Need to Secure Ecommerce Industry from Growing Spate of Cyber Attacks

Every business needs to be protected from some or other kind of threat. While brick and mortar shops can adopt sophisticated CC-TV monitoring and other measures, e-commerce ventures need an entirely different approach for implementation of security measures. 

Growing security needs of online businesses

It is easy to understand the growing security concerns in ecommerce industry if you look at the exponential growth of online businesses and their huge popularity. Security of online businesses needs to be understood from prospective of customers as well as operators and retailers. 

In the present context, every online business irrespective of its size is equally exposed to security risks. Most of the owners of small and medium sized online enterprises think that cyber criminals would only choose large ecommerce business. However, cyber criminals view all targets as equal opportunities. 

The very fact that all functions of an online business are executed via internet makes it highly vulnerable to online attacks by hackers and spammers. This also necessitates adoption of stringent security measures to prevent customers from becoming victims of cyber crimes. 

This underlines the need to proactively safeguard multiple aspects of an ecommerce business to provide sense of security to the clients and also to prevent online frauds, which can adversely impact future business growth. This is also confirmed by past surveys, which confirmed that botnets are the most sought after ways by fraudsters for exercising tremendous control on extensive computer networks of ecommerce operators. 

By adopting proactive preventive measures, ecommerce enterprises can retard rate of abandonment due to lack of customer-trust. As such there are no foolproof measures to indentify fraudulent purchases. 

Vital trends that drive online businesses

There is an ever increasing need to deal with eCommerce related frauds including brute attacks, fraudulent online transactions, fictitious logins and applications that relate to new accounts. There are few significant trends that should be considered while analyzing cybercrime vectors. 

App stores and smart-phones – More and more online shoppers seem to be inclined towards a select group of online retailers. They also feel more secure in conducting transactions such as online payments that need sharing of personal information, passwords, and bank account details to name a few. 

Smart phones have emerged as the most sought after means to make online purchase of virtually every type of product. Smart-phone associated login transactions in leading e-retailers are exponentially growing and are accountable for fifty percent of total volume. 

Cyber attacks reflect growth of ecommerce – The new trend of increased cyber attacks during peak sale months including festival or holiday season underlines the fact that cyber criminals have not only targeted the online business but have also succeeded in designing their own strategies.  The attackers are usually after high value online transactions by targeting login and payment processes.

Extensive and persistent bot attacks – Cyber criminals are not leaving any stone unturned while using bot attacks for testing and validating the identity credentials that have been stolen by them. In fact, the bot traffic is found to surpass the traffic of genuine transactions. These attacks are also evolving in terms of sophistication to dodge the detection measures. This makes them immune to the advances in security measures and confirms the fact that bot attacks are here to stay. 

Authentication measures

In spite of wide spread cyber attacks, the value of authentication measures continue to be appreciated by ecommerce operators and owners of online enterprises. These methods are designed to provide a sense of security to customers as well as sellers by establishing legitimacy of online transactions. Digital security certificates are extensively adopted by sellers to assure their clients that they are not dealing with unauthorized third party vendors. 

In order to prevent interference of third party elements, ecommerce industry has always counted on SSL certificates. Such measures are being extensively adopted for secure storage of credentials as well as for responsible handling of sensitive information. 

Ecommerce security – way forward

Every online merchant needs to spend quality time in validating the security measures that are in place for protection of the entire process of buying from online intruders. Ideally, they should view these processes from the buyer’s perspective. 

Customers will instantly abandon your ecommerce site if their browser fails to identify a server that uses an SSL certificate. In view of this, a standard security check-list can be designed, which includes seamless communication between a server that uses SSL and the browser. 

Selection of the trusted web host is an extremely critical aspect of securing your online business. This will take care of major portion of security concerns since reputed hosts are found to implement the most advanced security systems to protect online transactions and to store the vital information with utmost care.  

Implementation of preventive measures much before the business goes online is an important factor to establish flawless security. One can also educate customers to exercise care while transacting online. These measures are essential to guarantee a healthy growth of ecommerce industry.