Are You Ready for Cyber Monday?

Six Tips to Prepare Online Retail Servers for Cyber Monday

Follow these important server maintenance tips or risk losing bumper sales on Cyber Monday.

Yes, I know that the stores already have Christmas items on the shelves and holiday shopping commercials have already hit the airwaves. Even so, I can’t believe that Thanksgiving is next week. And that means Cyber Monday is two weeks from today.

Are you ready for Cyber Monday and the entire holiday season?

With more than 50 percent of all holiday shoppers heading online this season, the worst thing that can happen to an e-retailer is to get shut down. Perhaps you have noticed how banks have been targeted with Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks lately. Will hackers turn their focus to the retail market during the holiday shopping rush? I don’t have an answer to that question, but being a bit of a pessimist, my gut feeling is to prepare for a worst-case scenario.

How do you know if your site is able to withstand a DDoS attack? Here is one way: Corero Network Security developed a test that can identify a website’s vulnerabilities and readiness. Remember, no site is bullet-proof. The hackers have gotten very good at this. But I think it is better to know your weaknesses ahead of time to build a stronger defense.

The folks at Corero also provided a few tips on how to build that defense:

1. Know what an attack looks like: Have a plan to RECOGNIZE smaller attacks that fall under the radar of traditional defenses.
2. Credit card security: Protect your Payment Card infrastructure and deploy defenses at the perimeter of your cardholder data.
3. Know your customers: Lock out business with all countries where you don’t do transactions.
4. Be vigilant: Maintain continuous vigilance, understand the latest attack tools and test your defenses against the broadest spectrum of possible attacks.
5. Measure the financial impact: Look into taking advantage of available technologies and services to thwart DDoS attacks before they take you down.
6. Look for fraud: It's a mistake to let the DDoS attack consume all IT and security resources. The attack could be a smokescreen to mask a more serious threat.

Even though it feels too early to be thinking about Christmas, it is never too early to be thinking about making your shopping site more secure.