No matter what type of business you have, the ugly truth is, that no one is one hundred percent safe these days. It’s safe to conclude that we live in the digital era, where a vast majority of people are technology-dependent.
In the past few decades, the entire world has experienced a huge transformation when it comes to technology. Even though there are many positive sides to this, on the other hand, this has enabled lots of people to easily access any information out there.
When we say lots of people, we refer to hackers who are using every single opportunity to target larger companies and compromise their data security. That’s precisely why you, as a business owner, must do everything you can to get yourself familiar with all potential threats, so you can protect your e-commerce business.
Today, we’ll discuss the ones that are the most common, and we will put together a list of solutions that you can implement to make sure that your company does not suffer the consequences of these malicious attacks.
How can a VPN help you out in protecting your online Business?
Now, before we proceed with the threats, we mustn’t forget to mention the benefits of using a VPN. As you’ve probably figured out by now, hackers have become craftier, which is why they can easily compromise any data.
That’s precisely one of the reasons why every business should consider a VPN or Virtual Private Network. This is for sure one of the most essential tools to keep companies protected from various data breaches.
Certainly, one of the most omnipotent uses of VPN is safe data sharing between teammates, cohorts, and people who are not part of your company. Depending on the type of service you’ll be using, make sure that the VPN encrypts the entire internet connection, not just the one to the company network.
Why is this important? Namely, when the files are uploaded to your storage, email address, or any other network outside your business, they are encrypted with a VPN as well, meaning that only an individual with the right encryption can access and utilize the data.
Another thing that’s worth mentioning is the fact that a typical online connection isn’t very encrypted and secured.
More importantly, it secures client and consumer information, internal communication, internal files, and many other things.
The Most Common Threats E-Commerce Businesses Frequently Deal With
Financial Scams
Ever since the first e-commerce company entered the internet world, financial fraudsters have been causing lots of unpleasant issues. Sadly, there are numerous types of financial fraud in this industry, but today, we’ll mention the most common ones:
- Credit Card Scams – This is something that occurs when a cybercriminal utilizes stolen credit card data to purchase products at your online shop. In these situations, both the shipping and billing address may vary. Luckily, you can effectively detect these actions by using an AVS, which is an Address Verification System. Another type of credit card scam is when the scammer steals all your personal data and identity so he or she can obtain a new credit card.
- Fake return & refund fraud – In this scenario, the fraudster executes unauthorized transactions and eliminates their trail, which leads to major company losses. Furthermore, there are fraudsters who have a tendency to be part of refund scams, where they usually file fake requests for returns.
Phishing
Unfortunately, a lot of e-commerce business owners are not aware of how serious phishing can be and how it can negatively impact their company. Today, in this online world, it is one of the most common attacks performed by hackers.
That’s the moment when they try to take over your e-commerce website. So what do they most frequently do? Namely, usually, they send a deceptive email that looks like it was sent from someone you know.
The whole point of it is to collect your login details. With the right information, the hacker could make a phishing web page that looks exactly like your e-commerce website login page, and then contact you to let you know that there’s something wrong and then ask you to solve this “issue”.
Sadly, in most cases, business owners believe that something is truly wrong, which leads them to reveal their details, which attackers later utilize to log in to your site and execute many malicious things.
Unfortunately, in the last few years, phishing has become extremely common. So what can you do about it? The experienced and highly-skilled legal team at revisionlegal.com suggests contacting a law firm that is familiar with these types of issues that affect online companies to help you effectively respond to any types of breaches. This is for sure one of the most efficient ways to prevent this problem or solve it if it has already occurred.
What Else Do You Need To Know?
The Threat Coming From The Inside
Another type of threat that is happening quite frequently is when it comes from the inside, meaning from its employees. According to the analysis that was conducted four years ago by Verizon, more than ninety percent of data leaks that were reported could easily be traced back to workers’ unintentional or even intentional mistakes.
Furthermore, employees can be a huge security threat in two ways:
- Irresponsible/Uninformed Workers – These people do not want to hurt the company in any way, but are frequently acting quite carelessly, which can potentially lead to data attacks. The most common employee errors that could jeopardize the company include visiting websites that are loaded with malicious files, forgetting unlocked gadgets that are full of sensitive info in public areas, and downloading attachments from suspicious emails.
- Rogue workers – These are employees who are not satisfied with some aspects of your company, or their jobs. Namely, if these people are part of the IT sector and are quite knowledgeable, they can try to compromise your data in many ways.
So what can you do in this case? Luckily, there are many steps that you can take to lower internal threats. They include:
- Terminate unutilized privileged accounts
- Privilege access policy
- Train all your workers equally
- Emphasize how crucial it is for a person to log out after a session
- Uncover malicious websites
- Data encryption
- Employ multi-factor authentication
Cloud Jacking
What is this? Namely, cloud jacking can be defined as the process during which a third party infiltrates cloud computing. So, once an attacker enters your company cloud, he/she will try to modify the cloud code with a goal to easily manipulate sensitive data, extend their reach to take control of it, eavesdrop on your colleagues, etc.
Why are they doing this? A vast majority of hackers are doing it, so they can smartly develop phishing schemes. In these cases, they usually upload fake instructions, memos, or anything else to the company cloud.
And unfortunately, since employees are not aware of it, they will believe that all these files are actually real and approved by you, so they will download them and follow the instructions without knowing that they are fake.
And sadly, all these actions lead to cyber criminals gaining more access to sensitive data of your company, releasing it, and sometimes, even moving your money into fraudulent accounts.
Distributed Denial Of Service Attacks (DDoS)
DDoS attack or a distributed denial-of-service attack represents an attack during which a cybercriminal utilizes several computers with the goal to strike your server with fake traffic. Why is this done?
Well, it’s because he or she wants to make your site inaccessible or to make sure it doesn’t work properly for users. Even though a majority of people are familiar with the term hacked and that it leads to data being uncovered, there are still lots of people who have never heard of the DDoS attacks and how hazardous they can be.
Unfortunately, nowadays, even some of the biggest online businesses become victims of these types of attacks. For instance, some of the most popular e-commerce platforms like PayPal, Etsy, Shopify, and many others were suffering some major downtimes precisely because of these attacks.
Smaller online stores are even at a greater risk because oftentimes, they do not take any precautions to prevent these awful occurrences. So what are the most common ways DDoS attacks can impact your e-commerce company?
- They can paralyze the server by overburdening it with traffic
- They can make your web page very slow for users, which will instantly negatively impact your income and conversion rates. It is widely known that nobody loves to be on a website that is being too slow
- They can significantly slow down your server and make it practically impossible for you to execute any operations on the back-end.
Even though all of these sounds quite terrifying, do not worry, there are some things that you can do to protect your e-commerce business:
- Utilize a Web Application Firewall (WAF) because it can instantly filter out any negative traffic and make it pretty challenging for these types of attacks to have any impact
- You can allow geo-blocking if you notice that most of the traffic is constantly coming from a certain foreign country
- You can always modify your server IP, or contact your ISP so that they can take certain precautions to protect you right off the bat.
If you’re an e-commerce business owner, then you should definitely take things seriously when it comes to these online attacks, if you want to make sure your company is secure. Therefore, go through everything that’s been mentioned here, so you can always stay prepared for any potential issues.