It is an undeniable reality that security threats in e-business are wreaking havoc in online transactions. The industry suffers from as much as 32.4% of all successful threats every year. Hackers typically attack e-commerce store admins, users, and employees with a variety of malicious methods.
There are simply too many e-commerce security threats and scams that are running rampant in the industry these days. Here, in this blog post, we have attempted to enumerate the prevalent threats your e-commerce encounters and how you can avoid them.
If you have already been a victim of being hacked by credit card scams, scamming, phishing, bad bots, DDoS attacks, or other cyber attacks, you can acquire a full malware removal now with Qualysec Security.
Top 10 E-commerce Security Threats
1. Financial frauds
Since the initial online companies joined the internet world, financial scammers have been causing headaches for businesses. Different types of financial frauds are found in the world of e-commerce, but we are discussing here the two most frequent of them.
a. Credit Card Fraud
It occurs when a cybercriminal purchases goods on your online store using stolen credit card information. In most cases, the shipping and billing addresses are different. You can identify and prevent such activities in your store by having an AVS – Address Verification System installed.
Another type of credit card fraud is when the fraudster steals your identity and personal information to allow them to obtain a new credit card.
b. Fake Return & Refund Fraud
The rogue players execute unauthorized transactions and wipe out the evidence, which inflicts significant losses upon businesses. Certain hackers also undertake refund frauds in which they place fraudulent return requests. To defend your site from such advanced attacks, incorporating fraud detection software that is up-to-date into your up-to-date online platform can have a massive impact on improving your capability for identifying and halting fraudulent operations in real time.
2. Phishing
Some online stores have reported getting notifications or messages from hackers who impersonate the actual owners of the legitimate stores. Such scammers put up fake copies of your site pages or even a well-established website to get the users into believing them. For instance, view this photo below. A harmless and convincing email from PayPal requesting to send information.
The 2017 EITest is one more fine example of such nefarious campaigns. If the clients do not realize and fall into the trap, surrendering their sensitive personal data such as login credentials to them, the hackers quickly proceed with scamming them.
3. Spamming
Some spam players may send malware links through email or social media mailboxes. They can also insert these links in their comments or messages on blog comments and contact forms. When you click on them, you will be redirected to their spam sites, where you might become a victim.
4. DoS & DDoS Attacks
Most online stores have lost money as a result of interference in their website and total sales owing to DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attacks. What occurs is that your servers are bombarded with requests from numerous untraceable IP addresses that make them crash and unavailable to your store visitors.
5. Malware
The attackers can create an offending software and install it on your IT and computer systems without you even knowing. Offending programs like spyware, viruses, trojans, and ransomware fall under this category.
Your customers’, admins’, and other users’ systems can have Trojan Horses installed in them. The offending programs are capable of copying any sensitive information that may exist on the compromised systems and could even infect your site.
6. Exploitation of Known Vulnerabilities
Attackers are waiting for some weaknesses that may be present in your e-commerce site.
Mostly, an e-commerce site is weak to SQL injection (SQLi) and Cross-site Scripting (XSS).
Let us briefly discuss these weaknesses:
a. SQL Injection
It is an insidious method wherein a hacker is attacking your forms of query submissions to be able to get access to your backend database. They taint your database with a contaminated code, they harvest information, and then eliminate the track.
b. Cross-Site Scripting (XSS)
The attackers may inject a malicious JavaScript code into your online store to attack your online customers and visitors. These codes may read your customers’ cookies and calculate. You can use the Content Security Policy (CSP) to avoid such attacks.
“Also, Read our guide to E-commerce Penetration Testing: Securing Online Businesses”
7. Bots
Some hackers create special bots that can scrape your site to obtain details regarding inventory and prices. The hackers, typically your rivals, can then make use of the information to decrease or change the prices on their websites to reduce your revenue and sales.
8. Brute force
The internet world also has attackers who can apply brute force to your admin page and break your password. Such scam programs access your site and attempt thousands of combinations in hopes of getting your site’s passwords. Always use strong, complex passwords that cannot be easily guessed. Also, always update your passwords regularly.
9. Man in The Middle (MITM)
A hacker might intercept the conversation occurring between your e-commerce site and a customer. Walgreens Pharmacy Store has suffered through that sort of an event. If the user is linked with an unsecure Wi-Fi or network, then those kinds of attackers might make the most out of that.
