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6+ Cybersecurity Tips To Protect Your Customers During Holiday Shopping

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6+ Cybersecurity Tips To Protect Your Customers During Holiday Shopping

As the pervasive shadow of Covid-19 recedes and slowly becomes a memory, many of the technologies and protocols we developed during that time remain. Global eCommerce retail sales have always experienced an annual incline. However, these figures have been boosted as more consumers have adopted online shopping and abandoned traditional brick-and-mortar stores.

With more shoppers online, cybercriminals are sure to become bolder and more opportunistic too. While consumers must practice proper cyber hygiene and protect themselves on the internet, eCommerce store owners are also responsible for ensuring that shoppers’ private information stays safe.

But how? What steps should you take to protect your customers during the holiday shopping season? This guide will share six cybersecurity tips you can implement starting now.

Why Is Cybersecurity Crucial for the Shopping Season?

A 2021 Verizon report revealed that 46% of all cyber breaches impacted small businesses. Due to the high cost of a breach in the form of fines and damage to their reputation, many of these businesses are now facing bankruptcy.  

However, the most alarming statistic is that over a quarter of small businesses collecting credit card information have subpar cybersecurity or no security at all. With cyberattacks forecasted to spike during this holiday shopping season, eCommerce store owners must pay attention to their cybersecurity measures as much as they do to their marketing campaigns. But what should you look out for?

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Most Common Cyberattacks Affecting eCommerce Businesses

The most popular exploits today include:

  • Account takeover (ATO): Cybercriminals use stolen usernames and passwords to take over accounts. For eCommerce stores and businesses, this could be employee or administrative credentials to log into servers or client machines. Once the bad actor breaches the company’s network, they can gain access to the databases where confidential customer information is kept. They can then steal this information, sell it to the highest bidder or use it for nefarious purposes.
  • Gift card and wallet fraud: There are numerous ways cybercriminals and fraudsters can initiate these types of exploits. They can hack into a company’s gift card database and scrape card and activation numbers. Alternatively, they can tamper with physical gift cards or attempt to use gift card number generators. Your business must be mindful of this potential entry point.
  • Inventory exhaustion: Some online stores remove the item from the available inventory when customers add it to their shopping cart. This reserves the item for them, so it’s still available when they finally check out. Cybercriminals can use bots to initiate a hoarding attack. A bot will constantly add items to a shopping cart to create the illusion that it is out of stock. This denies the sale of the item for petty purposes or so that the bad actor can purchase it themselves when they can afford to.
  • Bandwidth choking (DDoS attacks): Distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks are one of the oldest tricks in the book. This is where a bad actor floods a website or web service with network traffic to overload and crash it, although it can happen to small online stores too.
  • Content scraping: Cyberattackers may use bots to extract or copy all of your website’s content that they can use maliciously. For instance, they can duplicate your website and divert organic traffic from it, then use your website’s clone to steal information from your customers.

Cybersecurity Tips To Protect Your eCommerce Customers

So how can you protect your company and customers from the above attacks this coming holiday season?

1. Enforce Strong, Unique User Passwords

Many eCommerce stores require users to create accounts before they can make purchases. A 2021 GoodFirms survey found that 30% of breaches could be traced back to weak password policies and practices. Generally, the less complex a password is, the more susceptible it is to brute-force attacks. Your business must enforce strong password policies both internally (employees and administrators) and externally (customer profiles).

Here are a few characteristics of a strong password:

  • Unique and different from your other login credentials
  • Uses a mixture of uppercase and lowercase letters, symbols, and numbers
  • At least eight characters long
  • Does not contain any personal information, such as dates of birth or names of relatives/pets

Using strong passwords is one of the most important cybersecurity tips, and it’s critical that your business enforces this policy. It is also recommended that users (both your customers and employees) utilize a password manager.

2. Establish Cybersecurity Policies

Good cybersecurity awareness can thwart most exploits initiated by bad actors. Being able to identify fraudulent links and other phishing exploits is more valuable than trying to find a software solution that addresses all your cybersecurity concerns.

You and your employees must be updated on the latest cybersecurity practices and protocols. Consider hiring an expert who can walk you through the best practices. Your cybersecurity policies should be informed by the data privacy rules and regulations of the territories your business operates in. For instance, if you’re operating in the EU, you must be educated on the GDPR. If you’re operating within California, you should understand the rules of the California Consumer Privacy Act.

