Online shopping is booming, but customers will shun e-commerce if they do not feel their data is secure.

Just as “Video Killed the Radio Star,” e-commerce is making shopping malls go the way of the horse and buggy. In 2016, consumers reported making 51% of their purchases online, up from 48% in 2015 and 47% in 2014. Meanwhile, real estate experts estimate that large brick-and-mortar department stores need to eliminate about 1/5 of their current footprint in malls just to return to the same levels of productivity they enjoyed a decade ago.

Consumers love the convenience and cost savings of ordering items online and having their purchases shipped to their door, but they will quickly sour on an e-commerce site if they feel their credit card information and personal data are not safe. Following are five tips for keeping your e-commerce store safe from hackers during the holiday season and throughout the year.

1. Make sure your e-commerce store is PCI DSS compliant.

While PCI DSS compliance alone does not equate to a comprehensive e-commerce cyber security, being compliant with PCI DSS is the first step – and it’s required by major card issuers. Additionally, some states have laws that refer to PCI DSS explicitly or contain equivalent mandated standards. If you are breached, and it turns out that your e-commerce store was not PCI DSS compliant, your store may be found in violation of your state’s laws regarding data privacy, and the credit card companies that mandate PCI DSS could impose fines on your organization amounting to tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars. If you are unable to pay the fines, you will no longer be able to accept their cards. Plus, your customers’ data will have been breached, which could result in civil lawsuits and massive damage to your store’s reputation.

2. Make sure all of your hardware and software is up to date.

Antivirus and antimalware software should be updated regularly, and any manufacturer updates or patches to your operating system and other software used in your business should be downloaded and installed as soon as possible; they often include important security patches addressing newly discovered threats.

3. Make sure all of your employees, including temps, are trained in cyber security best practices.

The weakest link in any business’ cyber security plan is its people. The overwhelming majority of data breaches occur after hackers obtain legitimate login credentials, often through social engineering schemes such as phishing emails. Make sure all of your e-commerce store’s employees, including seasonal workers, are trained in cyber security best practices, such as how to spot phishing emails and why they should never send personal data through unsecured email, share their passwords or leave them out in the open, or log in to the network on an unsecured device or connection.

4. Create a culture of “if you see something, say something” regarding e-commerce cyber security.

Employees, especially seasonal workers, want to please their bosses, and this is something hackers take advantage of through schemes such as “spear phishing,” where hackers send what looks like a legitimate email from the business owner or a c-level executive to a low-level employee, requesting sensitive information such as system login credentials or e-commerce customer data. Employees should be instructed to report all suspicious emails or any other activity that just doesn’t seem right – even if they think “it’s probably nothing” – to a supervisor.

5. Place appropriate restrictions on employee’s system access.

E-commerce employees, especially temporary workers, should be given the minimum level of system access they need to perform their jobs, and no more. If at all possible, limit access to your most sensitive data – such as customer payment information and employee tax data – to full-time, year-round employees. The reasoning is that full-timers have a track record with your company, have far more experience with cyber security best practices than your temps, and probably underwent a more extensive background check as well.

The cyber security experts at Lazarus Alliance have deep knowledge of the cyber security field, are continually monitoring the latest information security threats, and are committed to protecting organizations of all sizes from security breaches. We offer full-service risk assessment services and Continuum GRC software to protect companies from data breaches, ransomware attacks, and other cyber threats.

Lazarus Alliance is proactive cyber security®. Call 1-888-896-7580 to discuss your organization’s cyber security needs and find out how we can help your organization secure your systems.

What will the state of cyber security look like under the Donald Trump administration?

The election is over, the votes have been counted, and thankfully, other than a few isolated reports of malfunctioning voting machines, Election Night was unremarkable from a cyber security perspective. Now, it’s time to turn our attention to President Elect Donald Trump and what a Trump Administration will mean for cyber security in the U.S.

Donald Trump’s Official Stance on Cyber Security

Cyber security is the only tech-related topic Trump addresses directly on his official website. At this point, his plan has four main points:

• Appoint a “Cyber Review Team” composed of “individuals from the military, law enforcement, and the private sector” to perform “an immediate review of all U.S. cyber defenses and vulnerabilities, including critical infrastructure” and “provide specific recommendations for safeguarding different entities with the best defense technologies tailored to the likely threats.” The Cyber Review Team will also be tasked with establishing protocols and setting up “mandatory cyber awareness training” for government employees.
• “Instruct the U.S. Department of Justice to create Joint Task Forces throughout the U.S. to coordinate Federal, State, and local law enforcement responses to cyber threats.”
• “Order the Secretary of Defense and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to provide recommendations for enhancing U.S. Cyber Command, with a focus on both offense and defense in the cyber domain.”
• “Develop the offensive cyber capabilities we need to deter attacks by both state and non-state actors and, if necessary, to respond appropriately.”

Much like HIPAA, Trump’s plan focuses on procedural generalities as opposed to technical specifics. However, this is to be expected of a presidential candidate who comes from a business background, not a tech background. The positive thing about the plan is its focus on taking proactive measures to prevent attacks, not just responding to them after they occur.

What to watch out for: Who Trump appoints to his Cyber Review Team. President Elect Trump should seek out experienced cyber security professionals with deep knowledge of the industry and the issues to hammer out the technical details of his plan.

The End of the H-1B Visa?

