The saying goes ‘if it looks too good to be true, then it probably is’, but the prospect of reeling in a deal is blinding US and UK shoppers to potential cybersecurity issues.
this is one of the key findings of a survey conducted by Opinion Matters on behalf of White Hat Security which has found that more than a quarter of UK and US-based online shoppers would proceed with a bargain purchase without first checking if the website is secure.
The survey also revealed that shoppers in the US were found to be more likely to put themselves at risk than those in the UK, with more than a third of US-based respondents admitting that they wouldn’t check the website’s security before purchasing.
Moreover, a third of UK and US-based shoppers are not sure, or definitely did not know how to identify if a website is secure.
This said White Hat was particularly worrying given that more than half of shoppers are expecting to use their credit or debit card to purchase goods on the forthcoming Black Friday weekend. Yet threat researchers from WhiteHat Security analyzed retail websites between July and September 2015 and found that they are more likely to exhibit serious vulnerabilities compared to other industries.
The most commonly occurring critical vulnerability classes for the retail industry were: insufficient transport layer protection (with 64% likelihood); cross site scripting (57%); information leakage (54%); brute force (38%); cross site request forgery (29%).
“This research suggests that when it comes to website security awareness, not only is there still some way to go on the part of the consumer, but the retailers themselves could benefit from re-assessing their security measures,” commented Jeremiah Grossman, Founder at WhiteHat Security, “particularly when considering the volume and nature of customer information that will pass through their websites this Cyber Monday.”