10. e-Skimming
E-skimming is attacking a website’s checkout pages with malware. The goal is to steal the clients’ payment and personal information. Are you an e-commerce entrepreneur? Don’t underestimate the gravity of such e-commerce security threats.
“You might like to explore our recent post on What Is Web Security In E-Commerce?
E-commerce Security Solutions that can ease your life
1. HTTPS and SSL certificates
HTTPS protocols not only secure your users’ sensitive information but also improve your website rankings on the Google search page. They achieve this by encrypting data transfer between the servers and the users’ devices. It’s thus important to ensure there are no SSL/TLS errors on your site and to fix any that arise promptly to keep your site secure.
Do you understand that some browsers will cut visitors’ access to your website off if these kinds of protocols aren’t implemented? You ought also to have an SSL certificate issued recently by your host.
2. Anti-malware and Anti-virus software
An Anti-Malware is a computer program that identifies, eradicates, and prevents infectious software (malware) from infecting the computer and IT infrastructure. As malware is the generic term for all types of infections such as worms, viruses, Trojans, etc, obtaining an effective Anti-Malware solution would suffice.
On the contrary, an Anti-Virus is software that was originally designed to fend off viruses. Much Anti-virus software also developed to prevent infection by other malware. Protecting your PC and other supporting systems using an Anti-Virus keeps watch over these infections.
3. Securing the Admin Panel and Server
Always employ complicated passwords that are hard to guess, and it is a habit to change them regularly. It is also advisable to limit user access and specify user roles. Each user should only do as much as their roles allow on the admin panel. In addition, it notifies you whenever a foreign IP attempts to access it.
4. Securing Payment Gateway
Don’t keep your clients’ credit card details in your database. Rather, let a third party like PayPal or Stripe process the payment transactions off your website. Most of these reputable payment processors now have secure QR code payment facilities for easy transactions. This provides enhanced security for your customers’ personal and financial information. Did you know keeping credit card data is also necessary to become PCI-DSS compliant?
5. Deploying Firewall
Good firewalls block fishy networks, XSS, SQL injection, and various other cyber-attacks which are still making headlines. They also assist in controlling traffic to and from your online business, to only pass trusted traffic.
6. Educating Your Staff and Clients
Make sure your workers and clients obtain the most current information regarding managing user data and how to visit your site securely. This information, employed for numerous objectives such as cold calling, e-commerce email marketing, and other methods of sales outreach, needs to be handled with care to avoid noncompliance as well as foster confidence. Erase terminated staff members’ information and cancel all their access to your systems. Having a secure business phone system can also protect your communications and provide better operational efficiency.
7. Additional security implementations
- Always check your sites and other websites on the web for malware
- Backup your information. The majority of e-commerce websites also implement multi-layer security to enhance their data safety.
- Regularly update your systems and make use of good e-commerce security plugins.
- Finally, acquire a dedicated security platform that is immune to regular cyber-attacks. You can learn more about the security measures you must undertake for your e-commerce store.
Qualysec Solutions to E-commerce Security Threats
Qualysec is one of the top security solution providers that allow e-commerce businesses to operate smoothly while mitigating e-commerce security threats.
Our tried and tested web application firewall repels Bad Bots, Spam, SQL injections, XSS, and a host of other cyber attacks. It operates in real time, keeping your site safe 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The firewall is smart enough to recognize any suspicious and malicious activity. It does this by tracking the traffic patterns of everything that goes out and comes into your e-commerce store.
We can also assist you with getting rid of malware, malicious redirects, pharma attacks, and other such threats in a record turnaround time. You can use our smart malware scanner to identify any malware yourself and monitor changes in your files daily. We keep a log of any change in your codes for you to check and remain aware. Our machine learning intelligence drives all the scans so that we do not miss anything.
We know that a bug in your code may lead to security issues in your e-commerce. Hence, we offer top-class website security audits to identify any potential vulnerability in your online assets.
Conclusion
Cyber-security is extremely crucial if you are going to make it online. Hackers are improving their skills, so you have a team that is committed to being up to speed with security problems and offers round-the-clock security to your websites.
Qualysec has a team of experienced engineers who freely communicate with clients. We offer firewalls of solid-rock, malware scanning, and pentesting to keep your website secure at all times. You can view our dashboards to monitor the security status and progress of your websites easily. Qualysec offers excellent security threat solutions to e-commerce stores. Schedule a call today to discuss your needs with our cybersecurity professional!
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