The Risks of Digital Transactions and How to Safeguard Against Them

While digitalization is an inevitability of the time, it also brings with it quite a few different risks associated with digital transactions that need to be assessed and mitigated with the appropriate tools.

There is a saying in the webspace that it’s not the internet, it’s the people who are active in it. While it’s a good soundbite to refer to the fact that the people who used to pose risks to the safety and security of a business in the real world are continuing to do the same in the digital world, it is only partially true. The structure of the digital world in its adulation brings with it a few risks of its own too.

In particular, if it involves a financial transaction of any kind – banks, insurance, payment systems, e-commerce transactions, etc.; the risk gets multiplied. Therefore, it’s paramount that you equip your businesses with the right set of tools and security measures to ensure a smooth, secure, and highly reliable environment for everyone involved. Fortunately, there are some Qualified Trust Service Providers such as infocert.digital who can effectively help to secure all your digital transactions.

Majors Risks Associated with Digital Transactions

Purchasing online is a phenomenon that is in constant growth in our society, since it gives customers the opportunity to shop while on-the-go or, as for these unprecedented times, during a global lockdown. As a plus, transactions for online purchases are simpler and simpler, with just a few steps required to complete the process.

In any digital transaction, quite a lot of sensitive data gets transferred via a few different sources. It makes them vulnerable to sophisticated online attacks who are always on the watch to take advantage of any little opportunities. The most commonly experienced risks of digital transactions include:

Data Theft

Data theft can be a problem for large and small businesses, as well as for individual computer users; moreover because, even when organizations or businesses are the targets, it is the client’s data that will be stolen and used by hackers for malicious purposes. Information that hackers may be interested in stealing can include anything from personal information, like a driver’s license or ID numbers, date of birth, and health records, to financial information, like credit card numbers or bank accounts. As financial transactions online rely heavily on personal details and unique security codes, it is those highly sensitive data that are at the major risks of getting stolen.

Stolen Identity

With the data stolen from a digital transaction, fraudsters then try to pose as the person they stole from and get financial rewards in the process. In the last few years, new strategies have been created by hackers to get access to personal information, the most common being phishing (that is, a scam in the form of an email sent by a thief, who pretends to be the representative of a legitimate company, most frequently a bank or a credit union, and asks the victim to log on to a fake website). One of the ways personal identities can be stolen is through a data breach: thieves hack into a wireless network to get access to corporate databases, reaching lists of personal information such as customer data or payroll files. This can result in huge economic consequences for the targeted companies, as well as in a loss of faith by their customers.

Missed opportunities

Among the spiral of network tools a digital transaction uses to be processed, if one of them fails, it can result in some unnecessary hassles for the customer. In many cases, it translates into losing the faith of the customer. On the contrary, if customers don’t have any problems during the transaction, they will more likely become repeat customers, and the number of referrals will increase.

The Best Way to Mitigate the Risks

Some simple strategies can help secure online transactions for a business. The first, basic step is to always be informed about new threats and current data breach trends. Another advice is to ask clients only for relevant data: data that is not relevant to the transaction would be unnecessarily exposed to risk, and moreover, the clients may be reluctant to repeat or even complete online transactions, if they feel like they are asked too many personal information.

As for the technological aspect, the strongest advice is always to keep your web applications updated: doing this will repair any malware or vulnerabilities that exist in outdated applications. A good solution could be setting an automatic system update, that will keep your online transactions safe with no need to manually download any safeguard, and that will also protect your applications from viruses.

While using the best-in-class technologies and services can mitigate the technical failures, and thus missed opportunities; fraudulent identity and data theft require some advanced measures in place. These are:

Verify Identity

Asking for a valid ID such as a driving license is a good way to ensure it’s the real owner who is conducting the transaction. However, the process must happen in real-time to avoid irate the customer.

Data Validation

Another way to safeguard the transactions is to validate a set of identifying data with an authoritative data source online.

Face Recognition

If the scope of business allows for it, you can also put a face recognition tool in place to check whether it’s a real person or a bot.

Offering quite a few different AI-powered solutions for all the above-mentioned measures, the identification services at InfoCert certainly worth checking out.