There has been a significant increase in the number of small and e-commerce businesses, especially since the COVID-19 pandemic.
People are taking their stores online, increasing the demand for digital services, including web hosting services. This rising demand for online services has given impetus to another online business opportunity – Reseller Hosting business.
Reseller Hosting is a web hosting solution that allows individuals to start their own web hosting business by buying Hosting Reseller plans from parent web hosting companies and selling customized hosting services to customers who require it.
However, the rise in online business also comes with an increase in cybercriminal and fraud activities. These hackers and fraudsters largely target and prey on new websites and businesses due to the lack of experience and advanced security measures.
Before jumping on to safeguarding your online business from fraudsters, it is important to understand the several types of fraud in the e-commerce industry.
What are the Types of Fraud in Business?
There are different types of fraud used by cybercriminals to disrupt businesses and their customers.
- Account Takeover
- Credit Card Fraud
- Identity Theft and Account Takeover (ATO) fraud
- Refund Fraud
- Chargeback Fraud
How to Secure Online Businesses from Fraudulent Activities?
Fraudsters can target any small business such as a Reseller Hosting company. However, you can protect your online business from such fraudulent activities by following the practices and strategies mentioned below:
- Implement CAPTCHA for secure checkout
The implementation of CAPTCHA (Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart) can stop almost all bots attacks. This is because CAPTCHA ensures that the customer request is received from a human being and not a bot.
A customer needs to type in certain numbers and letters they see on the screen that are usually jumbled up and require focus. Although it can hamper usability to some extent, it is a crucial tool to prevent bot attacks and fraudulent practices.
- Encourage secure and strong passwords
Setting rigorous and strong passwords requirements whenever a customer tries to sign up to your website adds a layer of security and protection against fraud.
You need to ensure and encourage your customers to create a complex password with numbers, letters, special characters, capitalization to ensure secure passwords instead of creating a simple or memorable password that can be easy to guess.
- Address and credit card verification
Verifying addresses and credit card values are crucial compliance standards to keep fraudsters and hackers away from your business.
Online merchants and banks use the Credit card Verification Value (CVV) and Address Verification System (AVS) to ensure fraud protection. AVS cross-checks the customer’s billing address with the information on their credit card. CVV is a unique three-digit number or code on the back of credit cards that are unfamiliar to hackers, as they cannot access the CVV without actually stealing the customer’s credit cards.
- Restrict employee access to payment gateway
As a business and website owner, you should be the key administrator of your website. This role includes having the control to restrict payment gateway access by controlling and configuring permissions on your website online portal.
Limiting payment gateway access reduces the chances of employee fraud.
- Set limits to daily customer purchases
Once bots take over the customer accounts through fraud, they can perform multiple purchases and transactions to scam the website. If you do not set limits on your customer purchases, it can severely impact your website’s performance and business.
Therefore, you must consider setting a valid and reasonable limit to your customer’s total dollar value and the total number of purchases you accept in a day, based on their purchase and shopping patterns.
- Contact customers or send messages to validate purchases
It is crucial to contact your customers via a text message or an email to let them know when and if you have received a payment on their end for any item.
This practice helps your customers learn about if their credit cards are used fraudulently without their notice. In addition, sending such critical messages and notifications makes your business highly reliable, trustworthy, and credible.
- Maintain a proper record of your customer transactions
Your online or Reseller Hosting business should have a proper record of all your sales and transactions. Reconciling and recording these accounts daily will help you notice your customer’s buying behaviour and patterns. In addition, this record will make it simpler for you to determine any unexpected or suspicious transactions.
As a Hosting Reseller, whenever you sell hosting plans or other services, you need to ensure to keep a bill or receipt as proof to avoid refund fraud, where a dishonest customer tries to reclaim an order or service that they had already received.
Detailed, thorough, and organized records can help you prevent fraudulent payments and refunds.
Summing Up
Protecting and securing your business against fraudsters and hackers is a crucial responsibility and should be every retailer’s and Hosting Reseller’s top priority. Small and medium businesses are getting affected by cybercriminal attacks and other online threats continuously. They are getting more advanced, clever, and sophisticated, making it even more crucial to implement security measures and safeguard businesses and their customer’s data.
Therefore, implement the strategies mentioned above for a secure and safe online business.
If you wish to start your web hosting business, buy Reseller Hosting plans and services by ResellerClub.
We offer highly reliable, performance-optimized, secure, and affordable Reseller Hosting solutions with 24×7 ResellerClub support. So, check out our plans and services for utmost business security and fraud protection and make money through your own online web hosting business.
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