With worldwide retail e-commerce sales projected to increase, the industry is booming without plans to stop any time soon.
Because of this, many businesses are unprepared for the security threats that come with running an e-commerce company. In an ideal world, brick-and-mortar stores can run without worrying too much about security due to systems and setups put in place by the governments of their respective localities.
Things are quite different with e-commerce businesses; however, you are responsible for protecting yourself. Using sophisticated tools like e-commerce fraud protection software enables businesses to employ advanced algorithms and security protocols that identify and thwart fraudulent activities.
By combining an understanding of the threats and the power of protective measures, we can ensure a safer and more enjoyable online shopping experience for everyone.
In 2023, global retail e-commerce sales reached an estimated 5.8 trillion U.S. dollars. Projections indicate a 39 percent growth in this figure over the coming years, with expectations to surpass eight trillion dollars by 2027.
While the actual e-commerce figure and percentage of retail sales e-commerce is responsible for continues to rise, so do the threats and challenges associated with e-commerce.
E-commerce security is crucial for both businesses and consumers who shop online. It protects sensitive information, and fosters trust in the online marketplace.
Effective e-commerce security goes beyond simply relying on website security software or your e-commerce CMS; it is essential to understand the different security threats and take adequate measures to protect yourself.
This article details the six most dangerous e-commerce security threats and the steps you can take to protect yourself.
Contrary to what many expect, most e-commerce security risks do not require the use of groundbreaking technology on the part of the hacker. Most security threats in e-commerce only require a bit of social engineering and deception toward key people at the target organization.
Many e-commerce security threats operate in a similar way. Let’s explore ways to protect yourself from these threats.
Many e-commerce business owners aren’t aware of how much of a threat phishing poses to their business, yet it is consistently one of the main ways hackers take over e-commerce sites.
Phishing is a method in which a hacker sends deceptive emails disguised as an email from someone or an organization that you know in an attempt to get you to reveal your login details. This trickery is also known as spoofing.
For example, with enough information, an attacker could create a phishing page that looks like your e-commerce site's or your payment processor’s login page, send you a message that something is wrong, and then ask you to log in to fix it. Wrongly assuming the email to be legitimate, you give them your details, which they take note of and use to log in to the actual site and perpetrate their crime.
Phishing is so common that a whopping 76% of businesses have reported being victims of a phishing attack in the past year. Research shows that the e-commerce and retail industry is the fifth most targeted, and the percentage of phishing attacks is expected to increase as more businesses move online.
Unfortunately, many e-commerce businesses are not properly prepared to deal with a phishing attack. So, it might be a good idea to learn how to identify phishing attacks and train your employees to prevent your e-commerce business from being compromised.
Spam emails are also one of the major threats to e-commerce stores and one of the main ways through which some of the attacks on this list are carried out.
In many cases, phishing and malware attacks are carried out through spam emails. Spammers also occasionally hack the email accounts of individuals or organizations you know and then use these accounts to send spam emails aimed at compromising your e-commerce store, hoping that you will believe them to be legitimate.
These emails can sometimes link to phishing sites or link to infected sites that can compromise your computer security.
A distributed denial of service attack, or DDoS attack, is an attack in which an attacker uses multiple computers to hit your server with fake traffic, making your website inaccessible or unable to function properly for legitimate users.
While many are used to hearing about sites “hacked” or compromised in a way that leads to data being exposed, very few are familiar with DDoS attacks and how damaging they can be; even the biggest e-commerce brands have fallen victim to these attacks.
There have been reports of major e-commerce platforms such as Etsy, Shopify, and PayPal suffering significant downtimes due to these attacks. Smaller e-commerce businesses are particularly at risk if measures are not taken to protect against malicious traffic.
Here are some of the ways DDoS attacks can affect your e-commerce business:
So how do you protect yourself from DDoS attacks? Here are some ideas:
SQL injections are generally regarded as the most common form of cyber attack today, and e-commerce businesses aren’t exempt.
These attacks involve hackers trying to gain access to your e-commerce site by injecting malicious SQL commands into existing scripts that your site needs to operate. Once successful, this changes how your site reads key data and allows the hacker to execute certain commands on your site or shut it down at will.
Pretty much any e-commerce site that uses an SQL database is vulnerable to an SQL attack. Methods you can use to prevent an SQL attack include using whitelists that ensure only certain people can access certain portions of your website, regularly updating your website and using the latest technology, and regularly scanning your web applications for vulnerabilities.
Hackers will sometimes take things to the next level and target the computer of a key person who has advanced-level access to an e-commerce site or target the server hosting the e-commerce site itself. When they want to do this, they often use malware.
Malware will often allow a hacker to take over your e-commerce server and execute commands as if you were the one doing so in the worst-case scenario; in the best-case scenario, they will allow hackers to gain access to data on your system/server or hijack some of your traffic. This could result in lots of lost revenue for your e-commerce business.
Credit and debit card fraud is even more insidious, and research shows it is the most common type of identity theft.
In essence, credit and debit card fraud occurs when users steal the credit card or debit card details of unsuspecting victims and then use it to make a purchase on your e-commerce store. Not knowing that the details used to purchase from you is stolen, you go ahead and release the product or service to them. When the real user learns of this fact, they request a refund or issue a chargeback to your e-commerce business.
This results in lost revenue and could potentially hurt your standing with your payment processor.
In e-commerce, MITM attacks target the communication between your device and the online store you're visiting. Hackers act as the "middleman," intercepting the data exchanged between you and the store.