Any business that deals with payment information and credit cards must ensure that it is PCI-DSS compliant. The official PCI security standards council site has a list of guidelines to help companies keep confidential customer data as safe as possible.  

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3. Implement Additional Authentication

Concepts such as two-factor and multi-factor authentication have become extremely popular in recent years. Multi-factor authentication means implementing an additional form of authentication in addition to your user credentials. For example, after entering a username and password, you may choose to verify the login attempt through an email link or one-time code sent to a user’s phone.  

4. Only Store Customer Data That You Need

Guidelines and regulations such as the GDPR don’t specify a time limit for how long you can keep a customer’s personal information. However, it’s important that you only store data that you need to provide services to the customer for as long as you need it.

It’s also important that you segment databases and data according to their importance. Credit card and payment information should be kept separate from general customer information and your business information. All data must be placed in secure encrypted databases.    

5. Employ a DDoS Mitigation Solution

DDoS and other bot-related attacks can be mitigated through the right solution. However, you should first ensure that you have a disaster recovery site in place. If your attacker manages to shut your site down, you can roll the traffic over to a recovery site. Of course, this doesn’t always work, especially if the attack is DNS based.

Alternatively, you can purchase a dedicated server to prevent DDoS and bot attacks. Sometimes, your ISP or cloud provider may offer integrated DDoS protection. Do not hesitate to add this feature to the list of services. While bot-mitigating solutions such as CAPTCHA have been shown to decrease conversion rates, they’ve been proven to be somewhat effective against spam and bot attacks.

That said, cybercriminals have begun using more sophisticated tactics, such as machine learning to circumvent CAPTCHA checks. With cloud-based platforms and integrated memory systems being the driving force of machine learning adoption, more cybercriminals will have access to these tools.

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As such, it’s important to implement a multi-channel mitigation solution. For instance, your mitigation solution should be able to detect any suspicious traffic coming from a visitor’s IP address. It should also be able to track any questionable customer activity, such as adding items to carts but not checking out.

6. Conduct Regular Software Audits

Your business should be employing all the necessary software tools to facilitate proper cybersecurity, including anti-malware solutions, firewalls, user account management tools, etc. You can hire a zero trust expert to help determine what software will suit your network infrastructure the best.

You also need to monitor your software stack and ensure that your operating systems, productivity/business software and cybersecurity software are all updated to the latest versions. This process can be made easier with cloud panels and workload automation software.

Conclusion

Many of the cybersecurity tips listed in this guide should be implemented regardless of the upcoming holiday shopping season. Nevertheless, your website and servers must be able to handle the usage influxes and traffic spikes that will be brought on by the holiday shopping season. One of the best ways to ensure holiday sales are not interrupted is to have multiple recovery sites to mitigate any downtime.

Next, your company must ensure that it’s up to date on the latest cybersecurity and network protection developments. You can only protect your customers if you protect yourself first.

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How To Combine PR and Content Marketing Superpowers To Achieve Business Goals

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A figure pulls open a dress shirt to reveal the term PR on a Superman-like costume, reflecting the superpower resulting from combining content and PR.

A transformative shift is happening, and it’s not AI.

The aisle between public relations and content marketing is rapidly narrowing. If you’re smart about the convergence, you can forever enhance your brand’s storytelling.

The goals and roles of content marketing and PR overlap more and more. The job descriptions look awfully similar. Shrinking budgets and a shrewd eye for efficiency mean you and your PR pals could face the chopping block if you don’t streamline operations and deliver on the company’s goals (because marketing communications is always first to be axed, right?).

Yikes. Let’s take a big, deep breath. This is not a threat. It’s an opportunity.

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Reach across the aisle to PR and streamline content creation, improve distribution strategies, and get back to the heart of what you both are meant to do: Build strong relationships and tell impactful stories.

So, before you panic-post that open-to-work banner on LinkedIn, consider these tips from content marketing, PR, and journalism pros who’ve figured out how to thrive in an increasingly narrowing content ecosystem.

1. See journalists as your audience

Savvy pros know the ability to tell an impactful story — and support it with publish-ready collateral — grounds successful media relationships. And as a content marketer, your skills in storytelling and connecting with audiences, including journalists, naturally support your PR pals’ media outreach.

