Tag Archives: Christmas

Panda Security

How to Bolster Security for Your Online Store This Holiday Season

Leave a comment

tips-cybersecurity-panda-christmas

The gift giving season is just around the corner. With the frenzy of Black Friday and Cyber Monday already behind us, shops that conduct their sales online (and their clients) should be prepared for the most hectic weeks of the year still to come.

Unfortunately, this is also the busiest time of year for scammers that try their luck at fishing in frenzied waters. Cybercriminals are well aware of how many companies, regrettably, don’t invest enough in protecting their online sales platforms. Thus, cyberattacks and data breaches soar around the holidays. Luckily, if you run an e-commerce website, you’re still in time to follow these tips:

  • tips-online-salesDon’t cache your clients’ payment information. The best way to avoid problems is by thoroughly verifying that credit card numbers are never stored in your data base and never pass through your servers. It’s as easy as resorting to one of the many payment solutions on the market, such as PayPal or Braintree, which take it upon themselves to handle that sensitive data for you.
  • Make sure your website’s platform (Prestashop, Magento…) is up to date. Search the Internet for common vulnerabilities these tools may have and look for a way to remedy them. The same goes for plugins and extensions you may have installed.
  • Implement a secure SSL protocol. This is essential to your online store (especially when transmitting user information). In truth, it’s essential to any website, but customers perceive e-commerce platforms that don’t show the “http” in the address bar as insecure. And with good reason.
  • Be prepared for the flood of traffic. A large number of users will connect at the same time to make holiday purchases on your website. Check that your web hosting service is up to speed and can handle traffic peaks, that you are using a well-configured load balancing solution and a CDN to reduce the traffic that your server has to withstand. Not only will you avoid downtime, but also you will increase speeds and improve user experience.

From a vendor’s standpoint, these are some issues to be kept in mind to increase security for the holidays.

But there’s something else that businesses should keep in mind when it comes to protection at this time of year. Namely, that their employees, whether they like it or not, will be making purchases using company computers.

Among the precautionary measures that we would like to impart, these are especially pertinent. Before making a purchase, your employees should make sure:

  • That their system is up to date has the protection of a reliable advanced cybersecurity solution.
  • That they only make purchases on well-known websites that have a solid reputation, and that the webpage uses an SSL protocol with security certificates.
  • That they avoid bargains that seem implausible, especially if they appear in emails and the sender is not fully trustworthy.

With this advice and a bit of common sense, holiday preparations shouldn’t bring about any unpleasant surprises. Shopping online is quick, convenient, and easy, but we have to stay vigilant to avoid falling into scams.

 

The post How to Bolster Security for Your Online Store This Holiday Season appeared first on Panda Security Mediacenter.

Avira

How to Shop Online in Secret, and Other Tips This Holiday Season

Leave a comment

shopping, Online-Shopping

With Christmas just 11 days away, shopping is still in full swing for most consumers around the world. According to a survey of shoppers by the National Retail Federation, as of Thanksgiving 2016, only 9 percent of US shoppers are finished with their Christmas buying. With the majority of shoppers choosing to shop online, the […]

The post How to Shop Online in Secret, and Other Tips This Holiday Season appeared first on Avira Blog.

AVG

Santa’s Security Secrets

Leave a comment

We all think we know Santa – where he lives (to the nearest Pole!), what he likes to wear (on one day of the year!) – but what do we really know about this mysterious character? What does he do during the rest of the year, what are his hobbies, where does he work on the other 364 days of the year,  what is his ‘real’ name, and more importantly – who is on his naughty list?! None of these personal details have ever been revealed, and even in today’s connected world, Santa has managed to keep his identity a closely guarded secret – but how, and what best practices can we learn from our favorite festive character?

 He wears the AVG Invisibility glasses
Santa saw AVG’s Invisibility Glasses in February and sent us a letter saying “Dear AVG, those Invisibility Glasses are just what I need to keep me invisible during the year. I have been a good Santa, and I hope you can help me out.”

The glasses make it difficult for cameras or other facial recognition technologies to get a clear view of Santa’s identity, so Facebook can’t automatically tag him in that embarrassing picture under the mistletoe, for example! We, of course, agreed to provide a pair, enabling Santa to travel the world without being tracked, seeing sights that would have been difficult to visit due to the number of people taking pictures to post online. Santa has provided us some pictures from his travels that we can share with you here…XXXX.
Cameron, Obama and Santa

Bono and Santa

Taj Mahal and Santa

Eiffel Tower and Santa

While not generally available yet, unless you’re Santa, the concept serves as a reminder to protect your privacy online. There are, of course, many other methods Santa uses to stay private – he has shared a few of them with us in this exclusive interview!

He stays away from social media
“There are hundreds of Santa impersonators on Facebook, but I – the real Santa – am nowhere to be found,” says Santa. Staying away from social media completely might be a challenge for the rest of us, but it’s worth thinking about the information we share via these channels at this time of year. Make sure to check your security and privacy settings to ensure you’re not exposing any information you’d rather not be. “You may want to think twice about posting those pictures of the latest high-tech gadgets you’ve been gifted too – you never know who might be looking!”

He still uses a POLARoid camera
“I never take selfies,” says Santa, “they may get leaked online and that could be awkward.” But with most of us now using our smartphones to take pictures, there are privacy issues you may not have considered. Aside from pictures getting into the wrong hands – the recent VTech hack which may have enabled hackers to steal children’s photos is an example – you might not know that smartphone photos are also often ‘geotagged’, meaning that others can find out exactly where your pictures were taken.

