Six ways to protect online business transactions

The new generation of customers has a greater inclination towards ordering things online as they can choose from an abundant range of websites at competitive prices. Sellers are also leveraging the online platforms to expand their businesses. Therefore, there is a need to ensure utmost security for these online platforms.

With eCommerce market booming in India, organisations can deploy some simple tricks to secure their online business and transactions. The rising popularity of online shopping and eCommerce sites has led to a sudden surge in the number of online transactions and total online sales, which were at about $1,471 billion last year are expected to reach $2,356 billion by 2018, reveals data compiled by Statista.

In India alone there are 250 million internet users, a figure that has grown by 14 per cent as compared to the previous year. As a result, the need to protect online transactions has increased tremendously. Here are six simple tricks to safeguard their online platforms:

Smart Scanning for Vulnerabilities

Online threats that haunt most businesses include vandalizing of websites that may lead to blacklisting, loopholes and vulnerabilities that gives the attackers the access to sensitive information, malwares that can install themselves into systems and steal confidential data. Organizations need to opt for solutions that can provide automated application scanning combined with manual penetration testing to look for logic flaws in coding and app vulnerability.

Protect Your Mobile Apps

More and more consumers are now using mobile applications for online transactions. These mobile apps come along with a numerous security loopholes such as malwares, unsafe app capabilities, hidden processes, and complex code vulnerabilities. These problems only get worse with constant updates. Such issues can only be dealt with real-time mobile application penetration testing for malware detection, log analysis, Layer 7 assessment and more.

Look beyond SSL

Even though secure socket layers ensure safe and encrypted flow of information between a browser and a server, it is not the be all and end all of securing the web applications. A website may claim to be secure as they use 128 or 256 bit encryption and may even boast of a seal from an external certificate authority. But what the online retailers fail to understand is the fact that SSL cannot protect against application layer attacks. Businesses need to deploy solutions that can provide a multi-layer protection.

Enhance Protection with Data Encryption 

Data encryption is important in the sense that it enhances the defense mechanism and protects the sensitive information. Encryption also reduces the risk of the hackers being able to crack the passwords.

Limit Access to Sensitive Information

It is important for organizations today to limit the access to sensitive information to personnel in the organization who really need to have the access to the same. Sharing information throughout the organization with employees who really don't need to use it increases the risk of the data being breached.

Fortify Web Applications 24x7

The nature of web applications is intricate and needs to be frequently changed and updated. Constant updating leaves vulnerabilities and loopholes that hackers can very conveniently exploit to gain unauthorized access to sensitive information. In such cases, Web Application Firewall is the only way to virtually patch vulnerabilities like XSS and others. Smarter business solutions LIKE zero WAF false positives and continuous monitoring with adaptation for any changes to the application make the WAF an apt security mechanism.

As more businesses move on to the online platform to conduct business, competition is likely to be fierce. In order to safeguard their online business platforms companies would have to pragmatically opt for solutions that can provide them a holistic approach towards safeguarding their web applications. Organizations need to opt for vendors who can assure them 24×7 monitoring and protection.

(image) The writer of this article Ashish Tandon, Chairman and CEO, Indusface. Tandon is a serial entrepreneur with a rare combination of strong technology understanding and business expertise. Under his leadership, Indusface has become India’s leading application security product company, serving over 700 global customers. Prior to founding Indusface, he has successfully led several ventures in the areas of Internet, Software & Security. Tandon is also a founder, investor and board member of OpenClove. Tandon has completed IIM Ahmedabad’s Executive Programme on Management. The views expressed here are personal.