Cornish Businesses at Risk on the Net
A local website company believes many local e-commerce store owners are putting both their business and customer’s security at risk through poorly constructed and secured websites.
In tests conducted by St.Agnes based, Uknetweb, serious security flaws were found in 2 out of 3 sites, despite them appearing to have well developed sites with proper safeguards against hackers and other criminals.
This comes at a time when fear of ‘e-crime’ is at an all time high and local online store owners need to be aware that they hold a duty of care over their customer details and their own sensitive customer information.
The site owners, who commissioned Uknetweb to perform the test hacks, were shown how access to their confidential customer details took less than half an hour in each case.
This research achieved similar results to those found by the BBC Nationally in October, where they found online hackers selling ‘how to guides’ and login details for web shops.
The BBC reported a hacker boasting, “I got many shops and tons of daily orders. I hack a shop in 3-4 hours and sell it for $100-500” and thanked “stupid admins” for making basic mistakes which allowed him to break in.
With much internet crime now coming from organised criminal gangs looking to sell this information on at low cost to a range of criminals, business owners need to wise up and ensure they protect themselves and their customers appropriately.
In many cases the original hacker does not use the details, opting instead to sell them on as false identities to be used for acquiring credit and identity documents for resale to unsavoury characters associated with drug trafficking or child pornography.
Managing Director, Toby Parkins said, “Hackers will always get more sophisticated as time goes on; however, in many cases the simplest levels of protection have been ignored.”
“The best way to ensure your own website security is to get a full technical specialist to build your site rather than cheaper off the shelf developers who have only basic knowledge of the coding systems.”
Any company concerned with their own internet security can request a low cost security check from Uknetweb by calling 01872 555933 or visiting www.uknetweb.com
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Tags: Business, cornwall, data protection, E-commerce, hackers, internet security, uknetweb, web design, Web Development, website development
