Online retailers face perpetual cybersecurity threats; this is the reality of our highly digital, data-driven world where those threats grow more sophisticated by the day. By understanding the outcomes of potential threats, you can better protect against them. And, if the worst happens and a threat becomes a full-fledged breach, you’re prepared to respond swiftly, resulting in a less severe impact to your business.
Understanding the risks to eCommerce security
To plan for different outcomes, you first need to know what data is at risk and how it could be threatened.
What sensitive information do online retailers collect?
Credit card and payment information is the most common type of sensitive data cyberattackers seek from eCommerce businesses. Email addresses, home addresses and — if the site allows users to create accounts — passwords are also at risk of being used maliciously.
What are common eCommerce security issues?
Accidents caused by human error that would allow unauthorized access to your data or intentional approaches, such as phishing scams, SQL injections and distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks all threaten eCommerce security. Knowing how these events could occur, as well as their outcomes, is an important first step in fortifying your data.
eCommerce security threat outcomes to plan for
To determine the best methods of data security threat prevention, you need to know how to answer the questions you’d ask yourself if one were to manifest. Finding those answers begins with having eyes on all your data, accurately organizing it, and ensuring it’s regularly cleaned and secured.
Did an eCommerce security threat occur?
If you were to detect some abnormal activity in your data, the first question you’d ask is whether a threat is responsible. It’s possible that, without knowing where your data lives and actively monitoring it, you won’t have a clear answer to this. Data discovery can properly identify all the sensitive information you have and show you where to find it. From there, data remediation will actively clean and monitor it, as well as alert you in case suspicious activity is detected. You could even self-threaten by unknowingly possessing dirty data, but with discovery and remediation, it can be identified, located, and eradicated.
Once it’s been determined that a threat occurred, it’s important to determine what kind it was. Because data can be breached through all sorts of avenues, the answer would shed light on vulnerabilities so you know where to beef up security.
How was data affected by the threat?
What will it mean for your business if a threat results in lost, stolen, or corrupted data? Nothing good. But, to prevent things going from bad to worse, start regularly backing up your data and storing it in a separate but still highly secure location so it can be easily restored. You’ll also want to implement a proper data labeling and classification process, as it’s integral to data loss prevention. Properly classified data better facilitates remediation so it can be more accurately cleaned and monitored.
How much data was impacted?
If a breach were to occur, you need to be able to accurately report the amount of data that was compromised. That’s virtually impossible to know without first discovering, classifying and remedying it. In the case of a compromise, you’d have clear visibility into everything affected so you can be nimble with your response. By implementing these tools proactively for threat protection, you’d have that visibility to know what to secure from the start.
Who did the data belong to?
Data security threats must be publicly disclosed so anyone affected can be vigilant about their personal information being misused. In addition, the event has to be disclosed in a timely manner. Even if your eCommerce site experienced a cyberthreat that stole customers’ payment data, they could still potentially prevent fraudulent activity with proper notice. Banks and credit card companies have made it possible to lock a card’s ability to be used from a mobile app, which is another reason that it’s important to notify customers in time.
Data discovery, classification and remediation are what make timeliness possible. All of your data can be actively monitored, so the minute something goes awry, you’ll be notified and can take action.
Security starts with discovery, classification and remediation
Now that you know how to respond to eCommerce security threats, you’re better prepared to prevent them from happening at all. Spirion’s Sensitive Data Platform automates discovery, classification and remediation to protect your eCommerce business from the ever-increasing risk of cyberthreats. Bolster your sensitive data’s security with Spiron. Contact us today.
