How to Secure your E-Commerce Business with Endpoint Protection

Every day, we hear about more hacks, new cyberthreats, and increasingly harmful ransomware attacks. It's enough to make you wonder: What are the risks to my e-commerce business?

While there are a wide variety of cybersecurity solutions out there, many e-commerce businesses may not be aware of how essential endpoint protection is for them, and why. Here are three key instances when your data is most vulnerable and your business needs endpoint protection:

1. Anytime You Transfer Data

With the rise in popularity of e-commerce, online companies like yours frequently process a wealth of sensitive personally-identifiable information (PII) that belongs to customers, such as their names, social security numbers, dates of birth, billing addresses, email addresses, and credit card data, all in order to sell products on digital platforms.

While some environments are relatively secure for transferring PII data, such as when you work only on a secure e-commerce platform, others are not — for example, when you transfer PII data between your remote office hard drives or with any third party (such as payment processors like PayPal, email marketers like MailChimp, and ad services like Google).

Unfortunately, even traditionally secure websites are not immune to cyberattacks. Experts in e-commerce security have reported an uptick in attacks that use malicious code to exploit security holes.

For example, cybersecurity experts Malwarebytes recently discovered that Tupperware.com, which boasts an average of one million monthly visits, was compromised by web skimmers that reprogrammed the site with a malicious code to launch a fake payment details iframe. Fraudsters stole sensitive customer data of unaware shoppers with this credit card skimmer attack. Often, such stolen information is sold on the dark web.

It's also a mistake to rely on API (application programming interface) security alone, as it's vulnerable to denial-of-service attacks, code injections, reverse engineering, spoofing, and social engineering. In the face of all these risks, your e-commerce company must adopt industry-leading endpoint protection security to protect your customers and keep your small business safe.

2. While Your Team Is Working From Home

According Malwarebytes' recent Enduring from Home report, which surveyed hundreds of American IT and cybersecurity professionals, 24% of organizations paid unexpected expenses to address cybersecurity breaches, while 20% faced security breaches because of remote workers.

Remote workforces are usually more susceptible to network breaches because they typically lack the following:

Corporate VPNs and access to secured Wi-Fi
Comprehensive, layered security solutions
Secure business email
Training in remote working security practices
Endpoint protection

Mistakes made by your remote workforce such as using weak passwords, oversharing information on social media, clicking malicious links from phishing attacks, and using unsecured Internet connections while sharing sensitive data can lead to several costly issues:

Theft of customer data resulting in loss of business and client confidence
Ransomware attacks that cripple your systems causing expensive downtime
Spyware attacks that result in intellectual property theft

3. Passing Data Between Platforms to Perform Business Tasks

When you transfer data between platforms, you need endpoint security to protect it, especially when exporting data to make bulk adjustments or segmenting and retargeting customer data.

A typical example of this is when there is a customer segmentation event like a Black Friday / Cyber Monday sale. Your company needs to adjust the sale price of certain items on a platform such as Shopify, WooCommerce, Squarespace, or Magento. To do this, your staff will download the bulk data into a pivot table on a desktop hard drive in order to make bulk adjustments to maximize retargeting on social media platforms such as Facebook.

Customer data is secure on platforms like Shopify and Facebook, but this data can be exposed to potential attack at the mid-point, when it is stored on a local company hard drive or shared between staff — that is, if you don't have proper end-point protection.

An Endpoint Solution Your Business Can Rely on

To ensure that you're proactively protected from the vulnerabilities outlined above, you need endpoint protection with the following characteristics:

A simplified and standalone installation process
Proactive threat blocking with cutting-edge, AI-powered technology that thwarts virus, spyware, malware, and ransomware attacks
An intuitive and user-friendly user interface that delivers real-time updates across your network
Multi-faceted protection with layers such as web protection, application hardening, exploit mitigation, payload analysis, and ransomware mitigation
Comprehensive business support on email, phone, or chat

As cyber criminals grow bolder and more sophisticated with their attacks on your small or mid-size e-commerce business's remote workforce, your company must adopt the right security solutions to thrive in an increasingly competitive space.