According to statistics, e-commerce sales are set to increase tremendously this decade. But, together with that opportunity, there exist various risks for big companies and startups alike. Threats ranging from sophisticated hacks to malware attacks will require you to have a robust cybersecurity framework for your e-commerce business to grow.
In this article, you will learn about the basics of cybersecurity, the most common types of risks facing e-commerce businesses, and how you can mitigate them.
The most common types of attacks facing e-commerce businesses can be broken down into four major categories:
- Social engineering
- corrosive attacks
- disruption-distributed denial of services
- interception of information attacks
Here is a closer look at what each one of them involves and how best you can deal with it.
Phishing
This is a form of attack where hackers masquerade as legitimate business owners. These hackers send emails to your clients and trick them into revealing sensitive information. They do this by presenting them with a fake copy of your legitimate website.
The recipient is then asked to click a malicious link which leads to the installation of malware into their system.
In this method, scale emails sent out en masse to an untargeted population from a hacker posing as a celebrity that anyone could know. We also have spear phishing where attacks are aimed at one person or a small group. In this type of phishing attack, the hacker poses as a close associate of the victim and then proceeds to ask for personal information.
According to Imperva, these types of social engineering take advantage of people’s underdeveloped cybersecurity literacy, and you can prevent them by:
- Putting your team through Intensive training and skill-building to detect spoofed messages.
- Using the two-factor authentication (2FA) method, which adds an extra verification layer when users are logging in to sensitive applications.
- Enforcing strict password-management policies, like frequent changing of passwords
- Educational campaigns that enforce secure practices, like when and how to ignore external email links.
Corrosive Attacks
These are programs created by hackers to damage your computer, network, and business. They include:
- Ransomware. These are programs that seize the functionality of your system. They use incriminating data as leverage and then demand actions, like payment of a ransom fee, before returning the operation to normal.
- Viruses and worms. These act as neutral programs and spread themselves like a viral infection, infecting various files destroying or compromising data.
- Backdoors. These are programs that compromise system access by giving attackers illegitimate access to vital assets and resources of the system. They skip normal screening procedures, like authentication.
- To protect your business from a malware attack, use a firewall software. It works by regulating the traffic that enters and leaves your site, thus keeping out untrusted networks through selective permeability.
Disruption of services
A Disruption-Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack can be initiated by hackers by:
Using a combination of fake IP addresses and bots to target your servers with innumerable requests. Due to the sheer volume of traffic, your system gets incapacitated and then shuts down, exposing you to further vulnerabilities. This can then be followed by hackers demanding a ransom to cease their attack.
As an e-commerce business, you cannot afford any downtime so you should be vigilant as this type of attack can be very dangerous. Nevertheless, you can counter this threat by using a Content Delivery Network (CDN), which works by filtering out malicious traffic from the regular traffic.
Interception of information
This type of attack can be carried out in two ways. The first one is through skimming, where hackers pull information entered by clients onto secure websites before putting up smokescreens that intercept the data.
The second way is by intervening in an email or other communication network and then tricking both parties into believing that they are communicating with each other. In the process, the hackers making away with critical information. To prevent this, you should ensure that all communication sites are verified and that clients refrain from sharing sensitive information carelessly.
This information will definitely give you a perfect start towards launching a secure and successful e-commerce business. However, this is a tedious task, and doing it by yourself will most likely rob your company of valuable time and effort. As such, you should seek the services of professionals IT companies, like Intivix IT services San Francisco. It has been offering cybersecurity and IT services in the bay area for 24 years.
Maximize the safety of your online business by preventing costly and reputation-damaging breaches by setting up a robust cybersecurity framework that can help you achieve your business goals.
