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As we approach the busiest shopping weekend of the year, it’s never been more important to provide consumers with a secure, safe way to purchase online.
Black Friday typically marks the busiest time of the year for merchants. Although, it may have started as a single day of discount deals, the Black Friday festival (as it seems to have become) now stretches on for a week or more, giving consumers the chance to take advantage of the best deals ahead of Christmas.
For merchants, the pressure is on to grab attention, showcase some eye-catching deals and provide a seamless digital shopping experience. After a year of significant financial uncertainty for businesses, the upcoming sales period is more crucial than ever. But with this increase in custom comes a heightened risk to merchants’ cybersecurity.
Just like e-commerce businesses, cybercriminals are also gearing up for a busy Black Friday, looking to profit during a time when personal data is being passed between databases more frequently than ever.
Cybersecurity is a key consideration for e-commerce businesses at any time of the year. During a sale period like Black Friday, however, the importance of taking precautions is particularly crucial for a number of reasons.
The prospect of impressive savings advertised via email, through search engines and across social media can be enticing indeed. But from a consumer’s perspective, the rush to take advantage of these savings can lead them to make poor decisions – often clicking on dubious links and providing personal data on sites that they might otherwise be wary of.
At the same time, retailers are seeking more exposure during this time. Many companies rely on additional advertising for Black Friday, and cybercriminals who scrape content from legitimate branding can make realistic-looking ads that successfully trick customers, without the retailer or customer ever realising. In recent years, phishing attacks have seen an increase of 336% around Black Friday, and ransomware, malware, viruses and DDoS attacks are also a significant concern.
Cybercriminals also focus their efforts around Black Friday because of the sheer volume of customer data being processed during this period. The more information a merchant holds and stores, the greater the potential prize for a hacker looking to access that data.
If you plan on taking advantage of the shopping fever surrounding Black Friday, crossing your fingers against cyberattacks simply isn’t enough. You need to be proactive in order to reduce the likelihood of a breach and give both yourself and your customers peace of mind that their data is safe.
Payment card fraud should be a key consideration for any business trading online over the coming weeks. Ensuring your business falls in line with the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) means you are doing everything you can to accept, transmit and store card data in a way that protects your customers and prevents loss of data. PCI DSS compliance is something every e-commerce business should already be familiar with, but now is the time to revisit the requirements involved to make sure your security is up to scratch.
Your broader risk posture also deserves a review at this time. Services like penetration testing, mimic the actions of a hacker to put your defences to the ultimate test. At SRM, our partner team of CREST accredited penetration testers will prod and probe your digital estate to identify the weak spots in your systems before an incident occurs – giving you the chance to address them before a malicious hacker can take advantage of them.
Be open and honest with your customers about your cybersecurity efforts, letting them know that their data is in safe hands. By keeping them up to date with best practices, you can help keep both them and your organisation safe during the upcoming shopping season.
