Security question re building a site

[toadism]

Hi,

 

Am I posting this in the right place...?

 

I'm looking for a web designer and developer at the moment to work on a project.

 

There are two different 'models' of how I can set the website up, and which one I go for might influence my choice of developer.

 

My question here doesn't describe the full project, it's just about a bit of it:

 

One model is a system which would involve people submitting funds to my website, and other people extracting those funds - an Escrow system. This would involve transactions of fairly large sums of money. And I'd take a small percentage from these sums - as a fee.

 

The other option would not involve transacting large sums of money. I'd simply take the fee, connect the two people, and they would make their own payment arrangements.

 

There are advantages to my offering the Escrow service on the website, but the other option could work too.

 

So I need to decide which route to take. This is about the budget really. I need to know what security considerations there are with the Escrow option, so I can figure out what the cost difference between the two options might be.

 

My thinking is that if security was compromised on the website, then with the Escrow option, the business could stand to lose a lot of money from those chunks of money that have been Escrowed. So the set up needs to be secure. So security is not compromised.

 

I don't know what considerations there are re security etc. And I don't know if there's perhaps an easy way round - using a third party Escrow for example. I can't just send my users to Escrow.com - if I'm offering the Escrow option I need to be able to offer it through my site.

 

So I'm looking for pointers... if anyone has advice...

[Mark Baker]

Honest answer.

 

Personally, whenever I've needed to use escrow, I've always used humans (lawyers and registered escrow companies), and relied on paperwork for all identification. I wouldn't trust a computer-based system.