Online businesses are prone to frauds. If you run an online business then it is very important for you to understand cybersecurity risks and protect yourself and your customers form such frauds. According to Payza founder Firoz Patel, complaints most commonly received by online businesses are related to frauds like phishing, hacking and fraudulent transactions.
Even as businesses allocate more budgets for security and ramp up their defences against online frauds, cyber criminals are very creative in terms of coming up with new ways to carry out business fraud. There many different ways in which online fraud can be committed and they can be categorised into two main types:
Account Takeover
Today, almost all ecommerce stores offer an account to their customers to store their personal information and financial data. This helps the customers to quickly get started the next time they visit the site. It also helps the site to keep track of their customers. Fraudsters typically use phishing to get hold of this account information. They usually send an email to unsuspecting customers and trick them into revealing their username and password. They then use this information to get access to the user’s account. Payza has a dedicated blog that helps users understand how to safeguard their account information.
Identity Theft
All businesses store customer information in databases. Fraudsters hack into these databases and steal customer information such as username, password and credit card details. They sell stolen credit card numbers to scammers who then use it make unauthorized purchases.
To protect businesses from frauds the Payment Card Industry Security Standard Council has developed a set of best practices to safeguard customer data. In addition to online retailers, payment processors also completely handle PCI compliance.
What Can Businesses Do?
To avoid fraud, customers are advised to frequently monitor their accounts and transactions for any inconsistent billing or incomplete shipping information. Businesses can also use tools to track IP address of customers and check if they are from countries known as a base for fraudsters. They can also check if customers are using free or paid email service as the chances of fraud via a free service are higher than paid services. Another option is to put a limit on the number of purchases or the total value of money that is accepted from an account per day. All these precautions can go a long way in preventing online business fraud.
Payza Frauds 