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.

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.

For Years, Yahoo Put Usability Ahead of Cyber Security

The massive Yahoo data breach, which compromised 500 million user accounts and has put its planned acquisition by Verizon at risk, happened because the company repeatedly put product user experience ahead of security, the New York Times reports:

Six years ago, Yahoo’s computer systems and customer email accounts were penetrated by Chinese military hackers. Google and a number of other technology companies were also hit.

The Google co-founder Sergey Brin regarded the attack on his company’s systems as a personal affront and responded by making security a top corporate priority. Google hired hundreds of security engineers with six-figure signing bonuses, invested hundreds of millions of dollars in security infrastructure and adopted a new internal motto, “Never again,” to signal that it would never again allow anyone — be they spies or criminals — to hack into Google customers’ accounts.

Yahoo, on the other hand, was slower to invest in the kinds of defenses necessary to thwart sophisticated hackers that are now considered standard in Silicon Valley, according to half a dozen current and former company employees who participated in security discussions but agreed to describe them only on the condition of anonymity.

The Times goes on to describe how CEO Marissa Mayer, after having taken over the troubled search engine in 2012, decided to focus Yahoo’s efforts on developing new products and creating better user experiences for existing products such as Yahoo Mail. Even though Mayer was aware of multiple information security issues, those took a back seat. Yahoo’s internal security staff, including former CISO Alex Stamos, warned Mayer about security vulnerabilities but found their efforts stymied due to “concerns that the inconvenience of added protection would make people stop using the company’s products.” Mayer cut the team’s budget and refused to approve the proactive cyber security initiatives Stamos pushed for, including end-to-end encryption, intrusion-detection mechanisms, and automatic resets of passwords on accounts that had been compromised. Even now, Mayer is still declining automatic password resets for the accounts compromised during this most recent breach – again, all in the name of not inconveniencing users.

Cyber Security vs. the User Experience

It’s common for tech companies to worry about how information security measures will affect the user experience. Often, developers must sacrifice speed and ease of use for a more secure product, and, while the majority of Americans claim to be highly concerned about data breaches, fickle customers may resist or become frustrated over security measures. A recent study found that one-third of Americans engage in risky behaviors to remember online passwords, and an ethnographic study of healthcare workers found widespread, flagrant disregard of cyber security practices in hospital settings.

While these are valid concerns, the answer is not to simply release unsecured products and hope for the best, as Yahoo apparently did. The burden of protecting customer data does not lie solely on software developers and data storage companies, and it cannot. The overwhelming majority of data breaches occur not as the result of external hacking but because hackers obtain legitimate login credentials, usually through social engineering schemes such as phishing. Manufacturers must build proactive security measures, such as multi-factor authentication, into their products, and get their customers accustomed to using them, even if the features are inconvenient or frustrating. The cost of a data breach is much higher than the cost of customer frustration, to both the breached company and the compromised customers.

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.