One of the biggest responsibilities for any business is to secure their customer’s information and protect their own business at the same time. Security has become a crucial part of companies as online fraud has become a common threat. So, it is highly necessary for a business to stay aware of fraudulent activities and protect their business with the necessary measures. Businesses that have vulnerabilities are more prone to online fraud as fraudsters target the organizations that are weak in protecting themselves.
Online fraud is not just limited to small or medium businesses, but there are larger businesses too that are attacked by frauds in the past. Businesses that deal with customer transactions are more likely to get hacked from both customer front and business front. Fraudsters may cost you huge amounts of money if you overlook the weak points of your business. Apart from the economic loss, online frauds also result in loss of customer’s trust as no customer wants to make a purchase from an unsecured business risking their sensitive data. So, it is highly important for you to protect your business from fraud to help your business survive in the market, no matter which niche it belongs to.
Fraudsters can enter your business from any means and can harm you in different ways. One of the popular ways that fraudsters attack online businesses is through hacking. However, chargeback fraud is also popular among the businesses that don’t maintain a proper record of all customer transactions. But thankfully, there are many ways you can protect your business from being a victim of online frauds. Before learning the measures to protect businesses from fraud, let us have a look at how these frauds actually happen.
Online fraud occurs in various forms such as identity theft, hacking customer’s information, and stolen cards.
In detail, the frauds are of the following types:
- Hacking the business servers and restricting access to the owners demanding a ransom.
- Cybercriminals steal customers’ data and sell it for a huge amount for other companies.
- Some fraudsters place bulk orders and make payments from other customer accounts.
- Or some bad customers apply for a chargeback after receiving their orders. This is mostly seen in eCommerce businesses.
Here are the top 10 ways of how you can protect and secure your business from fraud or hacking.
10 Best Tips to Protect Business from Online Frauds
Secure the Transactions
As businesses face a major loss for any type of fraud that occurs, it is highly necessary to take precautions even before they happen. The first step to consider is securing the transactions of customers with strict guidelines so that only you can avoid fraudulent transactions. But however, you should not irritate your customers requesting too many actions from their side to confirm their identity. You should not stop them for too long to confirm and secure their payments when they are ready with their credit cards out to make payments. Doing so can result in losing some loyal customers.
Hence you need some effective tools to secure the transactions without losing customers. So, here are the best ways to secure transactions effectively without compromising customer’s time.
- Card Verification Code
Ask for Card Verification Code, mostly known as CVC or CVV while customers make their payments. This not only makes fraudsters withdraw their plan due to lack of requested information but also acts as a piece of evidence if customers file chargeback in any case.
- Address Verification System
AVS or Address Verification System is a security tool that checks for the numerics in the billing address of the card and the address submitted for registering the card. If the tools find the unmatched numerics in the billing addresses (say Zip Code), then it declines the transaction if you enable the automatic option or you can manually decline it.
- 3D Secure
3D Secure is one of the efficient ways to secure the transactions as it asks for the user-generated password to proceed with the payment. Hence it stops the fraudsters at the payment process and helps you out from chargeback disputes.
Set Limits
The other best way to protect your business from online fraud is setting certain limits for each customer such as limited orders or limited purchase value per day. As fraudsters aim for big they might turn back as don’t want to risk for lower amounts. This might not completely protect you from fraud but at least keep the loss down.
Protect your business environment
While you are taking essential measures to secure customer transactions, it is also necessary to protect your business. A secured business is a business or company with all secured systems and servers. Yes, protect computers, applications and the internet you and your employees use in your company to shut the loopholes close. Doing this prevents hackers from entering your business. So, get advanced versions of anti-virus and anti-malware software to protect all the devices in your business environment. Also, protect all the computers or laptops with highly secured passwords to prevent the frauds that might happen from visitors.
Take Help of Geo-Location Technology
Geo-location technology helps you identify the country or region of your customers. Therefore you can stay alert when an unusual behavior occurs from suspicious regions. Investing in geo-location technology to protect your business will not go waste, that will always do you good.
Study Customer’s Behaviour
As your goal is to protect your business from fraudulent activities, there is no way other than investing your time to monitor customer’s activity and behavior on your site. You can spot the fraudster immediately when he behaves unlike other customers and carts too many products. Analyzing each suspicious customer behavior not only helps you to stop him from doing fraud but also acts as a reference to identify other fraudsters.
Maintain Customer Database
Having said that chargeback fraud has become popular as the number of purchases or activities in many online businesses is increasing. It has become difficult for businesses to store every customer’s information as they get a huge amount of traffic each day. And this is leading to chargeback disputes for businesses. But gathering your customer’s information and storing them in your database is quite useful during some unexpected hard times though you have secured the transaction processes with CVV. Therefore it is recommended to maintain the customer database which will also help you in providing great customer service.
Monitor your Bank Accounts & Credit Reports
Though you think you have closed all the doors for fraudsters to enter into your business, it is seriously important to check your bank accounts and credit card reports regularly. And this doesn’t take much time, keep the tabs open to check credit reports and scores always. So that you can take action immediately if something unexpected happens.
Always Have your Software Updated
With the evolving technology, evolving cybersecurity products the hackers are also becoming more skilled. So, to keep everything related to business safe from hackers just ensure if your operating system, applications, software used in your devices are up-to-date. The latest versions of all antivirus, anti-malware etc. are designed with the capability to detect and fight against any kind of cyberattack.
Run Security Audits
You might have taken all the necessary precautions and actions to fight against the fraud attacks. But it is also equally important to perform security audits more often for your business. This helps you know what are the weak points in your business that benefit the fraudsters. You never knew that your employees might have opened some harmful emails or downloaded toxic files unknowingly. So, it is always better to run security audits at regular intervals to make sure that your business is safe.
Educate your Employees about Fraud Risks
Now that, you have learned to protect your business with essential steps, it’s time to teach your employees the threat of online fraud and precautions to prevent the attacks. Tell them not to open any emails that look strange, not to share passwords with their colleagues, and not to accept the refund or transaction-related issues without analyzing properly. Share them the responsibility of building a secure wall around your business to protect it in all possible ways.
Conclusion
Detecting the frauds before they hit your business with losses is always far better than finding the fraudsters after they hack or harm your business. So the first step is to get some anti-fraud prevention tools within your hand as said AVS, 3D Secure, Geo-location etc. As the primary goal of any business is to protect itself and keep up the existing loyal customers, moving towards securing your business from online fraud is the only best step you can take. Also do not forget to backup your critical information regularly to keep your data safe even if it gets hacked. Thus by following these above measures you can keep your business safe from online fraud.
