The occurrence of data breaches increased by 40 percent from 2015 to 2016 according to a joint study from the Identity Theft Resource Center and CyberScout. How that figure will read this time next year is unknown.
What is known is that this is the standard in which consumers shop and merchants safeguard their businesses. While merchants and consumers continue to war with the fraudsters, merchants should have an e-commerce prevention plan in place.
Online Shopping Sales Eyeing Record Numbers
Total Processing, a merchant services provider in the U.K., recently announced that global online sales will reach $353 trillion in 2017. Other than more and more consumers shopping online, this also means hackers and fraudsters in the most remote locales of the globe will be diligently trying to capitalize on merchants’ weak networks.
Who is Getting Hit the Most?
There are two sectors that hackers and fraudsters find most appealing:
- The healthcare industry: Personal information has 10 times the value on the black market than credit card information. Attacks on healthcare providers, hospitals and physicians’ offices from 2009 to 2013 tripled before slightly falling 10 percent from 2014-16.
- Businesses/E-commerce Industry: Based on what we witnessed in Canada when its consumers swapped magstripe credit cards for those with the microchip in 2008, this is not surprising. Fraudsters find it much easier to penetrate e-commerce businesses rather than POS and brick-and-mortar stores. What is alarming, even in 2017, is the number of merchants – large and small – not taking the necessary safeguards such as:
- PCI compliance
- Storing consumer credit card information separately from their servers (or not storing it at all)
- 3D secure processing and/or tokenization
3 Industries Taking Data Breach Protection Seriously
Of the five sectors examined in the ITRC/Cyberscout study, three have taken e-commerce fraud prevention measures: Banking and financial institutions, government and military agencies and educational institutions, all of which have consistently reported fewer instances of data breaches.
Breaches on government and military agencies have decreased 20 percent from 2007-16 while educational institutions have decreased 15 percent in the same period. Banks and financial institutions, which peaked at about 13 percent in 2008, have decreased to 5 percent.
E-Commerce Fraud Prevention Solutions with Instabill
With an e-commerce merchant account from Instabill, we align merchants with the secure payment gateway of our trusted acquiring banking partners. We can also arrange for 3D secure merchant accounts and PCI compliance for online businesses as well as chargeback prevention strategies.
Our merchant account managers are available live and one-on-one at 1-800-530-2444 (and by live chat) Monday through Friday from 8:00 a.m. until 6:00 p.m.
