Securing Your Ecommerce Store During COVID-19
Without a proactive prevention plan, an e-commerce store will lose customer data and revenue as transactions soar during COVID-19.
Only last year, a study found that the number of malware-affected Magento 2 stores doubled monthly for three consecutive months.
Privacy and security are at the epicenter of electronic technologies, especially eCommerce. Online shopping platforms require high-security components coupled with a reliable infrastructure and robust framework.
Without a proactive prevention plan, an eCommerce store will lose customer data and revenue as transactions soar during COVID-19.
Here are 5 of the most common cyber threats to look out for, plus some quick tips to prevent them:
DDoS attack
Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks and DOS (Denial of Service) attacks are methods that hackers use to flood a server with traffic from multiple sources until the website crashes.
DDoS attacks are common, especially during Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales. To prevent these attacks, your IT team should monitor for irregular traffic and set up secure firewalls.
Phishing
Cybercriminals disguise themselves as authorized businesses, then send enticing emails to customers. These phishing emails include fake calls to action in the guise of popular retailers, banks and financial institutions.
To prevent such attacks, create a clear policy regarding the solicitation of authentication and ensure that you never ask for this information through email.
Financial Frauds
As scammers become more sophisticated, it’s no longer necessary to confiscate physical credit cards to make fraudulent purchases. Criminals can get these details to make unauthorized transactions in several ways, including phone calls, emails, WiFi hotspots, and credit card skimming.
Always update and run the latest version of your e-commerce store processing system to ensure security patches are current.
SQL Injections
An SQL injection (SQLi) is a type of security attack in e-commerce, mostly devised through query submission forms. This vulnerability uses malicious codes to attack servers that store critical data for websites.
To prevent SQLi, validate all SQL data inputs against a whitelist and only use stored procedures and prepared statements.
Blocking Cart
The blocking cart, AKA hoarding bots, is an e-commerce threat where malicious bots add multiple products to shopping carts until they’re out of stock.
The aim is to exhaust a product's resources so that no customers can buy it. This creates a shortage, allowing the criminal to sell the product at inflated prices elsewhere. To prevent bots from accessing your site, be sure you have bot detection software set up.
Now that we’ve covered the most common security threats, here are signs you may have been attacked.
Signs your e-commerce store has been hacked:
- Heavy load on your server with multiple requests from the same IP address
- Loss of bandwidth from content scraping bots
- Breached database for sale on an open-source TOR site, which is hard to trace
- New databases or unknown tables appear suddenly
- Different products appear on your website
- Free shipping is enabled for users who are not eligible
- Malicious popups ask users to install anti-malware
- Users complain or bounce from your site, due to malicious redirects
- Unknown pages of content appear on your website
- Despite PCI compliance, banking credentials are stolen
- Server logs indicate brute force attempt
- Google has blacklisted your online store
- Suspicious admin account appears on your dashboard
Ways to Improve Ecommerce Security
Mandate customers use strong, secure passwords
Set a minimum length for the passwords. Mix uppercase, lowercase, numbers, and symbols. Do not allow common substitutions like D00R8377 for DOORBELL. But then, remember too many data security restrictions can irritate customers, leading to cart abandonment.
Do not store customer data
You may be tempted to store your customer data for future analysis and business growth, but don’t. Storing data will make you responsible for any damage incurred due to data theft. For secure payments, consider a third-party gateway to execute your transactions.
Train your in-house team
Even the best security strategy will not work if your team is not security savvy. Organize workshops to teach them about elementary and secondary security practices. Later, migrate those measures to your company’s organizational workflow to avoid maximum security blunders.
Educate your customers
At times, data breaches can happen due to a customer’s negligence. They may be sharing sensitive data or using weak passwords. You can dodge negligence by educating your customers about safe ecommerce security practices.
Implement multi-layer security
Two-factor authentication (or multi-factor authentication) adds additional layers of security. Apart from the standard username and password, an additional code is generated, which is used to protect customer’s data further.
Cloud-based systems have greater protection
As cybercrime has become increasingly sophisticated, substantial resources are needed now to achieve the multi-layered, 24/7 protection required to protect key systems. SaaS-based systems are designed from the ground up to withstand Internet danger, and world-class security is necessary to remain in the business.
Conclusion
Your ecommerce business is just as safe as the security measures you put in place to protect it from malicious hackers and hijacks. When looking ahead, focus on ecommerce security and put the right protection in place. Do it for the safety of your websites and your customers during these challenging times of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Originally published at MultiChannelMerchant
