Tis the season for shopping, travel, food, and family. Unlike holiday seasons of past, planning and performing these activities will involve the web. Booking travel online. Searching for great buys, and purchasing gifts for your family, friends, and clients. Discovering the best recipes and party ideas to ensure your holiday gathering is memorable. When you sit back to think about it, eCommerce is infiltrating our shopping lives, and for good reason.
- eCommerce websites never close.
- You can easily compare prices from multiple sellers.
- No lines, crowded parking lots, or germs (H1N1).
All these benefits mean more and more people (of all ages and economic conditions) will be shopping online during the holidays in 2009 – enough to generate an estimated $156 Billion in sales. (Online shopping represents 36% of sales expected from all channels this winter according to the National Retail Federation.)
That’s music to the ears of cyberthieves. Like retailers, hackers are going into their busy season. The influx of shoppers using eCommerce websites over the next several weeks means that there are more cyber crime victims upon whom to prey.
Even if cybercriminals can only maintain conversion rates for malware (Trojans, rootkits, spyware, zero-day exploits, keyloggers, and viruses) and phishing attempts (spam), the voluminous spike in traffic means they will increase their earnings. Cyber thieves know that unpredictable traffic patterns and spikes can make it difficult to detect a security breach meaning hacks carried out during the holidays may go overlooked for a longer period of time.
So that’s that backdrop in front of which a secure web hosting provider views holiday 2009, and we’re up for the challenge.
Our Epic Support Team observes the online shopping season with a wary, cautious and protective eye (so you don’t have to). We monitor traffic patterns and pre-empt malicious attempts to our network so successfully because we’re familiar with all the tools in a Cyber thief’s arsenal. We’ve seen them all and have what it takes to recognize breaches quickly and remediate when necessary for SMBs.
- Enterprise application security defends your eCommerce application.
- Humongous bandwidth pipes burst to 100 Mbps when needed while CDN serves heavy media content around the globe to help ensure that more visitors can reach your website without latency and to provide better defense against “the average” DDoS attack.
- Smart, effective Spam protection will help eliminate phishing attempts from your employees inbox and downloadable malware from penetrating your business’ computers.
“We empower our secure eCommerce hosting clients to focus on bringing the customer to their site because they feel confident that it will be available when visitors arrive via our network. Even if your eCommerce website is not hosted with us, and you are not comfortable changing providers to close to the shopping boom, we can still help you prepare.” Chris Drake, Founder and CEO.
Throughout the holiday shopping season, FireHost will provide Website Vulnerability Audits for eCommerce websites. Place your order now and have your website audited while there is still time to remediate problems, before the traffic really spikes. Going into the shopping wars equipped with detailed report of your vulnerabilities can help you bounce back quickly should any problems arise.
In preparation to the “cyber mayhem” that’s about to ensue, the FireBlog will incorporate Cyber Shopping Awareness and Preparedness articles from 11/9-12/24. We’ll have a plethora of useful information that can improve your holiday shopping season whether you are on the giving (eCommerce) or receiving (eConsumer) end of the spectrum, so follow us on Twitter and Facebook for updates.
Future articles include:
- CyberMonday Countdown: How to Ensure Your eCommerce Website Will Perform
- SSL Your Way to a Safer, More Successful CyberMonday
- Incorporating Video Testimonials and Demonstrations Without Compromising Performance
- Safe Cyber Shopping Tips and Methods for Consumers
- Why Hackers Have a Headstart on Holiday Shopping
- How to Identify Unsafe Shopping Conditions – a visual roadmap
- Make Year-end Donations Safely, Online
- Best of Holiday 2009 – Sites that Deliver Security and Performance
This entry was posted on Monday, November 9th, 2009 at 5:00 am and is filed under Security. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
