There are so many ways for the holidays to turn sour for an online retailer. Gift cards and loyalty points, not subject to the same type of verification as credit cards, are stolen from customer accounts and used for fraudulent purposes. Compromised corporate credit cards are used to make high-volume purchases in the thousands of dollars and shipped to multiple locations… activity that might raise flags for a consumer card, but pass as business as usual during business gift season. Customer credentials and payment information are hacked from one retailer’s site, then reused far and wide to victimize more secure, but unsuspecting merchants. These are all real examples we hear too often from retailers.
With annual sales projected to reach over $630 billion by 2020, online retailers are a rich target for hackers, so much so that annual losses are estimated at $12 billion. And with holiday sales representing nearly 20 percent of the year’s sales for retailers, hacks and breaches can be especially painful during this time of year when businesses are… TotalRetail
