E-commerce security threats are causing havoc in online trading. The industry experiences up to 32.4% of all successful eCommerce security issues annually. Statistics also suggest that there has been an increase of more than 50% in the annual security threats in eCommerce in 2020 as compared to 2019, and the trend is likely to continue even further. Hackers usually target E-commerce store admins, users, and employees using various malicious techniques. Organizations must include eCommerce security guidelines in their business SOPs, especially amidst the rising cases of thefts and mishappenings in E-commerce. These guidelines should ideally consist of protocols to safeguard people and gain their trust. These aspects should include privacy, integrity, authentication, and non-repudiation concerns.
Privacy concerns include preventing any activity of sharing customer data with unauthorized parties. Ideally, organizations should not share sensitive information with their customers. A minimum antivirus, firewall, encryption, and data protection can be some of the basic protocols you should include while strategizing eCommerce security measures.
Integrity concerns again; ensure that your customer’s information remains unaltered. Here, altering any part of your data can cause your customers to lose a sense of trust in your brand. Along with that, there can be authentication concerns for your E-commerce business. The business needs to prove that the data is fundamental, deals with genuine services, and delivers precisely its promises.
Why are E-commerce security issues important?
While E-commerce sales growth has attracted the bad players’ attention in equal measures. Ecommerce cybercrime reports reveal that the industry is among the most vulnerable ones regarding cybercrimes. According to statistics, organizations endure more than 32.4% of all virtual attacks. In addition, 50% of small eCommerce store owners lament that eCommerce security issues are becoming severe. Furthermore, the reports show that 29% of website traffic consists of malicious requests.
Such attacks have contributed to significant financial losses, market shares, and reputation losses. Almost 60% of eCommerce organizations that endure cybercrimes tend not to survive more than six months.
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Common eCommerce Security Issues That Need Your Attention
One of the significant threats of eCommerce businesses is financial fraudsters. With the ease of knowledge access and people becoming more tech-savvy, it’s pretty easy for hackers to create illegitimate profiles and cause you trouble.
1. Malicious alterations: Hackers can also alter your website’s content, making it look a lot more suspicious. This is usually done to divert the traffic onto a different website – thus destroying your brand’s reputation.
2. Client data theft: We are surrounded by cases of data theft. Especially in the E-commerce industry, which works on client data, it is common to encounter such eCommerce security threat.
3. Online frauds: When hackers use worms, different types of viruses, trojan horses, or other malicious programs, they tend to infect your business website exponentially. These programs may easily hijack the system they are being accessed at, erase all possible data, block access, and forward malicious or unwanted emails to clients.
4. Uncertainty in online transactions: Ecommerce businesses need to make it a mandate to ease the process of checkout. If not, hackers might look for loopholes in the process and cause hurdles in payments, resolutions, and delivery of the goods. Such attempts usually result in complex transactions – and unhappy customers.
Tips for tackling E-commerce security issues
1. Use multi-layer security aspects
A Content Delivery Network (CDN) can block DDoS threats and infectious incoming traffic with the help of machine learning. We suggest you add another security layer to your Ecommerce apps, commonly referred to as Multi-Factor Authentication. This helps blocks fraudsters as they require more than just your customer’s usernames and passwords to access their accounts.
2. Secure Server Layer Certificates are much needed.
If your E-commerce website does not have an SSL certificate yet, you need to address that right now. These certificates make your data unreadable and almost non-hackable. This way, you can save your customers’ sensitive data from leaking out.
Some of the most common SSL certificates are extended validation, multi-domain EV SSL certificates, wildcard SSL certificates, Unified communication certificates, AMT SSL certificates, and general-purpose SSL certificates.
3. Use a rock-solid firewall.
Use effective E-commerce software and plugins to bar untrusted networks and regulate the inflow and outflow of website traffic. They should provide selective permeability, only permitting trusted traffic to go through. A firewall protects your business from bad bots, more than a couple of hundred types of attacks, top 10 threats, and much more.
4. Get anti-malware software.
Your electronic devices, computer systems, and web system need a program or software that detects and block malicious software, otherwise known as malware. Such protective software is called Anti-malware software. An effective anti-malware should render all the hidden malware on your website.
In conclusion, businesses should employ several eCommerce security measures and protocols to keep security threats in eCommerce at bay all the time. Apart from the primary authentication systems like usernames and passwords, SSL and multi-factor authentication are essential. If you need help with your E-commerce app development, get in touch with a renowned enterprise app development company to get started.
