A degree of trust is implicit in any transaction. Online, many signs that build a customer’s trust (such as a shopfront and friendly staff) are removed. One of the roles of providing security in online transaction systems is precisely to build that trust.
“There is no silver bullet for online security,” says Andrew Horbury, product marketing manager at e-commerce security company Verisign. “When choosing to do business with one organisation over another, your customers will often choose the one they trust most,” he continues.
“Online businesses should look at the appropriate level of trust for their site.” suggests Horbury.
“Whatever the method, the key is to remember that it should drive traffic to your site and be visible to customers who may need education to know that your site is the one to trust.”
One of the most common security mechanisms in e-commerce is SSL (Secure Socket Layer) encryption.
“Like a passport or a driver’s licence, an SSL certificate is issued by a trusted source: a certification authority of some sort,” says Horbury.
“It’s important for two reasons: it encrypts and authenticates – it keeps your user’s information safe and protects you from compromising situations to do with your customer’s sensitive information.
“Additionally, it builds trust and repeat custom from users who have confidence in the secure services you provide. It works in three steps.
“Firstly, the SSL certificate encrypts sensitive information during online transactions.
“Secondly, the SSL certificate contains unique, authenticated information about the certificate’s owner (this information is about your business).
“Finally, the certificate is verified by a certificate authority to ensure the owner is who they say they are.”
Brad Templeton, director of product marketing at Transaction Network Systems (TNS), says: “SHA256 is the next step up from SSL. It effectively doubles the number of characters in the encryption. This type of encryption is becoming more robust; it’s one of the standards that Visa suggests.”
Though this information is useful, a big question for many business owners is ‘how much security is adequate?’
"'Adequate’ is not usually a word used in security discussions,” explains Chris Hughes, also of TNS. “It is the responsibility of the gateway to ensure the security of sensitive data, otherwise the banks and card schemes would not allow them to continue processing. However, there are many additional tools and processes that are employed to create layers of protection to mitigate vulnerabilities.”
For most small businesses operating an e-commerce shopfront, SSL encryption is an effective method of ensuring a customer’s security and trust. As the small business grows more prominently into international markets, however, there are additional measures that can be taken, just in case.
There are two security measures small businesss owners should consider.
First, there’s BIN (Bank Identification Number) range blocking, which recognises card numbers from disreputable countries and either blocks them immediately or alerts the merchant to irregularities.
Then, there is also IP range blocking, which detects if a BIN doesn’t match the location of the source IP address, thereby indicating potentially fraudulent activity.
Netregistry can provide the SSL certificate you need to make your transactions secure. Read more about QuickSSL here.
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