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By Silvia Neufeld
News Reporter

With the recent onset of Internet hacking attacks and the seemingly impossible task of quickly capturing and prosecuting whoever is responsible for them, many are questioning the Web's effectiveness and security.

Concerns about Internet security have been raised after two highly publicized hacking incidents this year alone. The first, in January, involved a hacker who stole consumers' credit card numbers from the Internet music retailer CD Universe, then released thousands of them on a Web site after the firm refused to pay a $100,000 ransom.

Earlier this month, hackers managed to cripple several large Web sites, including Buy.com, eBay and E-Trade, by flooding them with "fake traffic," or false requests for information that experts believe may have been sent from thousands of personal computers.

These incidents, and others, left many computer users afraid their machines might be hijacked for similar purposes.

"We monitor our systems 24 hours a day, seven days a week, but there is no way to avoid these attacks," said Marc Ladin, vice president of marketing at PDQ.net, a Houston-based Internet service provider.

Regardless of security measures in place, any network of computers may be a target for hackers, particularly those looking to disable large retail or government sites.

"These types of hackers with these types of capabilities aim for the bigger sites," Ladin said.

The attacks led President Clinton to sign into law the Digital Theft Deterrence and Copyright Damages Improvement Act earlier this year, a law that toughens the penalties for digital misappropriation.

Nevertheless, e-businesses say the fears of Internet crime won't lead them to give up their presence on the Net, particularly when the success of Internet transactions seems so high.

In 1999, for example, online sales reached an all-time high of $5 billion between Thanksgiving and Christmas -- three times the sales of the same period in 1998, according to Forrester Research of Cambridge, Mass.

"There is so much potential for businesses to do business online," said Vincent Beale Jr., a sales manager for Cynet Inc., a software company named one of Houston's 10 fastest-growing in 1999 by the Houston Business Journal. "We will continue to incorporate the Internet into our business."