E-Commerce: Relevant Threats and Preventive Measures

E-commerce websites have long been a hot topic for cyber threats. They are treasure troves of personal and financial knowledge for would-be attackers. And for organizations of all sizes, the expense of a hack, both in data loss and in consumer confidence, maybe incredibly devastating.

For example, you own a physical store, you most likely to implement security measures like CCTV cameras, security guards, and fire alarms to prevent the store from theft. Similarly, you need to deal with your e-commerce business in the same way, you must ensure eCommerce business security on priority.

What is Ecommerce Security?

Security is a vital aspect of every transaction that occurs on the network. If its security is compromised, clients may lose their confidence in the e-commerce business. Online business protection applies to the principles that govern secured electronic exchanges, enabling goods and companies to be bought and sold through the Internet, but to conferences set up to provide those concerned with well-being. A fruitful online company depends on the trust of consumers that an entity has critical elements of e-commerce security set up. Security in e-commerce is the guarantee of unauthorized access, use, alteration, or obliteration of online business services.

Major E-commerce issues and threats

1. Financial frauds

From its inception, financial crime has plagued online firms. Hackers perform unauthorized transactions and wipe out the track that cost businesses a significant amount of losses.

Certain fraudsters often file requests for bogus refunds and returns. Refund fraud is a widespread financial fraud in which corporations refund the merchandise or defective goods unlawfully purchased.

2. Spam

Where emails are viewed as an effective tool for higher revenue, it still remains one of the most commonly used spamming. Posts on your site or contact forms, though, are also an open invitation to web spammers to leave infected connections to harm you. They also send them via the mailbox of social media and wait for you to click on those posts. Moreover, this attack not only affects your website’s security but also damages your website speed too.

3. Phishing

It is the most common security threats of e-commerce where attacker impersonate as legitimate businesses and send emails to your clients to trick them into disclosing their sensitive information by simply presenting them with a fake webpage/website of your legitimate website or anything that allows the customer to believe the request is coming from the legitimate source.

Commonly the attackers email your customers or your team with fake messages like – “you must take this action”. This technique only works when your customers follow through with the action and provide them their login information or other personal data which the hacker can exploit as per his financial gain.

4. DDoS

DDoS or Distributed Denial of Services attacks targets to disrupt your website and impacts overall sales. In this type of attack, the attacker floods the servers with illegitimate requests to slow down its functionality or even crash down your website. These may result in a major financial and reputational loss to any e-commerce business owner.

5. Brute Force

In an effort to find out your secret by brute-force, these attacks hit the admin panel of your online shop. It uses programs that create a link to your website and to break your password using any possible combination. By using a strong, complicated password, you can safeguard yourself against such attacks. Remember to change the passwords periodically.

6. SQL Injection

SQL injections are malicious techniques in which an attacker targets the query submission forms to get access to your database. They insert malicious code into your database, gather the information, and later delete the trail.

7. Cross-site scripting

Cross-site scripting or XSS is the type of attack in which a hacker plants a malicious JavaScript snippet on your e-commerce website to target your website visitors and customers. with a successful XSS attack, the attacker can access the cookies of your customer’s browser. This attack can be prevented by implementing a Content Security Policy.

8. E-skimming

E-skimming is performed by an attacker by implementing a special programming software known as “Skimming Code” at the end of any online shopping process, known as the checkout pages. Checkout pages are where you input your credit card or any other banking details for placing the order and buying the product. With the help of skimming code, the attacker can get your payment details and further can use that detail for his own financial gain.
More specifically, e-skimming is also known as “Magecart attacks,” and this term refers exclusively to the consortium of cyber attackers who carry out and launch this type of threat vector attack.

9. Trojan Horses

Before a Trojan horse can corrupt a computer the user must download the server-side of the malicious program. The Trojan horse, by itself, cannot manifest. The executable (exe) file must be installed and the software must be installed to unleash the attack on the device. Social engineering techniques are also used in order to persuade end-users to download the malware script.

Laptop and tablet device owners are not the only ones at risk of being compromised by a Trojan horse. Android devices such as smartphones and tablets with mobile malware may also be targeted by Trojans. This sort of infection could lead to an attacker redirecting traffic to and using these attached Wi-Fi devices to commit cybercrimes.

How to prevent your e-commerce business?

1. Use Defence in Depth

Having layered security such as Multi-factor authentication in your infrastructure helps you in preventing your environment from the breach. A perfect example of this can be two-factor authentication where a user is required to enter more than one type of credentials such as a one-time password (OTP) to gain access to your website services.

By implementing such measures, you can block fraudsters as they will be required to enter more than just the username and password to access a legitimate user account. Although the possibility of zero-day vulnerability is still there.

2. Use of HTTPS

It is recommended by most of the prominent compliance standards to use only secure ports and protocols for your environment. HTTPS is a secured version of the HTTP protocol. The use of HTTPS instead of HTTP, not only protects the sensitive information submitted by the users but their user data as well.

You must buy an SSL certificate from your hosting provider before you make the switch. It has become the standard to get an up-to-date SSL certificate and HTTPS protocol, so if you want to get significant traffic, it is important that you get them.

3. Antivirus and Anti-Malware Software

To place orders from anywhere in the world, hackers may use stolen credit card details. An antivirus or anti-fraud program will benefit you with this serious e-commerce epidemic. To allow you to take more measures, they use advanced algorithms to mark any malicious transactions. They have a probability score for fraud that will assist owners to determine whether a particular transaction is legal.

4.Awareness among your users

Security is all about the awareness one person has. E-commerce businesses should educate their intended users about the risks associated with unsafe security practices.

The awareness should be around the use of strong passwords which include alphanumeric characters and special characters that are near impossible to perform Brute-force attacks. Businesses should also educate their users about how phishing works.

5. Keep your systems up-to-date

It is recommended to keep your systems up-to-date with the latest security patches. The outdated software becomes a serious liability that may cause you harm. So, you should always install the security updates and patches as soon as they release.

6. Firewalls

Another successful e-commerce recommendation is to use firewalls and reliable pocket-friendly and plugins. They keep untrusted networks at bay and monitor traffic that reaches your site and exits it. It provides selective permeability and requires only trustworthy traffic to enter your network. They also safeguard against cyberattacks such as cross-site scripting and SQL injections.

7. Backup your data

Data failure is not unusual due to hardware malfunctions or cyber-attacks. And if you don’t periodically backup your records, you’re at risk of losing it for good. You need to do it on your own and not trust anyone else to do it for you. Using an automated backup program to automatically back up all your files, even if you fail to do it manually.
You should go a step further to make a backup copy because if you lose the initial backup, you will have a contingency plan open. Another choice is to choose a managed e-commerce web hosting service that, like Cloudways, that automatically generates backups for you.

Conclusion

Being aware of the risks that are present online in your immediate environment is a good solution. You should also be aware of how you should defend yourself and plan for these e-commerce risks.

There’s no space for errors, as we established earlier. One crucial mistake will cost you your complete business. Therefore, as much as you invest in its ads or site design, the better way is to invest in e-commerce security. It’d be well-spent money!

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