DDos attacks - Ebbing risk for safe apparel e-tailing

The growing use of the internet around the globe has triggered the expansion of e-commerce activities and increased the amount of time and money consumers are spending shopping online. Apparel e-tailing is no exception; hence the number of individuals shopping via laptops, desktops, smartphones, and tablets is increasing with each passing day. The revenue-generating business of e-commerce is believed to rise from $231 billion to $262 billion in the US alone, which is a whopping 13 percent increase. This lays a huge responsibility on the shoulders of apparel e-tailers to provide appropriate service and timely delivery of orders to customers.

This may sound like an easy business, but e-tailers require keeping their websites and mobile applications up and running every single second while maintaining the safety and security of their customers' information. These pose a huge challenge in front of clothing brands running an online store. Most clothing e-tailers seem to have the knowledge of keeping their overheads, logistics, and revenues in place, but what they often miss out on is keeping their business safe from online threats.

Just like installing CCTV cameras and sensors in a brick-and-mortar store, an online store requires such safety measures since the risks of viruses and cyberattacks are higher. The expansion of apparel e-commerce brings along the danger and possibility of cybercrimes too. So far, e-tailers are aware of issues like credit card thefts and identity frauds, but the latest menace causing attacks is the Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) or Denial of Service (DoS).

The DoS or DDoS attack is essentially an attempt to make a machine or network resource unavailable to its intended users. Hackers employ different means and methods to carry out a DDoS attack, but it usually involves the efforts of one or more individuals to temporarily or indefinitely disturb or suspend connectivity to the internet. Cybercriminals planning such DDoS attacks generally target apparel websites or services that are hosted on high-profile web servers, such as banks, retailers, or card payment gateways, hampering internet activities.

With the convenience of shoppers purchasing clothing with just the touch of a finger, the online retailing platform is expected to increase to $327 billion in sales every year by 2016. But this amazing growth for online retailing comes at a price for brands and companies. Hackers using a DDoS attack can flood a retail website with tremendous traffic and overwhelm an apparel e-tailer's server, to the extreme of disabling access to sites or mobile applications for their users. This can result in heavy losses for a clothing brand and also cause high customer dissatisfaction. The intensity of such attacks can last from a few hours to a few days.

Holiday seasons and mega sales are usually the times when the probabilities of DDoS attacks are high. The apparel e-tailing industry is fiercely competitive, and hence, many unscrupulous players can also use the DDoS attack to sabotage their competitors' websites and draw consumers to their own site. When consumers cannot access a particular apparel e-tailer's site, they get frustrated and are bound to switch to their competitors' site for shopping. A DDoS attack, however, is not meant for stealing money, at least not directly, but the downtime caused due to such an attack can lead to heavy expenses.