Retailers admit to balancing security risks against opportunities to boost sales

Thursday, June 28, 2018 - 10:01 by Graham Miller

The latest report from ACI Worldwide has shown that although e-commerce sites are keen to offer safe shopping online to customers and protect them from fraud, they will often let standards slip if it means they can secure a rise in sales as a result.

A little over a quarter of the retailers from across the continent that were scrutinised as part of the study admitted that they had been struck by some form of security breach, leading to the loss of customer data.

Sixty one per cent said that the risk of being hit with a cyber attack was greater today than just 12 months earlier, while a similar proportion argued that the bigger risk facing their profitability at the moment came down to cart abandonment.

Almost half of those questioned confirmed that they would swallow the increase in the threat of cyber attacks if doing so meant that they would be able to sell higher volumes of products to customers.

This shows that there is clearly a disconnect between the demand for safe shopping online and the willingness of retailers to actually take the necessary precautions to ensure that it is available.

Report spokesperson, Andy McDonald, said that as e-commerce becomes more popular, retailers are flocking to embrace it, even if they are not necessarily prepared for the full brunt of the responsibility that comes with operating online.

He also said that it was not acceptable for firms to privilege higher sales figures over data security, especially in the wake of the GDPR’s rollout which means that retailers will face steeper fines if they suffer a breach.

Making payments as secure as possible is the most important step, according to McDonald, since this is the point at which the most damaging types of fraud can take place.