TECHNOLOGY & TELECOMMUNICATIONS

AT&T; Enhances Internet Services: The telecom giant bolstered its services to help businesses sell on the Net, promising to protect them from missed orders and insuring buyers whose credit card numbers are stolen by hackers. AT&T; Corp.’s SecureBuy Service is designed to convince more businesses to hire AT&T; to design, set up and manage their sites on the World Wide Web, the most popular portion of the Internet. Internet services are part of AT&T;’s strategy to expand beyond its traditional long-distance business, which has been losing customers to Sprint Corp. and MCI Communications Corp. Those competitors, in addition to IBM Corp., Microsoft Corp. and others, have similar Internet services, but AT&T; Chairman and Chief Executive Robert Allen said AT&T;’s are now the most extensive. Internet commerce is in its infancy, but AT&T; and its competitors expect it to grow dramatically.