[BreachExchange] Make Sure Your Network Security Is Ready for the Holiday Shopping Season

[Inga Goddijn]

https://securityboulevard.com/2018/11/make-sure-your-network-security-is-ready-for-the-holiday-shopping-season/

The holiday shopping season kicks off tomorrow. There will be a notable
spike in holiday shopping as people across the country rush to take
advantage of the deals and bargains available on Black Friday
<https://techspective.net/2013/11/27/do-your-homework-before-buying-a-new-smartphone-this-black-friday/>
and Cyber Monday
<https://techspective.net/2013/12/03/the-12-scams-of-christmas/>. For
retailers, it is a double-edged sword, though. It is a fabulous time of
year for sales and revenue, but unfortunately it comes with a significant
increase in risk and challenges for cybersecurity as well.

Cybercriminals know how to exploit the holiday shopping season to increase
their own revenue as well. The dramatic spike in online traffic and sales
makes it easier to blend in undetected. At the same time, many employees
are off for the holiday and tend to take more vacation time through
December to spend time with family, which means that even if a security and
fraud detection system is in place, it will take DevOps and security
engineers that much longer to analyze the alerts and decide if they present
a real threat.

There are automated tools to detect and block suspicious or malicious
activity, but retailers can’t afford to block every IP address that might
be flagged as a potential problem. Most detection systems are highly
inaccurate, and the transaction may actually be legitimate. In addition,
shoppers coming from mobile devices may be sharing an IP address for many
of the users in the same areas, which means that blocking that specific IP
address may also block access to dozens—if not hundreds—of other shoppers.
A cyber attack is bad but blocking or rejecting a legitimate transaction is
as bad or worse.

“Web applications and ecommerce sites are at risk of cyber attack year
round,” stressed Ivan Novikov, CEO of Wallarm. “However, the risk increases
significantly during the holiday shopping. Overwhelming network demand and
the focus on maximizing sales make it more challenging for organizations to
effectively detect, identify and stop attacks.”

What can retailers do to effectively protect against these threats? Here
are four things to do to prepare for the holiday shopping season:
1. Audit

Conduct a security audit of all your systems where customers will shop and
transact and where ecommerce stores are implemented ahead of the Black
Friday and Cyber Monday rush. Make sure your platforms such as WordPress,
Joomla, and Drupal—as well as any and all containers under them—are fully
patched.
2. Verify

Verify configuration of external services and APIs—especially for
third-party payment services like Stripe and Braintree. It is very easy to
misconfigure authentication and data protection settings.
3. Automate

Most ecommerce attacks are driven by hijacking legitimate accounts—either
through phishing attacks, or by guessing passwords or substituting a
password from one of the known caches of stolen passwords available on the
dark web. Legitimate accounts have established patterns of access and usage
and there are automated tools, such as Wallarm <https://wallarm.com/>, to
detect anomalous activity and protect against behavioral attacks like that.
4. Filter

Suspicious or malicious activity is almost constantly present. There will
be even more on Black Friday and Cyber Monday, but you can’t treat it all
the same. It’s crucial to filter the attacks by risk to resolve issues most
effectively. In situations where hackers become more active and DevOps
resources are limited, it is important to focus the attention on the
attacks that either have the higher potential impact or specifically target
your sensitive or important assets. You can prepare to evaluate the risk of
attacks in advance either by deploying cybersecurity tools that classify
the risk of attacks or creating scripts that can help highlight attacks
that are of the more critical nature.

Black Friday
<https://techspective.net/2016/11/22/8-best-practices-cyber-security-black-friday-cyber-monday/>
and Cyber Monday will bring a dramatic spike in sales and revenue, and a
massive increase in cyber attacks as well. If you follow the tips here and
prepare your network security, you can get some peace of mind, enjoy the
holiday season and spend time with your family too.
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