What Are The Primary Security Threats To E-Commerce?

Shifting to e-commerce platforms from brick and mortar stores involves a lot of work. You have to modify almost everything to come on the internet as a business. E-commerce has a lot of benefits like global reach, quick shopping, decreased operational expenses, and 24*7 online availability, amongst others. However, there are security threats and issues involved.

Although you can reach a greater audience through the internet, you also invite a plethora of security threats that can lead to huge losses and a tainted reputation. Hackers and fraudsters are always looking for innovative ways to steal from your company or innocent customers. However, you must know that Accertify and other companies are building stronger solutions against these problems.To know what kind of cybercrimes can affect your business, keep reading.

#1 Credit Card Fraud   

Amongst the most common types of security threats an e-business has to deal withare credit card frauds. To stop such frauds from occurring, you will have to detect fraudulent transactions, which is not an easy task, specifically if your website processes several hundreds of transactions each day. Some of the signs that can help you find a fraud are –

• A sale of significantly higher value than you are used to receiving
• An order that has different shipping address and billing address
• An IP address of the customer in a faraway location than their billing address location
• A successful order placed after multiple failed ones

You should take the necessary action as soon as you identify any fraudulent transaction because you will not only send your products to the wrong person but also have to pay the credit card holder who was scammed. It would also damage your business’s reputation.

#2 DDoS Attacks

A distributed denial of service or DDoS attack occurs when the servers of your website flood with requests from thousands of untraceable and unknown IP addresses. Such attacks are generally driven by manipulation of IoT devices and can cause your entire website to go offline. This leaves your site open to more severe attacks like a malware infection. If proper steps are not taken, the businesses lose a considerable amount of money.

#3 Bad Bots

There are both bad and good bots on the internet. Bots are typically programs designed to do a particular task on the internet. Good bots do not cause any harm and help search engines offer useful results. Also, automated technology has now evolved into sophisticated software helping businesses make decisions without a high amount of information.

However, bad bods are designed to cause harm to your business. These bots are developed to copy real human workflows over web applications to act like real users. They act as security threats to your business in multiple ways, including –

• Price scraping – Such bots are usually sent by competitors for monitoring your pricing, inventory levels, pricing strategy, marketing plans, etc. letting them outrank you in the search engine results or undercut your prices.
• Credit card fraud – Bad bots are programmed to test the stolen card numbers and insert CVVs repeatedly until they are successful. Once the cybercriminal has the credit card information, they can buy whatever they want to in someone else’s name.
• Account takeover fraud – In the dark web, selling stolen login information of customers has become a huge industry. After buying this information, cybercriminals employ bad bots to try username and password permutations on various websites. Once they hit the right combination, they can use it to steal card details, place huge orders, etc.

You can decrease bad bot activities by featuring CAPTCHAs on your website, which deter bots from making fake accounts as well as gaining access to the sensitive data of other users. You may also consider blocking all the traffic from the data centers with a notorious reputation.

#4 Malware

Any piece of software that is designed by the cyber-criminals to gain access or cause damage to a computer network is called malware. Malware files are inserted into the web pages through techniques, such as SQL injection, and let hackers –

• Take control of your networks and computers
• Fake their identity
• Send malicious emails to your clients on your behalf
• Tamper with your database
• Gain total access to the business’ entire data on its system

As malware strategies are continuously evolving, your anti-virus protocols also need to modify accordingly. To protect your website against security threats to the e-business, you must install a firewall to monitor activities. You must also store limited sensitive data on your website.

The Bottom Line

The internet has made it convenient for entrepreneurs to do business. However, cybercriminals are provided with ample opportunities to steal sensitive information and misuse it for personal gains. These nasty hackers can use credentials and credit card details to place false orders, which ruins a business’ reputation and causes losses. This is why e-businesses need to use high-quality protection software and services.