Today we are talking security, which is something that we are all familiar with, the house alarm, the car immobilizer, passwords and key cards but how seriously do we take our online security? especially when it comes to our stores?
In our last blog CYBERCRIME 101 - WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW! we looked briefly at the damage and cost of cybercrime on both a global and local scale and learned that even though there is no definitive number or tracking organisation, the financial cost of cyberattacks is incredibly high.
In this blog, we will answer the question ...
Ultimately it boils down to two reasons.
Firstly to protect any and all information given to you by your clients/customers and secondly to protect you and the reputation of your business.
Just take a moment to think about how much information your customers and clients give you when they buy your product, Name, D.O.B., bank details, home address, email address and maybe more. Now ask yourself, would you give that information to a random stranger? No, of course not! However that is exactly what your customers are doing, they are trusting you with their personal, private information because you say you need it.
As a store owner, it is your responsibility to protect any and all data given to you by your customers and to provide a safe, secure shopping experience. Things like identity theft and monetary loss are just two examples of the very real threats facing customers who shop online with unsecured sites, and did you know that even if you don't directly process a customers payments, your unsecured site can still be manipulated to redirect a customer to a fake payment page or allow an order to be changed before the payment is fully processed?
Of course, while the primary reason for online security is to protect your customers, it is also there to protect you. A breach in security can lead to the cost of hiring in experts to fix issues, loss of faith and in some cases revoked privileges in the business community, loss of stock, the outright destruction of a company or an individual's public reputation and worst-case scenario is all of the above and the closure of your business.
But maybe you're reading this and thinking
"It's OK, I have an IT team that takes care of all of this stuff for me" or
"Things like this only ever happen to huge corporations, it would never happen to my business"
Well ... last year just under 55% of small to medium businesses were victims of a cyberattack, if you weren't part of that 55% last year then chances are you already are or are going to be part of this year's statistic! Around 70% of all cyberattacks target small businesses and it is estimated that 60% of small businesses go out of business within a few months due to the financial cost of dealing with and trying to recover from a cyberattack.
Thomas Koulopoulos, founder of the Delphi Groups says
"It's going to happen to you and if the prevailing attitude at your company is that it won't then you're playing with fire. In my consulting and the graduate courses I teach on Cybersecurity at Boston University what I have found to be most frightening is the lack of awareness about the magnitude of the cyber threat and the complacency towards being proactive in managing the risk, especially among small businesses."
The unfortunate reality is that all online stores and businesses are tempting and attractive targets to anyone looking to hack, steal and manipulate the personal data of clients and customers and the uneasy truth is that hackers just don't care about how that will affect your customers, your business or you and your families.
Now hackers might not care about you and your customers but Magento do!
While it is important to remember that there is no 100% guaranteed way to eliminate all security risks, Magento comes with an incredible array of security options to help you get as close to that number as possible.
Over the next month, we will be looking at some of the most common types of cyberattacks and giving you some hints and tips on what to look out for and some simple, effective things that you can do to help secure your business. Please note that this will not be a full, extensive rundown of everything that Magento allows you to do to secure your store, rather a starting point of things that you can do to build a strong defence against attack.
With the level of threat and cost of cybersecurity rocketing every year, we cannot stress enough the need for effective security measures to be in place because the question you should be asking yourself as a store/business owner is not "will I and my company be a victim of a cyberattack?" rather "How will I and my company respond to it when we are?"
If you have any questions or comments about cybersecurity, about this or any of our other blogs or about Magento in general please don't hesitate to contact us using the details below.
Until next time, stay safe and have a great day.
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