ZIUR advises adopting cybersecurity precautions for a Black Friday without scares
The increase in Internet purchases raises the level of risk
The Gipuzkoa Industrial Cybersecurity Center, ZIUR, has drawn up a series of recommendations to take into account in view of the increase in commercial activity over the Internet on the occasion of 'Black Friday' and Christmas shopping. Although the date of 'Black Friday' is next November 25, many businesses are advancing their online sales campaign.
ZIUR warns of the increase in criminal activities through the Internet on these dates of strong commercial activity. As María Penilla, technical director of ZIUR, assures, "not only digital commerce platforms design their sales campaigns, hackers also prepare their strategies before a few weeks of greater consumerism and commercial activity on the Internet."
In this sense, from ZIUR it is recommended to increase caution on dates like these, where there are numerous offers and in which many platforms take advantage of the claim of the "shortage" of units at a reduced price to try to speed up the sales process. "Quick purchase decisions to hunt for the best offer, recalls María Penilla, are usually an added risk."
For this reason, ZIUR recommends paying attention to a series of recommendations to increase security against cyber threats both in private devices and in equipment dedicated to professional activity.
First of all, it is convenient to look at some details of the web page where you want to make a purchase. A first sign is that the address of the web page is 'https' and that the padlock that appears in front of it is closed. These types of pages give us the assurance that this website is encrypting the data, which increases the protection of buyers' payment data. On the other hand, if we access a website whose url begins with 'http' (without the ), the browser itself will give us an alert message, indicating that the address is not secure. The recommendation is never to make purchases on these websites, since the data is not encrypted and, today, a website that does not use 'https' is highly suspicious.
Cookies also represent another protection factor. All websites must offer people who access them the option to manage their own cookies, and thus decide what that company does with their personal data. It may be uncomfortable, but always review those cookies and allow only the functional ones, necessary for the web to work, and reject the rest.
Using browsers in "incognito or private" mode means that the websites accessed store as little information as possible about those who visit them. For this reason, it often happens that the price of a product or service increases when the same product is consulted again on the same website. "In some cases, such as Amazon's, the price is set by its own algorithm, explains Penilla, but in many others the search the day before is registered, if we accept all cookies or if we do not use browsers in incognito mode, and we They are raising the price; it is still a strategy to encourage us to make a quick decision to buy”.
The forms of payment accepted on a website are another aspect to monitor and give a lot of information about its legitimacy. In this section, Paypal is a good option when paying on web pages, since it has several advantages such as the possibility of using the recharge option to control spending and limit economic damage in the event of a security incident. In addition, this payment platform offers a guarantee, liability services and help against incidents. Another good practice is to have a rechargeable credit card that is used only for online payments, with a spending limit and activated alerts.
Having updated operating systems and antivirus is another essential security measure, both on computers and mobile devices. In any case, from ZIUR it is recommended, whenever possible, to make purchases from a computer, since, having a larger screen, it makes it easier to carry out the security checks indicated above and to know where a link leads when click on it.
Finally, from ZIUR it is advisable to pay special attention to bargains. If a website offers a product with a very significant discount, it is necessary to make sure before carrying out the operation to avoid accessing fraudulent pages.