E-commerce requires beefed up cyber security to function wel

E-commerce requires beefed up cyber security to function well

Samantha Cruz, Cyber
Operations Researcher, Horangi Cyber Security

In an increasingly interconnected world,
online shopping and electronic transactions have now transcended its innovation
status to become part of our daily lives. Its ease of use and convenience, can
also mean significant security risks since sensitive information and personal
data are routinely shared among business owners and shoppers.

Some these
security risks include the following:

FINANCIAL DATA THEFT/FRAUD: Many attackers target
personal information such as names, addresses and credit card
numbers. This allows them to make purchases online using someone else’s payment
information. One method being used is called pharming or using fraudulent websites to manipulate people into
giving out their credentials.

Another more effective and insidious method is
deliberately targeting specific users and manipulating them into giving their
personal information (also known as spear
phishing). Other exploits used to steal financial
information include, but are not limited to: SQL Injection, Cross-Site
Scripting, Path Traversal, Session Hijacking, and Drive-by Downloading

DISTRIBUTED DENIAL OF SERVICE (DDoS) ATTACKS: A Denial of Service attack’s aim is to take down
e-commerce sites by flooding them with requests. This kind of attack overloads the e-commerce site to the point where
it can’t handle anymore requests, making the service slow down or even go
offline.

Slow service
for an e-commerce site means loss of potential revenue and massive impact to
brand reputation.

MAN IN THE MIDDLE ATTACK: Man in the Middle attacks do exactly what they say — the attacker
eavesdropping or intercepting the user’s (in this case, the online shopper’s) connection
with the website. Even with Secure
Sockets Layer (SSL)/Transport Layer Security (TLS) in place, there
are still ways attackers can trick the
browser to gain access to the plain text data.

EFFECTS OF A SECURITY BREACH FOR AN E-COMMERCE SITE

If such an
attacker manages to compromise an e-commerce site, the following can happen:

LOSS OF REVENUE: The first, most obvious effect of a security breach is loss of income.
Small businesses shell out an average of
$38,000 to recover from a single data breach in
direct expenses alone.

On top of
that, a company that experiences a security breach can also be held accountable
for not following

data protection policies, leading to hefty
fines that can lead to a business’s insolvency.

DAMAGE TO BRAND REPUTATION: Apart from the direct loss of sales due to site unavailability (due
to a DDoS attack, for example), losses of sales can also be due to customers
walking (or in this case, browsing) away from the shop in favour of other shops
without such security breaches. Losing
customers’ and stakeholders’ trust is the most
harmful impact of a security breach.

People will not do
business with a breached company, plain and simple.

Even if the company
is eventually able to recover the financial losses, the impact on the company’s
reputation would be a scar that would take a significant amount of time to
fade. That is, if it even fades at all.

INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY THEFT/DAMAGE: Another impact of a security breach is theft and damage to
intellectual property like trade secrets, blueprints, and anything else that
gives a company their competitive advantage. This can mean missing out on
expanding the business since the company can no longer fully implement new and
innovative ideas brewing in the pipeline.

HOW TO PROTECT E-COMMERCE SITES

Image
developed internally by Horangi artists

The good news is there are ways e-commerce
shop owners can protect their websites, their customers, and their data:

1.      
Research on the e-commerce platform and payment gateway the e-commerce
business runs on to ensure it complies with information security standards. Make sure the platform is compliant with the Payment Card Industry
Data Security Standard (PCI DSS). PCI DSS is an information security standard
defined to control how credit and debit card information is handled. To
determine if the e-commerce platform is compliant, refer to Visa and Mastercard’s compliant service provider lists.

2.      
If you plan to implement your own platform using open-source platforms
like Magento, then the responsibility is on the shop owner to implement security
measures. Ensure that your shop is PCI-compliant and
other basic security measures are in place.

3.      
Make sure the entire site (not just the payment area) uses HTTPS and
do keep the SSL certificate updated. The
certificate creates a secure connection between the user and the server.
Otherwise, the data is easily accessible and readable by anyone. Contact your
hosting provider if the shop is not hosted via HTTPS.

4.      
Only store customer data that is needed and make regular backups of
them.

5.      
Conduct a vulnerability scan on the online shop. Even with security measures in place, it is possible that the site is
still vulnerable from threats that are not obvious to the end user. This is
where a web scanner comes in. Web scanner scans web applications for known
vulnerabilities by spidering through links and ignoring pages linked outside
the target domain.

SECURITY IS NUMBER ONE FROM DAY ONE

Hackers and
cybercriminals only get smarter and more sophisticated with each passing year.
Therefore, the onus is on business owners to make security a priority.

While a cybersecurity endeavour takes a lot of
time and resources, the upfront cost is still lower than the potential losses
and is a worthwhile investment for all e-commerce setups.

Background on
writer: Samantha Cruz is a Cyber Operations Researcher at
Horangi. She specializes in cyber research and security tool development.
Before joining Horangi, she has worked for Trend Micro as a security analyst
and engineer.