{"id":42619,"date":"2021-11-26T09:27:53","date_gmt":"2021-11-26T09:27:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/?guid=828f8e141cc1cd35e592b74cfbb5d1e9"},"modified":"2021-11-26T09:27:53","modified_gmt":"2021-11-26T09:27:53","slug":"smbs-urged-to-update-software-ahead-of-black-friday","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/smbs-urged-to-update-software-ahead-of-black-friday\/","title":{"rendered":"SMBs urged to update software ahead of Black Friday"},"content":{"rendered":"


\n Sabina Weston<\/a><\/span>
\n <\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n
25 Nov, 2021<\/span><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n<\/a><\/p>\n

\n

Small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs<\/a>) are being urged to update their software ahead of Black Friday and Cyber Monday to avoid financial and reputational damage<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The warning comes after the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC)<\/a> identified 4,151 online shops that had been compromised using a vulnerability within the e-commerce<\/a> platform Magento<\/a>. With 250,000 clients, the Adobe<\/a> subsidiary is the third-largest e-commerce system globally, after WooCommerce<\/span> and Shopify<\/a>.<\/p>\n

NCSC<\/span> alerted the affected retailers of the vulnerability in late September, with Magento<\/span> issuing a security patch on 12 October<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

All online businesses are being urged to update their software<\/a>, as the mass shift to e-commerce since the start of the pandemic has caused more customers to shop online than ever before, increasing their risk of falling victim to online scams<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Hence, the NCSC<\/span> has issued guidance on running a secure website and avoiding threats including skimming<\/a>, which has been described as \u201ca threat to all retailers\u201d by British Retail Consortium assistant director Graham Wynn.<\/p>\n

The trade association has urged \u201call retailers to follow the NCSC\u2019s<\/span> advice and check their preparedness for any cyber issues that could arise during the busy end of year period\u201d.<\/p>\n

NCSC<\/span> deputy director for Economy and Society, Sarah Lyons, said that the agency wants \u201csmall and medium-sized online retailers to know how to prevent their sites being exploited by opportunistic cyber criminals over the peak shopping period\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cFalling victim to cyber crime could leave you and your customers out of pocket and cause reputational<\/span> damage. It\u2019s important to keep websites as secure as possible and I would urge all business<\/a> owners to follow our guidance and make sure their software is up to date,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n

Last year, Check Point\u2019s security<\/a> researchers observed a sharp increase in the number of phishing<\/a> exploits in the run-up to Black Friday and Cyber Monday, with phishing emails having increased by over 13 times<\/a> in early November 2020. In December 2020, RiskIQ<\/span> security researchers discovered around 37,000 fake retail websites<\/a> set up to scam holiday shoppers, with 208 domain infringement events containing only \u201cBlack Friday,\u201d \u201cCyber Monday,\u201d \u201cBoxing Day,\u201d or \u201cChristmas\u201d. <\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sabina Weston<\/p>\n

25 Nov, 2021 <\/p>\n

Small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) are being urged to update their software ahead of Black Friday and Cyber Monday to avoid financial and reputational damage.
\nThe warning comes after the …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":627,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-42619","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42619","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/627"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42619"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42619\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":42620,"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42619\/revisions\/42620"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42619"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42619"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42619"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}