His sleigh is Wi-Fi free and disconnected
“Checking out if you have been good or bad is now even easier with people posting so much of their lives on their online profiles. I avoid being located, tracked or leaving things to chance by using an encrypted Virtual Private Network (VPN) when using the Internet,” says Santa. But It would be impractical for most of us to avoid the Internet completely. There are ways to make sure you’re surfing securely and privately though.

Secure your home Wi-Fi with encryption using a strong password. Also avoid public Wi-Fi hotspots when transferring personal details online during bank transfers for example, or follow Santa’s example and use a VPN. Phishing emails also tend to spike around the festive season as cybercriminals try to tempt us with too good to be true deals. If at any point you think the email is spam and fraudulent then do not open or click on any links, just delete the email!

He pays for everything with toys
Santa told us that his “route and present list is a closely guarded secret. I use very strong passwords and a reindeer for two-factor authentication”. If you’re doing last minute shopping online this year, it’s worth taking to time to remember good password practice – to save time, and a potential headache, later! This means using strong passwords that are different for each account, along with additional security codes or the ‘two-factor authentication’ Santa refers to where available.

So now you know a bit more about Santa and his security secrets – hopefully they’ll also help you to stay safe and secure this Christmas. Happy Holidays!

 

 

Image sources:
The British Foreign and Commonwealth Office, Erik (HASH) Hersman, TANAKA Juuyoh (田中十洋), Sreejith K, Brian Burk

 

AVG

4 Tips for Successful Online Sales over the Holiday Season

Leave a comment

Christmas is nearly upon us, but is your website ready to make the most of it? In fact, let’s go one step further: are is your website, social media and IT systems all singing the same song?

Preparation and a co-ordinated set up is essential if you’re going to make the most out of any uplift in customer attention and desire to buy from small businesses instead of the big brands.

You can have a killer website but if your social media channels aren’t up-to-date too then you’ll look behind the times and disorganised.  If your IT systems that enable you to take, process, and dispatch orders aren’t up to scratch, then any online sales you do make might go to waste.

The web is available 24/7/365 – this is as level a playing field as it gets for small business, especially when advertising and marketing budgets don’t match those of the large and well established brands.

Customers can be fickle and have short attention spans too, hopping from website to website in a matter of seconds if they don’t see what they’re looking for. This is the same for all businesses, but it underlines the importance of having everything ready, up to date and aligned.

Here are four things you can do to make the most of the holiday season for your small business online:

1. Have a dedicated webpage and keep it live all year round
Have a dedicated web page on your site for popular sales events like Small Business Saturday, Black Friday and Cyber Monday… and keep it live all year round! That might sound counter-intuitive when we’re only talking about one day in the year, but there’s a very good reason you should do this. Once a web page is live it’s far easier to manage: the basic structure can stay the same even if the copy and imagery change. Plus, people don’t always follow the rules when it comes to searching for offers and deals online – they’ll start searching for them whenever the mood takes them, wherever they happen to be. As recent research reveals, when people start looking for information about a purchase, they could be doing it using a mobile on the train, a desktop PC at work, or a tablet when they’re snuggled up in bed.

For example, If they start searching for details about Small Business Saturday in September and October – as Google search data shows – then having your web page already live will allow people to find you. Currys use this tactic with their Black Friday web page.

If you take down your page after the event, then search engines won’t be able to show it to customers whenever they start searching for it next year. They’ll draw a blank and you’ll be starting from square one all over again. Why shoot yourself in the foot? Competition for online orders is tough enough as it is.


2. Facebook is a great starting point for a conversation
“Like” it or not, Facebook is a force to be reckoned with. 84% of internet users between the age of 35-44 are on at least one Facebook service, meaning Facebook, Facebook Messenger, Instagram or WhatsApp. That figure goes up to a whopping 90% for 16-24 year-olds. This is where your customers – existing and future – are likely to be spending a lot of their social media time, so if you’re not on there, they won’t see you.

Make sure you’ve set up a Facebook business page. They won’t want to see a constant stream of sales related messages though. Imagine your business page to be a little bit like your personal Facebook page: it should express the everyday goings on and personality of your business. And in between those posts, you can publish business event or sales related messages. If you’re short on ideas, have a look at how other small businesses have used Facebook to grow their business.


3. Make sure your IT system is safe and secure
If it’s the one day in the year you definitely don’t want to be hacked it’s when you’ve just taken a large number of online orders. We can all remember the Ashley Madison scandal and countless other big brands being hacked and losing customer data over the years. A survey of UK businesses conducted this year also reveals nearly nine out of 10 large businesses said they had suffered some form of information security breach in the last year. Don’t be fooled into thinking it can’t happen to a small business. Hackers – and the viruses they release into the world – will target anyone they think might have weak website security.


4. Ask the experts
If you are concerned your ecommerce and supporting IT system aren’t as secure or co-ordinated as they could be, ask for help. There’s a whole host of free resources for small businesses all over the web to help you understand how healthy and secure your IT system is. For example, AVG’s free IT Security Health Check is a good place to start if you’re not an expert with little time on your hands. It’s short and sweet and offers straightforward tips for how to improve your IT security. The UK government is also offering Innovation Vouchers worth £5,000. These can be used to pay for advice which will help protect and grow your business by having good cyber security in place.

 

At the end of the day

Gearing up your website, social media and IT systems to make the most out of the holidays is only half the battle. Making sure they stay safe and secure, and continue to serve you and your customers well, is the other half.