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With looming security threats against online businesses, keeping your company safe should be your priority. The e-commerce industry in particular is greatly affected by these attacks. In fact, e-commerce companies lose 5% of their revenue to fraud every year. It’s important that you keep your website secure because it helps establish trust and credibility, especially among your clients. Now, the big question is: what are these threats that you should watch out for?

What Are The Cyber Security Threats E-Commerce Websites Should Watch Out For?

The e-commerce industry is now experiencing a surge in a number of security threats brought about by hackers online. Without you knowing, your website might have already been a victim of malware, phishing, bots, and other security threats. And with hackers targeting owners, admins, and employees of e-commerce companies, the best way to protect your company is to arm yourself with knowledge of these cyber security threats.

Malware

A huge cyber security threat involves a term you might be familiar with – malware. Hackers are extremely clever people. They can design software that can infect your computer systems without you knowing. These programs include viruses, trojans, and ransomware. Whether it’s your admin’s or your customer’s system, a malware-infected system can have data swiped easily. And yes, this can affect your e-commerce website as well.

Phishing

Phishing is a common practice of attackers wherein they send emails purporting that they are either a legitimate shop or company owners. In this practice, they create a convincing clone of your website to fool readers into believing them. This, in turn, leads to readers providing sensitive information such as card numbers, passwords, and other personal information.

Financial Fraud

Financial frauds have existed since the creation of online businesses. The two major types of financial fraud include credit card fraud and fake return fraud. As implied by the name itself, credit card fraud involves a criminal using stolen credit card data to purchase goods on an e-commerce website. This type of fraud may also come in the form of cyber criminals stealing personal identities to apply for new credit cards. Meanwhile, fake return frauds refer to unauthorized transactions that falsely request returns. For any company, this results in financial losses. That’s why this is a type of fraud you must keep an eye out for.

 

Spamming

Sending emails is one of the standard means of communicating electronically. And when it comes to increasing sales and generating leads, it’s one of the most effective channels of communication. But, bad players can take advantage of this powerful medium. How do they do this? They attack through infected links in forms, comments, or messages. And when an innocent reader falls into the trap of clicking the link, they will be directed to the website where they become a victim. This website then downloads different types of viruses or spyware on their device.

Bots

Bots are specific programs that are created to perform a specific task. A commonly used bot is a web crawler:  a bot that ranks all websites by browsing all the pages on the world wide web. You might be wondering how these web crawlers pose a security threat to your website. It’s simple – these bots crawl through your website to obtain info on inventory on prices. And when the hacker is a competitor, data can be used to lower the prices on their websites in an attempt to lower your sales.

To give you an edge against these competitors, include customized products in your catalog is a great  way to set yourself apart.

 

DDoS Attacks

DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attacks are a huge nuisance to many e-commerce companies. This type of threat involves a server receiving a barrage of requests from IP addresses that ultimately leads to crashing your website, making it unavailable to visitors. Your sales then suffer, making the attack successful.

 

Man In The Middle (MITM)

Have you ever feared that your conversations are being eavesdropped on? Your greatest fears are actually a reality on the internet. Many hackers eavesdrop on conversations between the e-commerce company and a client. When a user connects to a vulnerable Wi-Fi network, attackers can easily take advantage of it and steal personal data from these conversations.

 

What Are The Solutions To These Cyber Security Threats?

With different types of security threats rampant in the e-commerce industry, your company must be up to speed with the best solutions to combat these attacks. Fortunately, there are a variety of security measures you can take to keep yourself and your clients protected. Here’s what you can do to prevent a cyber security attack:

 

Risk Assessment

Conducting a regular risk assessment is a step toward combating these security threats. A risk assessment identifies assets that could be affected by an attack and the risks that affect them. This type of assessment ensures that the controls put in place are appropriate for your e-commerce company. Also, this data is used in helping company executives make important decisions on security.

Anti-Malware Software

In case you don’t have an anti-malware program yet, you should know that downloading one is an absolute must. This program is responsible for detecting and deleting viruses that can harm your computer systems. Make sure to download an efficient program and regularly update it so that your systems stay safe.

HTTPS and SSL Certificates

An excellent way to improve data security involves HTTPS and SSL certificates. Not only does it protect data transfer between servers and devices, but it also keeps your websites up in the rankings. This is especially needed for e-commerce websites due to the number of online transactions. Hackers can simply steal credit card information when there is a lack of security. Due to the number of financial transactions done on ecommerce websites, hiring a FinTech dev team is another way to ensure that your online transactions are safe.

 

Final Word

Keeping your website safe from cyber security threats is undoubtedly difficult, But, it’s a necessary measure all e-commerce companies must take if they want to protect the company and their clients. With hackers getting more creative with their attacks, cyber security must be a top priority of any company that wants to make it in the industry – and that includes yours.

 

If you need to build a hacker-proof high-conversion ecommerce website – reach out to support@buildateam.io and our team will gladly help you with your project.

 

Written by Chatty Garage