Strategic storytelling creates content focused on what the audience needs and wants. Sharing content on your blog or social media builds relationships with journalists who source those channels for story ideas, event updates, and subject matter experts.

“Embedding PR strategies in your content marketing pieces informs your audience and can easily be picked up by media,” says Alex Sanchez, chief experience officer at BeWell, New Mexico’s Health Insurance Marketplace. “We have seen reporters do this many times, pulling stories from our blogs and putting them in the nightly news — most of the time without even reaching out to us.”

Acacia James, weekend producer/morning associate producer at WTOP radio in Washington, D.C., says blogs and social media posts are helpful to her work. “If I see a story idea, and I see that they’re willing to share information, it’s easier to contact them — and we can also backlink their content. It’s huge for us to be able to use every avenue.” 

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Kirby Winn, manager of PR at ImpactLife, says reporters and assignment editors are key consumers of their content. “And I don’t mean a news release that just hit their inbox. They’re going to our blog and consuming our stories, just like any other audience member,” he says. “Our organization has put more focus into content marketing in the past few years — it supports a media pitch so well and highlights the stories we have to tell.”

Storytelling attracts earned media that might not pick up the generic news topic. “It’s one thing to pitch a general story about how we help consumers sign up for low-cost health insurance,” Alex says. “Now, imagine a single mom who just got a plan after years of thinking it was too expensive. She had a terrible car accident, and the $60,000 ER bill that would have ruined her financially was covered. Now that’s a story journalists will want to cover, and that will be relatable to their audience and ours.” 

2. Learn the media outlet’s audience

Seventy-three percent of reporters say one-fourth or less of the stories pitched are relevant to their audiences, according to Cision’s 2023 State of the Media Report (registration required).

PR pros are known for building relationships with journalists, while content marketers thrive in building communities around content. Merge these best practices to build desirable content that works for your target audience and the media’s audiences simultaneously.

WTOP’s Acacia James says sources who show they’re ready to share helpful, relevant content often win pitches for coverage. “In radio, we do a lot of research on who is listening to us, and we’re focused on a prototype called ‘Mike and Jen’ — normal, everyday people in Generation X … So when we get press releases and pitches, we ask, ‘How interested will Mike and Jen be in this story?’” 

3. Deliver the full content package (and make journalists’ jobs easier)

Cranking out content to their media outlet’s standards has never been tougher for journalists. Newsrooms are significantly understaffed, and anything you can do to make their lives easier will be appreciated and potentially rewarded with coverage. Content marketers are built to think about all the elements to tell the story through multiple mediums and channels.

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“Today’s content marketing pretty much provides a package to the media outlet,” says So Young Pak, director of media relations at MedStar Washington Hospital Center. “PR is doing a lot of storytelling work in advance of media publication. We (and content marketing) work together to provide the elements to go with each story — photos, subject matter experts, patients, videos, and data points, if needed.”   

At WTOP, the successful content package includes audio. “As a radio station, we are focused on high-quality sound,” Acacia James says. “Savvy sources know to record and send us voice memos, and then we pull cuts from the audio … You will naturally want to do someone a favor if they did you one — like providing helpful soundbites, audio, and newsworthy stories.”  

While production value matters to some media, you shouldn’t stress about it. “In the past decade, how we work with reporters has changed. Back in the day, if they couldn’t be there in person, they weren’t going to interview your expert,” says Jason Carlton, an accredited PR professional and manager of marketing and communications at Intermountain Health. “During COVID, we had to switch to virtual interviewing. Now, many journalists are OK with running a Teams or Zoom interview they’ve done with an expert on the news.”

BeWell’s Alex Sanchez agrees. “I’ve heard old school PR folks cringe at the idea of putting up a Zoom video instead of getting traditional video interviews. It doesn’t really matter to consumers. Focus on the story, on the timeliness, and the relevance. Consumers want authenticity, not super stylized, stiff content.”

4. Unite great minds to maximize efficiency

Everyone needs to set aside the debate about which team — PR or content marketing — gets credit for the resulting media coverage.

At MedStar Washington Hospital Center, So Young and colleagues adopt a collaborative mindset on multichannel stories. “We can get the interview and gather information for all the different pieces — blog, audio, video, press release, internal newsletter, or magazine. That way, we’re not trying to figure things out individually, and the subject matter experts only have to have that conversation once,” she says.

