Strategies to Safeguard E-Commerce Payment Pages This Holiday Season

When it comes to online shopping season online, the peaks are getting steeper and closer together. The sales spikes start early in the fourth quarter, driven by shopping events such as Amazon Prime Day in October and Singles’ Day promotions in November.

Trading continues steadily until the next peak ahead of Thanksgiving, followed by Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Then Christmas and the post-Christmas sales kick in. No wonder the Golden Quarter, roughly the period between October and December, is the busiest time of year for E-Commerce businesses and their concern regarding securing payment pages.

Retailers run promotions. Shoppers snap up last-minute deals and discounts. Transport and logistics companies go into overdrive. But there’s another group seeking to make the most of peak season: criminals.

In this blog, we consider how fraudsters are following the money, the statistics behind the story, and how criminals steal data. Most importantly, we look at how businesses can protect themselves, their reputation, and their bottom line, especially given the new requirements for payment pages.

Securing Payment Pages: Fraudsters Follow The Money

Asked why he robbed banks, prolific US bank robber, Willie Sutton, is alleged to have responded “Because that’s why the money is.” But as money has migrated from bank branches and brick-and-mortar stores to online banking and e-commerce, real-world hold-ups have been replaced by digital heists.

Data equals money in the modern economy. So, criminals have switched their focus to stealing data. That’s payment card data, customer data including personally identifiable information (PII), and business data, such as intellectual property and critical algorithms.

Criminals sell stolen data on underground forums. They use payment card data to create fake cards to withdraw cash from ATMs. Or buy things to sell for profit. They take intellectual property, circumvent licensing restrictions, access user accounts, and infect devices to steal from your business and customers.

Generally, if data has value to your business or customers, then it inevitably has value to criminals, too. So, protect it at any time of year, but especially during peak season when sales spike.

The Statistics Behind The Story

Here are three statistics to illustrate the size of the e-commerce opportunity/risk.

• $4.1 trillion - E-commerce retail sales expected in 2024

• 20% - Of total global retail sales are made by e-commerce.

• 11% - CAGR 2024-2029 expected in the fastest-growing retail e-commerce markets: Turkey, Brazil, India, Mexico, and Russia.

(Statista)

And three more statistics to illustrate the size of the E-Commerce data breach security challenge:

• $3.48 million - The average cost of a data breach in the retail sector

• 90%  - Of data breaches involve a web application

• 258 days -The average time it takes to identify and contain a data breach

( IBM Cost of a Data Breach Report 2024)

How Criminals Steal Data

The Internet was designed for sharing and collaboration not necessarily banking and shopping. How web applications are built has also changed over time. 

JavaScript, a programming language, enables web developers to incorporate complex features on web pages more easily. But also enables criminals to steal data more easily.

Any JavaScript running on a web page can access all data entered into form fields on that page. This makes payment pages susceptible to digital skimming attacks, also known as formjacking or Magecart attacks. 

These client-side attacks occur when cybercriminals inject malicious code onto the payment page of an E-Commerce website to harvest sensitive payment card data. This includes the account number, expiration date, and 3-digit security code, which criminals can monetize. Either by using it to make unauthorized, fraudulent purchases for goods to re-sell for cash. Or by selling the data to other criminals.

Such attacks are pernicious as they can remain undetected for many months. They’re completely silent and don’t interfere with the payment process. The attack surface is also broad. Criminals can hack the website directly or attack via the supply chain, compromising either first-party or third-party JavaScript.

Strategies For Securing JavaScript On E-Commerce Sites

There are no silver bullets in risk management. Rather, it’s best to develop a defense in depth, layered, or matrix approach to managing risk. The protection afforded across the various layers or stages becomes greater than the sum of its parts. 

Consider the following ways to secure your E-Commerce site:

1. Get Advanced Protection Through Obfuscation

Obfuscation can deter attackers by making JavaScript code more difficult to analyze and reverse engineer. 

Use cases differ and one size seldom fits all, so the best security platforms allow businesses to define their obfuscation policy and needs. They allow businesses to seamlessly integrate obfuscation into their continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) tools. Plus, they run obfuscated code without slowing down website performance.

2. Protect Your Web Apps With Run-Time Defenses and Code Locks

Most obfuscation solutions solely protect code from cyberattacks. Market-leading solutions, such as the one from Jscrambler, go a step further by offering extensive runtime defenses. These defenses empower applications to autonomously detect and react to any tampering, debugging, or poisoning attempts in real-time.

3. Know When Your Web App Is Under Attack

Ongoing monitoring is a second, third, and ongoing chance to check that the risk was correctly assessed in the first place — and is still applicable. For dynamic, international businesses, continuous monitoring is a must.

Know if your JavaScript code is being debugged, tampered with, or being used outside your desired environment, via alerts and an at-a-glance monitoring dashboard. This enables real-time threat mitigation. 

4. Benefit From Expert Advice

A security solution is good. But a security solution with expert advice is even better. Look for a solution provider able to back up their products with responsive customer service, good-quality documentation, and the industry-specific expertise to tackle your specific vulnerabilities.

How Jscrambler Helps Protect Customer Data And Payment Pages

Jscrambler offers comprehensive client-side protection to prevent data leakage, customer hijacking, web skimming, and Magecart attacks. This helps protect customer data, secure web application first-party code, comply with PCI DSS v4, and enhance client-side security. 

Some of the features of the Jscrambler platform include:

• Polymorphic Code Obfuscation – Our enterprise-grade version has an extra layer of security and complexity to keep attackers out.

• Runtime Code Protection – Benefit from real-time self-defense against tampering, debugging, or poisoning attempts.

• Code Locks – Enforce licenses and prevent code from running outside set parameters for browser, date, or domain.

• Anti-Tampering – Protect your web apps against code changes. Trigger self-healing or specific countermeasures. 

• Anti-Debugging – Safeguard web apps by swiftly neutralizing any debugging or tampering attempts.

• Anti-Monkey Patching – Take advantage of a valuable feature for web apps processing payments and sensitive data.

• Real-Time Alerts – React in real-time with full application monitoring and notifications of high-risk behaviors.

With Jscrambler, we can maintain the level of security that is critical to running a multinational business and preserving our customers’ trust. The unique layer of security it adds is definitely an integral part of our defense strategy. I’d highly recommend Jscrambler to any other business with a full-blown E-Commerce platform that hosts millions of customers daily.

Fortune 500 Retailer

Comply With Payment Page Security Requirements

You may have heard about the upcoming March 31st, 2025 deadline around PCI DSS v4 requirements. 

To protect payment pages against digital skimming attacks, the PCI Security Standard Council (PCI SSC) published an updated version of the PCI Data Security Standard (PCI DSS). 

Version 4 of the standard contains two new requirements to protect against and detect digital skimming attacks on payment pages. These were published in March 2022 and will be requirements from 01 April 2025.

• Requirement 6.4.3 – this PCI requirement is designed to minimize the attack surface and manage all JavaScript present on the payment page. 

• Requirement 11.6.1 – this PCI requirement aims to detect tampering or unauthorized changes to the payment page and generate an alert when changes are detected.

Jscrambler helps businesses that accept card payments achieve frictionless compliance with requirements 6.4.3 and 11.6.1 of PCD DSS v4. Firstly, by enacting JavaScript polymorphic obfuscation to keep bad guys from reading and misusing code. Secondly, by providing maximum visibility and control over third-party scripts to prevent client-side vulnerabilities and attacks.

All this comes without impacting page load speed or the customer experience, which is as important during peak season as it is at any time of the year.

Don’t just take our word for it. Request a free, personalized demo today to see these features in action.