As a candidate, Trump famously took a hardline stance on immigration, including an initial pledge to eliminate the H-1B visa program that is heavily used by the tech industry. This has alarmed many tech employers, who claim that the H-1B is necessary because there is a shortage of qualified IT workers in the U.S., and that without being able to import talent from overseas, critical positions would go unfilled. This is an important issue in the cyber security field, which faces a severe skills shortage; there are approximately 200,000 unfilled cyber security jobs in the U.S., and demand is expected to increase by 53% by 2018.

However, it is important to note that Trump softened his stance on the H-1B at a Republican debate in March, claiming, “I’m changing. I’m changing. We need highly skilled people in this country.” Additionally, since his election, he has backed off from his initial zero-tolerance immigration stance overall.

What to watch out for: Whether Trump will abolish the H-1B is debatable. As a businessman, he used it to hire foreign workers, and his wife, soon-to-be-First-Lady Melania Trump, came to America on an H-1B. However, it is likely that Trump will make some changes to the H-1B program, and it is up to cyber security companies to ensure that our voices are heard as he makes decisions on this issue.

Cyber Security as Part of National Security

Throughout his campaign, Donald Trump referred to cyber security in the context of national security. At a debate against Hillary Clinton in September, he spoke of the gravity of the threat of foreign cyber terrorism against the U.S.:

…when you look at what ISIS is doing with the Internet, they’re beating us at our own game. ISIS.

So we have to get very, very tough on cyber and cyber warfare. It is — it is a huge problem. I have a son. He’s 10 years old. He has computers. He is so good with these computers, it’s unbelievable. The security aspect of cyber is very, very tough. And maybe it’s hardly doable.

But I will say, we are not doing the job we should be doing. But that’s true throughout our whole governmental society. We have so many things that we have to do better, Lester, and certainly cyber is one of them.

What to watch out for: It is possible that a Trump Administration will increase spending on cyber security at the federal level and impose more stringent requirements on state and local governments. Since the number and severity of data breaches and ransomware attacks are intensifying, these would be welcome changes.

The cyber security experts at Lazarus Alliance have deep knowledge of the cyber security field, are continually monitoring the latest information security threats, and are committed to protecting organizations of all sizes from security breaches. We offer full-service risk assessment services and Continuum GRC software to protect companies from data breaches, ransomware attacks, and other cyber threats.

Lazarus Alliance is proactive cyber security®. Call 1-888-896-7580 to discuss your organization’s cyber security needs and find out how we can help your organization secure your systems.

IoT manufacturers should take heed from the recent Mirai DDoS attacks.

Recently, a widespread attack on Dyn’s DNS “Managed DNS” infrastructure wreaked havoc across the internet and brought down a number of major websites, including PayPal, Twitter, Amazon, Netflix, GitHub, and Reddit. Instead of going after the sites directly, Mirai targeted the web’s domain name system (DNS), which acts as an “address book” that matches common domain names, such as Amazon.com, with their corresponding DNS addresses, which are what browsers use to locate the site’s web server and load its content. The source of the attack was an open source malware strain called Mirai, which works by infecting vulnerable IoT devices, such as routers, printers, webcams, even DVRs.

How does Mirai infect IoT devices?

The Mirai malware takes advantage of a very serious vulnerability in IoT devices: the fact that most users do not change the default passwords their devices are shipped with, either because they don’t know how, they don’t realize the importance of doing so, or both. In some cases, the login credentials may be encoded in the device’s firmware, making it difficult or impossible for end users to change them. Meanwhile, manufacturer default passwords are widely available online. There are 68 user name and password combinations in the Mirai botnet source code, many of which are used for multiple IoT devices made by the same manufacturers. Therefore, just one set of credentials could allow a hacker to access hundreds, possibly thousands of devices.

Hackers use Mirai to scan the internet for specific devices, then attempt to access them using their manufacturer default credentials. Once hackers access a device, they turn it into a “zombie” – often without the device’s owner even realizing it. Once a large number of “zombie” devices have been amassed, they are used to flood specific web servers with so many junk requests that they slow to a crawl or crash.

IoT Manufacturers Have Been Put on Notice

Cyber security issues have plagued the IoT industry for years, and as these devices proliferate, cyber attacks that involve connected devices are becoming more frequent and more serious. Yet, as discussed in a previous blog, only 10% of organizations have a cyber security plan to address the Internet of Things, and 68% have no methods for testing IoT devices. Meanwhile, nearly 60% of consumers report being “very” or “highly concerned” about IoT security.

As a result of the Mirai malware attack, Chinese manufacturer Hangzhou Xiongmai voluntarily recalled its home webcams, and it’s possible that we’ll see more recalls if and when Mirai rears its head again. Of course, IoT manufacturers could and must take proactive steps to prevent these sorts of attacks in the first place. IoT devices should be configured to require users to change the default credentials the first time they log in, preferably to a strong password, and manufacturers should never hard-code credentials into a device’s firmware.

Unfortunately, the Mirai malware isn’t going anywhere, and if IoT manufacturers do not step up to the plate, it could be altered for use in even more insidious attacks in the future.

The cyber security experts at Lazarus Alliance have deep knowledge of the cyber security field, are continually monitoring the latest information security threats, and are committed to protecting organizations of all sizes from security breaches. We offer full-service risk assessment services and Continuum GRC software to protect companies from data breaches, ransomware attacks, and other cyber threats.

Lazarus Alliance is proactive cyber security®. Call 1-888-896-7580 to discuss your organization’s cyber security needs and find out how we can help your organization secure your systems.