It's no secret that online shopping has started to eclipse brick-and-mortar retail. After all, nothing beats the ease and convenience of visiting all your favorite stores from the comfort of your couch and having your orders delivered right to your doorstep.
In addition, ecommerce has also opened a world of new opportunities for fledgling business owners. All it takes to get started is a product, a website and plenty of dedication. Unfortunately, many e-commerce vendors see their dreams of success fizzle out after suffering a cyberattack.
If you want to protect your ecommerce site from financial ruin, you ought to invest in a cyber insurance policy from CyberPolicy today. Otherwise, you'll be burdened with the recovery costs all on your own. Be honest, could your digital small business handle that kind of strain? Below are a few of the most common threats faced by ecommerce businesses and how to avoid them.
Fraudulent Payments: Since you are operating an online storefront, you won't have to worry about bogus sawbucks. But you will have to keep an eye out for fraudulent payments nonetheless.
Hackers routinely buy large batches of stolen credit card numbers from the dark web, which are then used to order big ticket items from your site. Be on the lookout for dozens of separate orders being sent to the same address, as this is a dead giveaway for cybercrime.
Breach of Customer Data: For better or worse, most e-stores save information on their customers to expedite the ordering process. However, this also makes your business a hot target for cyber crooks. Don't believe it? Just take a look at Alibaba who suffered an attack on 20 million user accounts in 2016! And how likely is it that customers will want to return to your site after you let their personal information fall into the wrong hands? Exactly.
The solution? Follow PCI regulation at all times and avoid storing sensitive financial information (such as credit card expiration dates) on your site; or at the very least encrypt consumers' personal data.
Business Downtime: E-stores have the benefit of being open 24/7, at least until a hacker has his way. Ransomware and distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks can take an ecommerce site down for hours or even days!
How long could your online SMB survive without customers or income? Combine this with the fact that the vast majority of customers will jump to your competitors if your site load times take over three seconds and you've got a real problem on your hands.
Thankfully you can avoid malware attacks by eschewing suspicious messages, downloads and apps. DDoS attacks can be stymied by employing mitigation software on your network to analyze and redirect malicious traffic.
SQL Injection: Especially crafty hackers can actually inject malignant segments of code into your ecommerce site via entry fields (such as an account creation box). This code could be anything, including commands to 'download all customer information and send to remote server.' Yikes!
To block an SQL injection attack, you'll need to invest in a safe API that can detect noxious commands and prevent them from being picked up by the application layer. It is also helpful to keep your applications and services up to date with all the latest security patches.
While these tips can help you stave off cybercrime, it's still prudent to invest in a cyber insurance policy just in case. Visit CyberPolicy for your free quote today!
