Online Payment Fraud Is On The Rise. Time To Secure Your Transactions With Digital Identity Management

The evolution of the online payment fraud landscape can be observed as a reaction to changing and more damaging fraud tactics, the impact of the pandemic, and the new advanced payment methods in the digital ecosystem. As reported by Juniper Research, 2022, the massive extent of the cumulative merchant losses between 2023 and 2027 is estimated to exceed $343 Billion, which equates to over 350% of Apple’s net income in the 2021 fiscal year.

While on one hand, online retailers are leaving no stone unturned in promoting business growth and expanding their online presence to stay connected to their customers, on the other hand, they find themselves struggling with countless security risks that come with it.

Since a lot of financial and commercial information is made available to the common mass via insecure networks, like the Internet, data security becomes a critical concern. According to the 2022 Finance Threat Landscape Report, 17.5 million credit card numbers were sold on black markets. With technological advancements gracing the Fintech industry, and the towering use of electronic cash and digital wallets for the sake of convenience, implementing fraud detection and prevention measures is paramount. You need to build a multitude of identity verification capabilities to ensure the data security of both merchants and users and safeguard online transactions from the prying eyes of cybercriminals.

The proliferation of cloud applications, connected devices, and the transition from legacy platforms to cloud-native solutions are an integral part of the business processes as organizations sprint ahead with digital transformation. As a result, the number of digital identities, like certificates and keys, is fast increasing, and managing them can be a significant challenge.

Online Transactions at High Risk

Machine identities provided by digital certificates enable the trust to ensure secure access and authentication to critical machines, devices, workloads, applications, and services. All of these connected “machines” use encrypted channels controlled by digital identities to transmit and store important data. It is critical to protect the machine identities as part of your organization’s cybersecurity strategy.

2023 EMA Report: SSL/TLS Certificate Security-Management and Expiration Challenges

Attackers are always on their toes to detect instances when these machine identities are not properly secured. Compromising machine identities allow hackers to enjoy a free pass and move laterally across the corporate network, without anyone noticing. The dire consequences are data breaches, network outages, SSL stripping attacks, eavesdropping attacks, malware, ransomware, phishing attacks, and more.

Ecuador’s largest private bank Banco Pichincha suffered a cyberattack that disrupted operations and took the ATM and online banking portal offline. The bank had to shut down portions of its network to prevent the attack’s spread to other systems. The episode had a cascading effect with the shutdown of systems leading to non-functional ATMs and online banking portals displaying maintenance messages.

In January 2021, Morgan Stanley faced a data breach. Morgan Stanley disclosed that the personal data of some of its corporate clients was stolen in a data breach that involved a third-party vendor, and hackers accessed information, including social security numbers.

As the global online payment industry is at high-security risk, it is pivotal to strengthen application delivery controllers (ADCs), networking devices, firewalls, and other infrastructure security devices with strong cryptography: identification, authentication, access control, confidentiality, and effective management of enterprise-critical machine identities.

Bolster Security with Digital Identity Management

Digital certificates, which provide identities for both hardware and software entities connected to the internet, can make or break a network system. Most enterprises now manage thousands of certificates regularly in their network infrastructure. These certificates must be monitored, tracked, and renewed on time to avoid expensive application outages and security issues. However, the maintenance required is not the only challenge posed by the growing number of certificates – security is also a significant concern.

By automating digital identity management, you can:

  • Track and manage certificate and key lifecycles efficiently: A well-built certificate lifecycle management (CLM) process is invaluable to businesses. It enables monitoring, facilitating, and execution of every certificate process, like procuring, provisioning, replacing, and renewing certificates on their respective endpoints across distributed environments, i.e. servers, applications, devices, and others. Implementing end-to-end automation to certificate lifecycle management is the roadmap to achieving an ideal Zero Trust framework, which is based on the principle of ‘trust no one, verify everything.’
  • Stay compliant with the changing data privacy laws and regulations: The primary aim of strict data privacy regulations such as the global PCI-DSS (Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard), Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (in the US), and the EU’s overarching General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is to secure customer data and curb data breaches. Enterprises that do not comply with these regulations face severe penalties, and often never fully recover financially and reputationally. In 2017, Equifax faced one of the largest data breaches in the world, which incurred the company over a billion dollars in penalties and settlements, and is still talked about today.
  • Protect against data breaches: By managing digital certificates, you can ensure the privacy of communications and transactions by reducing the risk that they can be intercepted by anyone other than the intended recipient. Digital certificates can guarantee the integrity of electronic communications by cutting down the risks of them being altered or tampered with, without the knowledge of the intended recipient. Tight integrations with HSMs and KMS (Key Management Services) provide certificates and keys to the highest possible levels of protection.
  • Improve vulnerability and risk management: Invest in a solution that scans the network in real-time and notifies security teams of potential risks and vulnerabilities. The ideal digital identity management solution must be policy-based and powered by end-to-end automation that enables remediation workflows such as revoking a rogue certificate or destroying a compromised key, along with the necessary validation checks.

Talk to an expert to know more about AppViewX CERT+ which provides automated certificate lifecycle management to enable policy-controlled machine identity management.

Tags

  • Application Delivery Controllers
  • certificate lifecycle management
  • Cybersecurity
  • digital identity management
  • vulnerability and risk management
  • Zero Trust

About the Author

Debarati Biswas

Senior Specialist- Product Marketing

A content creator and a lifelong learner with an ongoing curiosity. She pens insightful resources to address the pain points of the readers and prospective buyers and help them make well-informed decisions.

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