Steer clear of eCommerce ‘Halloween’ Cybercrimes through Customer verification

Halloween is approaching- the ancient Celtic festival of trick or treating. When everyone is looking forward to costume parties, festive cocktails, psychedelic rock music, spine chilling pranks, and scary looking pumpkins, cybercriminals are masterminding sinister schemes to rip individuals and small businesses off of their treats! Yes. Among other things like horror movies, or haunted houses, or ghosts, and goblins, Cybercrimes during Halloween season is one of the scariest threats. They are much more dangerous and destructive, even more than a zombie apocalypse, which by the way is very fascinating too. Anyway. Going back to the point of discussion. 

The technology continues to innovate every day and so does the ecosystem of cyberattacks. In today’s rapidly evolving business landscape, it’s almost impossible to imagine the absence of the internet from our lives. We live and breathe the internet, some would agree! This evolution has given rise to viruses, malware, cyberattacks, identity theft, dark web, phishing, and growing threats to commercial transactions. What these attacks can do to individuals and business reputation is beyond discussion. 

According to cybersecurity ventures, damages due to cybercrimes can cost $6 trillion around the globe, by 2021. Spooky right? 

Also, surprisingly after natural disasters and extreme weather conditions and COVID-19 obviously, cybercrimes are in the spotlight. Security awareness for businesses and individuals is the only way forward. Out of all global industries, eCommerce specifically, is suffering the drastic consequence of the growing threats of identity theft, and phishing attacks, causing billion-dollar losses to businesses.

According to F5 Labs threat analysis, payment card theft is haunting companies the most. Lack of proper customer (buyer) verification is what leads to this problem. 

In order to prevent the foundations of your online business and infrastructure from shaking this Halloween season, small online businesses should not fall short of their customer compliance. This is where KYC document verification using Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technology jumps in. Surprise, surprise! eCommerce businesses mostly fall prey to phishing attacks and stolen identities. Even though Phishing is a relatively new concept, it seems to be continuously evolving. Identity verification solutions using OCR services are proved to be fool-proof technology, which when deployed can protect against phishing attacks. KYC or Know Your Customer compliance is a process initiated by governments and the law enforcement agencies that businesses are obliged to follow before onboarding customers. 

Moreover, customer due diligence can significantly reduce the likelihood of your business falling victim to this menace. Phishing attacks have increased significantly from the year 2007. The impacts of phishing on online businesses are serious because it results in the breach of customer data such as their credit card details. Cybercriminals can use the stolen customer information to buy merchandise for reshipping. 

According to another survey, 43 percent of cybercriminals target small businesses.

Using KYC document, age, and address verification including 2-factor authentication vendors can verify transactions and can prevent Halloween crimes leading to unauthorized access. Now let’s see how it’s done? The customer provides their ID document for verification during onboarding, OCR extracts the information from the ID document, converts it into digital form to further process, information is analyzed against set parameters, the verification result is delivered. As simple as that! The cost of failure to report data breaches or comply with KYC regulations can go up to millions of dollars. 

Per compromised identity can cost businesses up to $90 give or take, considering a single eCommerce business has thousands of individuals using their platforms every day.

In this time of year, the grim reaper roams around the globe in search of souls. Sounds scary, and by grim reaper I meant cybercriminals. You get it! As online businesses are more vulnerable to cyber frauds, it’s important to surmount the weaknesses in the system, preventing it from turning into a graveyard of losses, and this time, they are not souls, but dollars. You may agree to disagree, but Shufti Pro’s document verification using OCR solutions for businesses is the right solution to lower the risks. The time is here when you can finally save your business from the horrors of online crimes! Happy Halloween.