks.