Data Breach Prevention during the holiday season
Online shopping is all set to soar this holiday season, with the risk of being exposed to Coronavirus likely to keep people away from visiting malls and retail stores. Other elements contributing to substantial growth in online shopping are expanding smartphone user base, attractive offers, digital wallet adoption, and inventions such as interactive apps and mobile/QR code payments.
While this digital shift offers a beacon of hope to the COVID-hit retail industry, cybercriminals have also noted the surge in virtual shopping. They aim to target websites and online shopping sites for malicious gains.
Heightened risk for data theft
In its Global Integrity Report 2020, global consulting firm Ernst&Young notes that there has been a tremendous increase in phishing and ransomware attacks by cybercriminals this year. And they are trying to exploit the fears and uncertainties around the virus. It has increased the risk to organizations that are already struggling to operate in the event of a pandemic.
The widespread adoption of remote models has amplified the use of cloud-based technologies and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS). Further, to build customer loyalty, retailers are continually looking to deploy technologies and solutions that can help them deliver a customized experience, easy payment options, and increased engagement.
However, as more and more stakeholders use digital technologies, the risk landscape is also increasing. For instance, retailers store sensitive personal information on their websites, such as buyers’ credit card numbers, names, addresses, purchase preferences, and related critical information, to improve customer experience. It is a treasure trove for fraudsters, and any invasion of privacy can cause significant damage to a retailer’s reputation and brand.
By using advanced techniques, cybercriminals can exploit sensitive data and launch attacks such as malware, ransomware, and DDoS for financial purposes. They can also trick users into submitting them to malicious sites for payments or even leaking sensitive information on the dark web.
The recent surge in online shopping has also increased the chances of triangulation fraud. In a triangular scam, a client places an order on a third-party market, for example, eBay, using a credit card, debit card, or PayPal account. The order is listed by a cybercriminal who receives that order and then orders the actual product from a genuine website, say, Flipkart, using a stolen credit card. This way, a genuine cardholder can end up losing his/her personal information to a fraudster.
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With so many transactions anticipated, the volume of cyber-attacks and intrusions will also be on an unprecedented scale. This can make it difficult for retailers to safeguard their systems and customers’ data from different types of cyber-attacks.
Steps to strengthen Your Small Business Security
Online retailers must adopt robust measures to secure their customers’ data and become cyber resilient from online shopping threat vectors. Here are a few key steps that can help retailers strengthen their information security across their cloud networks and to deploy data breach prevention methods.
Be sure to have full visibility on your network
It is imperative to have granular visibility and control over the cloud network. Each of your network entry points may need a customized approach to protect the cloud network. And conventional information security tools may not be efficient to safeguard all your endpoints. By deploying modern network surveillance, retailers can get detailed visibility into every aspect of their networks and minimize the chances of data alteration, theft, and loss.
Real-time alerts
The second vital step to safeguard all your clouds from any data breach is to deploy a solution (Data breach prevention solution) that gives you real-time alerts against any potential security loophole or intrusion attempt. As compared to legacy technologies, there are several modern-day intelligent tools to predict the possible attack. As cybercriminals have become more sophisticated, enterprises need a new analytics-driven automated approach to track and monitor their networks in real-time updates and alerts.
Verification of user legitimacy
Since their inception, CAPTCHAs have been widely deployed to prevent fraudsters from taking unauthorized measures. Authenticating CAPTCHA improves security by discouraging robots that generate robotic content and hackers that put malicious code. However, cybercriminals have developed techniques to automatically solve and tweak many types of CAPTCHA services while launching an attack. For instance, the old alphanumeric CAPTCHAs, which let in a short five-digit chain on a black image, are now easily crackable by spammers.
Organizations need to deploy advanced machine learning-based proactive measures to implement advanced user legitimacy verification models to protect their websites. It is also necessary to educate and guide your consumer regularly to protect against fraudulent activities and solutions to take for data breach prevention.
Enhance security
British Airways was recently fined $26 million for a data breach affecting 400,000 customers. The Information Commissioner’s Office found that it was not taking appropriate measures to protect the customer data. The episode highlights how crucial it is to safeguard customer data at all times.
Most online retailers use cloud-based storage for data backup since it is scalable and cost-effective. It is crucial to ensure safe backup to the cloud storage environment by securing data both while in transit and at rest. Parablu’s BluVault does precisely this. It uses encryption to protect the integrity of the data.
It is imperative to have a data backup solution that is cloud-agnostic and works well with your cloud service providers. Led by experts in security and data management, Parablu provides solutions that protect your digital assets whether they reside in public, private, or hybrid cloud.
Boost e-commerce sales during the festive season have given fraudsters a massive opportunity to exploit the cloud data vulnerabilities for malicious gains. Further, cyberattacks are continually evolving and becoming more innovative. Securing data assets at all levels is now more critical than ever.
To learn more about Parabalu solutions and how we can help you mitigate retail-related cyber risks, please contact our experts today or write to us to learn more – info@parablu.com.
