As our lives and businesses become increasingly digitized, cybercrime has made its way into common parlance as something we should all be concerned about. In times past, individuals or small businesses wouldn’t have been particularly targeted, but that’s just not the case anymore.
Because of the rapid acceleration in cybercrime, cybersecurity is now one of the fastest-growing segments in technology. As soon as one threat is identified and mitigated, new ones spring up to take their place. Like an endless game of whack-a-mole, security experts must be ever-vigilant to the emergence of smarter and more destructive threats with a wide range of objectives.
To complicate matters, malicious actors don’t all have the same goals. Money is instagram database always a driving principle, but sowing chaos, planting untruths, and destroying online reputations are just as prevalent. The perpetrators could be anyone from an individual to a group of scammers or politically motivated organizations, and nobody is exempt from risk.
The Threat Environment From an Ecommerce Perspective
Ecommerce businesses are targeted for a long list of reasons. If they fall victim to ecommerce security risks, they stand to lose a lot.
According to a recent study published by IBM, the average cost of a data breach is in the range of $3.86 million globally and $8.64 million in the United States alone. The study also reports that the average time it takes to identify, control, and recover from a breach is 280 days. Assuming an organization can continue operations, its reputation may be irreparably destroyed.
Ecommerce has grown exponentially in our post-pandemic world. In the past year alone, online shopping grew an incredible 44 percent, nearly three times the growth experienced in 2019. Ecommerce now accounts for more than 20 percent of all retail, for a total of $861 billion in 2020.
If ecommerce systems are breached, sensitive customer data, including personally identifiable information (PII) and payment card information, could be exposed.