Key security threats

The most common and most damaging forms of security threats to e-commerce sites include:

• Malicious code
           viruses, worms, Trojan horses, ransomware, and bot networks are a threat to a system’s integrity and continued operation, often changing how a system functions or altering documents created on the system.

• Potentially unwanted programs (adware, spyware, etc.)
            A kind of security threat that arises when programs are surreptitiously installed on your computer or computer network without your consent.

• Phishing 
           Any deceptive, online attempt by a third party to obtain confidential information for financial gain.

• Hacking and cybervandalism
            Intentionally disrupting, defacing, or even destroying a site.

• Credit card fraud/theft
          One of the most-feared occurrences and one of the main reasons more consumers do not participate in e-commerce. The most common cause of credit card fraud is a lost or stolen card that is used by someone else, followed by employee theft of customer numbers and stolen identities (criminals applying for credit cards using false identities).

• Spoofing
Occurs when hackers attempt to hide their true identities or misrepresent themselves by using fake e-mail addresses or masquerading as someone else.

• Pharming
            Involves redirecting a Web link to an address different from the intended one, with the site masquerading as the intended destination.

• Identity fraud
            Involves the unauthorized use of another person’s personal data, such as social security, driver’s license, and/or credit card numbers, as well as user names and passwords, for illegal financial benefit.

• Denial of Service and Distributed Denial of Service  attacks
           Hackers flood a Web site with useless traffic to inundate and overwhelm the network, frequently causing it to shut down and damaging a site’s reputation and customer relationships.

Sniffing
          A type of eavesdropping program that monitors information traveling over a network, enabling hackers to steal proprietary information from anywhere on a network, including e-mail messages, company files, and confidential reports. The threat of sniffing is that confidential or personal information will be made public.

• Insider jobs
             Although the bulk of Internet security efforts are focused on keeping outsiders out, the biggest threat is from employees who have access to sensitive information and procedures.

• Poorly designed server and client software
            The increase in complexity and size of software programs has contributed to an increase in software flaws or vulnerabilities that hackers can exploit.

• Social network security issues
             Malicious code, PUPs, phishing, data breaches, identity fraud, and other e-commerce security threats have all infiltrated social networks.

• Mobile platform security issues
             The mobile platform presents an alluring target for hackers and cybercriminals, and faces all the same risks as other Internet devices, as well as new risks associated with wireless network security.

• Cloud security issues
            As devices, identities, and data become more and more intertwined in the cloud, safeguarding data in the cloud becomes a major concern.