Cyberthreats and criminal activity surge around Black Friday and Cyber Monday. With a massive increase in online transactions, cybercriminals see more opportunities to strike. As a retailer, it’s essential to stay vigilant and protect both your data and your customers’. Failing to do so could lead to serious financial losses and damage to your reputation.
To help your retail company stay safe this shopping season, here is a brief guide to Black Friday and Cyber Monday cyberthreats and what you can do about them.
Top Black Friday and Cyber Monday cyberthreats
Cyberthreats during this time of year take many forms, each requiring targeted solutions to address.
Phishing emails
Phishing continues to be one of the preferred tactics of cybercriminals. Hackers often pose as retailers like you, attempting to trick customers and employees into sharing passwords, credit card details, and other sensitive information. These phishing emails may include:
- Fake deals and promotions to lure victims to scam sites filled with malware
- Notifications of fake problems with orders to get customers to re-enter their credit card details
- False claims of available refunds or prizes that require login credentials to accept
- Fabricated communications from business partners or customers designed to steal sensitive information from your company
How can retailers fight phishing emails?
- Send warning emails to your customer mailing list that tell them how to spot a legitimate email from your company.
- Implement email filtering and encryption tools to secure your inboxes.
- Train your employees to spot and report suspicious emails.
Web skimming
In addition to traditional malware and newer threats such as ransomware, web skimming also sees a huge uptick around Cyber Monday. Web skimming is when hackers secretly add malicious code to your website or eCommerce platform to capture customers’ credit card details and other private information. When customers enter their information to make a purchase, the web skimming code sends a copy to cybercriminals, who can then use it for unauthorized purchases or identity theft.
How can retailers fight web skimming?
- Do a comprehensive cybersecurity audit of your website, apps, and eCommerce platform to check for vulnerabilities and address them.
- Do a dark web scan to see if information from your site has been compromised.
- Be sure that all of your website’s tools, plug-ins, and security features are fully up to date.
Ransomware
Speaking of ransomware, it hasn’t gone anywhere. This type of attack locks you out of essential data until a ransom is paid — though even then, some cybercriminals may destroy or keep the data locked. During the shopping season, hackers believe the pressure to restore operations quickly at such a profitable time only increases the likelihood of their ransoms being met. Furthermore, retail companies are especially vulnerable during Black Friday and Cyber Monday, when high traffic and demand can reduce staff vigilance and strain IT resources.
How can retailers fight ransomware?
- Implement comprehensive data backups and disaster recovery solutions. If attackers lock access to your data, you can just switch to the backups.
- Train your employees on how to spot intrusion attempts and emails carrying ransomware, as the latter are still the primary delivery method of ransomware attacks.
- Keep all of your security tools updated and upgraded to the newest versions so they can detect the newest kinds of ransomware.
Scale up your cybersecurity along with your operations
As retailers scale up resources and operations to meet demand, cybersecurity must remain a priority. Cybercriminals are also ramping up their efforts, so enhanced security measures are essential to avoid ending up in the red this shopping season.
If you need guidance on how to beef up your cyber defenses for Black Friday and Cyber Monday, contact Liberty Center One. In addition to hosting your online shopping platform on our flexible One Cloud services, we can help you secure it with our data protection solutions.