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Regular, cross-team meetings are essential to understand the best channels for reaching key audiences, including the media. A story that began life as a press release might reap SEO and earned media gold if it’s strategized as a blog, video, and media pitch.

“At Intermountain Health, we have individual teams for media relations, marketing, social media, and hospital communications. That setup works well because it allows us to bring in the people who are the given experts in those areas,” says Intermountain’s Jason Carlton. “Together, we decide if a story is best for the blog, a media pitch, or a mix of channels — that way, we avoid duplicating work and the risk of diluting the story’s impact.”

5. Measure what matters

Cutting through the noise to earn media mentions requires keen attention to metrics. Since content marketing and PR metrics overlap, synthesizing the data in your team meetings can save time while streamlining your storytelling efforts.

“For content marketers, using analytical tools such as GA4 can help measure the effectiveness of their content campaigns and landing pages to determine meaningful KPIs such as organic traffic, keyword rankings, lead generation, and conversion rates,” says John Martino, director of digital marketing for Visiting Angels. “PR teams can use media coverage and social interactions to assess user engagement and brand awareness. A unified and omnichannel approach can help both teams demonstrate their value in enhancing brand visibility, engagement, and overall business success.”

To track your shared goals, launch a shared dashboard that helps tell the combined “story of your stories” to internal and executive teams. Among the metrics to monitor:

  • Page views: Obviously, this queen of metrics continues to be important across PR and content marketing. Take your analysis to the next level by evaluating which niche audiences are contributing to these views to further hone your storytelling targets, including media outlets.
  • Earned media mentions: Through a media tracker service or good old Google Alerts, you can tally the echo of your content marketing and PR. Look at your site’s referral traffic report to identify media outlets that send traffic to your blog or other web pages.
  • Organic search queries: Dive into your analytics platform to surface organic search queries that lead to visitors. Build from those questions to develop stories that further resonate with your audience and your targeted media.
  • On-page actions: When visitors show up on your content, what are they doing? What do they click? Where do they go next? Building next-step pathways is your bread and butter in content marketing — and PR can use them as a natural pipeline for media to pick up more stories, angles, and quotes.

But perhaps the biggest metric to track is team satisfaction. Who on the collaborative team had the most fun writing blogs, producing videos, or calling the news stations? Lean into the natural skills and passions of your team members to distribute work properly, maximize the team output, and improve relationships with the media, your audience, and internal teams.

“It’s really trying to understand the problem to solve — the needle to move — and determining a plan that will help them achieve their goal,” Jason says. “If you don’t have those measurable objectives, you’re not going to know whether you made a difference.”

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Don’t fear the merger

Whether you deliberately work together or not, content marketing and public relations are tied together. ImpactLife’s Kirby Winn explains, “As soon as we begin to talk about (ourselves) to a reporter who doesn’t know us, they are certainly going to check out our stories.”

But consciously uniting PR and content marketing will ease the challenges you both face. Working together allows you to save time, eliminate duplicate work, and gain free time to tell more stories and drive them into impactful media placements.

Register to attend Content Marketing World in San Diego. Use the code BLOG100 to save $100. Can’t attend in person this year? Check out the Digital Pass for access to on-demand session recordings from the live event through the end of the year.

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Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute

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Trends in Content Localization – Moz

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Trends in Content Localization - Moz

Multinational fast food chains are one of the best-known examples of recognizing that product menus may sometimes have to change significantly to serve distinct audiences. The above video is just a short run-through of the same business selling smokehouse burgers, kofta, paneer, and rice bowls in an effort to appeal to people in a variety of places. I can’t personally judge the validity of these representations, but what I can see is that, in such cases, you don’t merely localize your content but the products on which your content is founded.

Sometimes, even the branding of businesses is different around the world; what we call Burger King in America is Hungry Jack’s in Australia, Lays potato chips here are Sabritas in Mexico, and DiGiorno frozen pizza is familiar in the US, but Canada knows it as Delissio.

Tales of product tailoring failures often become famous, likely because some of them may seem humorous from a distance, but cultural sensitivity should always be taken seriously. If a brand you are marketing is on its way to becoming a large global seller, the best insurance against reputation damage and revenue loss as a result of cultural insensitivity is to employ regional and cultural experts whose first-hand and lived experiences can steward the organization in acting with awareness and respect.

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How AI Is Redefining Startup GTM Strategy

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How AI Is Redefining Startup GTM Strategy

AI and startups? It just makes sense.

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