This allows them to steal sensitive information like credit card details and login credentials, tamper with data, and redirect you to fraudulent sites.
Public Wi-Fi at cafes, airports, or even unsecured home networks can be breeding grounds for MitM attacks. Hackers can easily set up a fake network with a similar name, and unsuspecting users might connect to it, exposing their data.
Attackers can also use techniques to display a fake security certificate, making it appear like a legitimate HTTPS connection while intercepting data.
Brute force refers to a hacking technique that involves relentlessly trying a massive number of combinations to gain unauthorized access. Imagine a thief trying every single key on their keychain until they find the one that unlocks your door - that's the brute force approach.
E-commerce stores with access to customer financial information or administrator accounts are prime targets for brute force attacks.
The success rate of this e-commerce security threat depends on the complexity of the password being targeted. Strong passwords with a mix of uppercase and lowercase letters, numbers, and symbols take significantly longer to crack compared to weak passwords.
Bots are automated scripts that can perform various tasks online. While some bots platforms are helpful (think chatbots for customer service), malicious bots wreak havoc in the e-commerce landscape.
Bots can rapidly buy popular items before human customers get a chance, creating artificial scarcity and price hikes. They can automate login attempts using stolen usernames and passwords, trying to gain access to customer accounts. Bots can also steal product descriptions, images, and pricing information from e-commerce stores, harming competition and originality.
A supply chain attack targets an online store by exploiting vulnerabilities in the third-party tools and services it relies on. These tools and services are like behind-the-scenes helpers that make an online store function smoothly, and attackers see them as a backdoor to sneak into the system.
By exploiting this vulnerability, hackers gain a foothold in the system and potentially inject malicious code. Once inside, hackers leverage the trusted connection between the compromised system and the e-commerce platform to gain access to the target's data or functionality.
The above are some of the most common security threats an e-commerce business will face, and some of these threats were listed with accompanying solutions. However, you’ll be generally safer if you do the following five things.
Every e-commerce site should have one or more levels of encryption in place. When you think about it, pretty much every major e-commerce site you can think of (Target and eBay are some top ones that quickly come to mind) has suffered a data breach at some point. So no matter what you do, you’re still at a level of risk. As such, the first thing you should do is to make sure that data gotten from you is pretty useless should you get hacked.
While you continue to take measures to ensure you don’t suffer from a data breach, you should also make sure you properly encrypt all of your data so that the impact of a data breach on you and your users will be little or none, even if there is a data breach.
When encryption software is enabled on your e-commerce server, user data is converted from normal text into “cipher text” that can only be read once decrypted; depending on the level of encryption used, very few people are able to decrypt properly encrypted data.
Since payment is a core component of your e-commerce business, it is very important to take careful measures to ensure that your payment gateway is secure.
Many e-commerce businesses become victims of credit card and debit card fraud due to using unreliable payment gateways. Most online store builders will allow you to integrate with dozens of popular payment gateways, including PayPal, Stripe, and other enterprise gateways, so there is no excuse for not using a reliable one.
Using an SSL certificate is one of the best ways to protect yourself as an e-commerce business. When properly installed, an SSL certificate will encrypt all of the information users send on your e-commerce website and make it difficult for hackers to eavesdrop on this data or make any meaning of it should they eavesdrop on it.
Google generally ranks sites that use SSL & TLS certificate software better, and users also tend to trust e-commerce stores that use a wildcard SSL certificate. Many people would not do business with a website that doesn't use one. Besides protecting sensitive user data submitted on your website, an SSL certificate will also result in a lift in traffic and conversions.
It is also important that you and any employee who will be accessing sensitive areas of your e-commerce site use reliable antivirus software.
While antivirus software won’t necessarily protect your e-commerce site, it will protect your computer and that of those who access the backend of your e-commerce site. Good antivirus software will let you know if a hacker is trying to install a virus or malware on your computer, and advanced antivirus software will sometimes let you know if you visit a potentially harmful site or if you receive a bad link in a spam email.
If you have yet to install a firewall on your e-commerce server, you just might be waiting for disaster to happen. A firewall is a network security system that monitors traffic (both incoming and outgoing) based on security parameters you set up.
The barrier put in place by a firewall analyzes traffic to your server, determines which traffic is legitimate and which isn’t, and then only allows legitimate traffic to pass through it. In a lot of cases, a properly configured firewall will protect your e-commerce site from most DDoS attacks.
In e-commerce, tokenization replaces sensitive customer payment information, like credit card numbers, with unique identifiers called tokens. These tokens act as stand-ins for the actual data during transactions, offering enhanced security.
Tokenization streamlines the checkout process for returning customers. Since their payment information is already tokenized, they don't need to re-enter it for every purchase, making checkout faster and more convenient.
Educating your employees about cybersecurity best practices is vital. Training them to identify phishing attempts, handle customer data responsibly, and report suspicious activities strengthens your overall security posture.
Security awareness training programs educate employees about various cyber threats, best practices for secure behavior, and procedures to follow in case of suspicious activity.
Your e-commerce business is only as robust as the security systems you put in place to prevent it from being hijacked by malicious hackers. Taking steps to protect yourself from the threats outlined above will go a long way toward protecting your e-commerce business.
Security threats in e-commerce are one of the many obstacles that online businesses must navigate. Learn how to overcome the top e-commerce challenges in 2024.
This article was originally published in 2020. It has been updated with new information.
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