We are living in a world that relies on digitization. Everything we do is online these days and even the most popular brick and mortar businesses are still in the process of migrating their businesses online rather than staying on the high street. They are looking at where their customers are and taking it on board; and that means opening a website and moving online. The only problem with being a business that concentrates on being online is that the digital world is a risk. There are cyber criminals everywhere and that means you have a constant fight to keep your website and your customers and clients safe.
Being online means being able to fulfill customer needs at the click of a button, but if you aren’t protecting yourself and your business, you’ll find that being online can be a dangerous prospect. You have to do all that you can to protect your customer information because while you may have seen the constant stream of high profile customer information breaches, you never think it’ll be you that gets affected!
The good news is that there are plenty of ways that you can keep your customers safe from ecommerce fraud and whether you choose to use commercial surety bonds or you are investing more in your CCTV, you have to make sure that your customers are safe. Your online store – your business – deserves this level of attention so that you can have the outcome you really want.
So, how can you prevent ecommerce fraud from taking over?
Let’s take a look!
- You should do some research as to the right platforms. You need to have the right, best supported ecommerce platform out there so that you can build your online store from scratch. You can then switch to any upgrades that positively affect functionality of the store you already have. When you choose the right web platform, you have a crucial box ticked in your puzzle! You want to make sure that you do the right research into what will be a safe and supported website, and you shouldn’t settle for anything less than the best for your ecommerce business.
- Audit regularly. You need your website to pop and the best way to do that is to make sure that you can keep up with the design. More than that, though, you need regular website security audits so that you can detect any security flaws before your customers suffer for them. For a positive website audit, you should ensure that you have an updated SSL certificate, your cart software is upgraded and you have a website that is PCI-DSS compliant.
- Maintain compliance. When it comes to compliance, businesses have a lot of rules. You have to ensure that you achieve and maintain compliance as there is an information security standard to uphold. It’s there to protect your users and their data so it’s vital then that you keep up to date with the most basic security measures, which can include ensuring the use of a firewall, updating the passwords on your system and keeping your customer information well stored. You don’t want your business in the headlines for anything other than positive stories; not data leaks!
- Make sure that you have a warning system. You cannot be in front of your website 24/7, which means you need an alert system to let you know that there has been suspicious activity. Online stores often have to take extra steps to prevent fraud and system alerts are one of those things. If you have these system alerts in place you can be notified when something goes wrong.
- Don’t store the sensitive data. Did you know that PCI compliance prevents your business from storing valuable customer information? Most business leaders aren’t aware of that fact and it’s something that can trip them up. You cannot store CVV2 codes and credit card numbers if you are a PCI compliant business. People cannot steal what isn’t there, so as long as you are compliant your business should be protected.
- Encourage strong passwords. From your customers, your employees and your management team, you need to encourage good, strong passwords so that they are enough to trick hackers so that they don’t have access to sensitive information. Passwords across your entire business have to be set in a way that makes hacking less of a possibility. The only way you can protect your business is to ensure that this is what you do – especially online!
