Labor Day is a national day of rest for workers in the US. But it’s looking like online retailers will be busy this holiday weekend. The Pandemic downturn has turned out to be one of the shortest in history. If current sales trends and Labor Day facts are any indication, retailers should brace themselves for high website traffic and sales volumes. Consider these online sales stats and Labor Day facts:
- Global online sales will top a record-breaking $4.2 trillion globally this year (Adobe)
- YTD Online revenues are up by 64 percent due to a rise in online traffic, and the value of each order is up 3 percent (Adobe)
- 2020 Labor Day sales topped $2.6 bllion, up 14 percent over 2019 (Nextdoor)
- 90 percent of consumers expect to spend as much or more this Labor Day than last year. (Numerator sentiment survey)
Don’t Let High Labor Day Sales Make Your Online Business a Magnet for Hackers
Everybody loves high web traffic and the sales that come with it. But, as consumers stay home and to catch those great online sales, increased web traffic is likely to put stress on your systems. And all that extra traffic can make your online store a magnet for cyber thieves and scammers. Cybercriminals often choose high-traffic days to swarm your site with bots. In minutes your site could crash from a flurry of auto-generated bogus requests. They have many tactics, including fake accounts that steal products, or malware piggybacking in on orders.
When thieves ask for a ransom on one of the busiest online shopping days of the year, many companies can be faced with an impossible choice: pay up or stay shut down, bleeding sales and customers
How can you keep your online sales operations safe holiday sales risks?
More easily than you think. You don’t have to be an enterprise-level company to defend your data. At Integris, we specialize in helping small- and medium-sized businesses scale their security operations. Here’s what we recommend to deal with those Labor Day scammers.
ECommerce Cyber Security Tips for Labor Day…or Any Holiday
Get Third Party DoS Migration Services
If your website crashed due to a Denial of Service (DOS) attack, what would you do? For our clients, we recommend a third-party service that will allow you to quickly migrate over to their platform, using a complete system backup.
Keep As Little Information on Your Server as You Can
A thief can’t steal what they can’t find. If you’re keeping all your customer data on your onsite servers, you’re taking a terrible risk. To keep your systems safe, consider having all your payment processing done by a third party, like PayPal, that can store the credit card information off-site.
Vet Your Plug Ins
Most online retailers use third-party plugins to help them create a secure and speedy online shopping experience for users. But if you’re relying on any old plug-ins you get recommended, you could be setting yourself up for problems. Whether you’re working with an internal IT staff or an managed services provider like Integris, it’s important that your plugins are professionally evaluated. Poorly programmed plug-ins can become easily riddled with malware or create security holes thieves can easily exploit. If you want to stay ahead of Labor Day Facts about website traffic, this is a key area you have to address.
Set Your Outage Detection, Repair and Response Strategy
Do you have 24/7 monitoring on your systems? Are those systems prepared for the levels of traffic you could be experiencing over the Labor Day weekend? If your system becomes damaged due to an attack, do you have systems in place to sequester that portion of your network, so the rest can run while it’s being repaired? Do you know what would happen in the event of a major cyberattack, and how your network would respond? These are the type of decisions you’ll need to make, strategically, and in advance. It’s not too late to level up to meet the new demand.
Looking for More Resources on Dealing with Labor Day Cyber Attacks?
When you look at the Labor Day Facts on traffic and the recent headlines about cybercrime, it can be daunting. But fortunately, Integris has experts on hand that can help you, and lots of free resources that can get you on the right track fast. Check out our latest blog on how to avoid scammers, and our latest free 15-minute webinar on How to Keep Your Organization Safe from Cyber Crime, without Busting Your Budget.
