Rinchi
TechInAfrica – A survey conducted in October by global cybersecurity experts, Foregenix found that around 88% of African Magento websites are at high risk of hacking activities. The global analysis was taken from over 170,000 websites and around 1.5% (2,548) of the sites are malware-infected. Among those 2,548 infected sites, around 1,591 were infected by credit/debit stealing malware. The stealing malware took customers’ data through fake sale and fraud.
Furthermore, around 2.3% of sites are risky from Magento Shoplift, allowing hackers to control the website from afar and stealing personal data. Even more, the hackers can order items using the stolen personal data for free and exploit the system.
As a global security company, Foregenix is well-known for providing payment security. The company has an active intelligence team to analyze and identify attack trends, especially in the e-commerce sector.
The CEO of Foregenix, Andrew Henwood revealed the research at Payment Card Industry Security Standards Council European Community Meeting. He said, ‘While the figures for Africa are of great concern, they are roughly in line with our findings for many other regions,”
Henwood furthermore said: “The issues highlighted are a truly global problem, which threatens to undermine confidence in e-commerce. Repercussions as a result of compromises are heavy penalties by card providers and these put many smaller traders at risk.”
Even though Magento and other e-commerce platforms always release software updates regularly, it will not guarantee their websites are secure from vulnerability. Instead, it will be highly vulnerable if it’s not used, causing sensitive data loss and hacking activities.
“Online businesses often assume web developers, agencies and hosting providers take care of security. Design agencies are great at producing beautiful, transactional websites that sell their wares, but their expertise on security issues generally isn’t as well developed. Agencies and their clients need to be aware of e-commerce security issues, as even a single breach can be devastating for a small business,” Henwood said.
To address the issue, Henwood offers some effective solutions. “Simple precautions can make a real difference to reducing a company’s risk from criminals such as regularly patching, changing default settings on the administration interface and using stronger passwords with multi-factor authentication. Risk can never be entirely eliminated, so companies should also consider investing in a partnership with a cybersecurity specialist organization and cyber insurance policy,”
Visit http://webscan.foregenix.com to check and scan business’ websites externally for free. It can detect the issues found in the survey.
