When you make the decision to start your own business, you know you have to accept the good with the bad of it all. In that acceptance, there's the potential to achieve great success and make more money than you ever dreamed but there are also certain threats posed against your business that can throw everything down the drain... But that's just a risk you're going to have to be willing to take.

In all sectors of the business world, as a business owner, you're going to have to face the factor of threats to your business. Some threats cause minor setbacks while other threats, if not handled in a timely manner, can cause you to lose everything you worked so hard for.

Because of the different types of threats your business will face, it's important to make sure your business is protected in all sectors. From property damage to lawsuits, it's important to take the necessary precautions before they happen, and business insurance often covers the costs of legal claims as well as cover damages from errors or unintentional omissions.

What Business Faces the Biggest Threat?

In the eyes of a customer, they can only shop in a few different ways. They can shop in-store, they can shop from their TV, they can shop online, and they can order things out of a magazine. Out of those four options, shopping in-store and online are the most popular ways people shop. Now, out of those two popular ways people shop, can you guess which one faces the biggest threat?

If you guessed online shopping, then you guessed right. According to aciworldwide.com, online fraud increased 22% in 2017, so as the popularity in online shopping grows, just imagine what the number is today!

So if you are an e-commerce business owner or are thinking about starting an e-commerce business, it's important that you take the necessary action to protect your business but it's also important to be fully aware of exactly what types of data threats your business will be up against. Take a look a the biggest data threats your business will more than likely face.

Disruption of Business

Business disruption is any type of rift that causes your business to not be able to conduct business at any given moment. With e-commerce stores, they're supposed to be open all the time... there's no being shut down on weekends or holidays; your business needs to be accessible to people whenever they want to shop, regardless of what time of day it is.

Things like natural disasters, hacker attacks, and system shutdowns can all cause business disruptions.

Data Breaches

Breaches in data are things that happen all the time in businesses but that doesn't mean it should be considered as a norm, like it's okay to happen because it happens so often. A breach in data is when hackers gain access to a business' network and obtain customers' sensitive information for their own personal gain.

The sad part is that a lot of the customers who have fallen victim to data breaches, don't even know that their information was collected from a particular company to even be part of a data breach! When breaches in data happen, especially with big brand companies, it instills a lack of trust in those customers and they end up not shopping with that company anymore because they don't trust the site's security.

Fraud

Fraud is a tricky thing and the "fraudsters" who have mastered the act are some very clever individuals. The thing about fraud is that it's a silent crime. Oftentimes, business owners don't even know that they've processed a fraudulent transaction until weeks or sometimes months later. By that time, it's too late to find the person who committed the fraud or to even dispute the charges. As a business owner, your heart goes out to the person whose information was stolen from but your business is also the victim here

Fraud comes in many forms too. Fraud can be anything from chargebacks to refund fraud... these cybercriminals even commit fraud through social media! So it's very important that you, as a business owner, are very aware of the signs of fraud. For instance, any time a customer's shipping address is different from the billing address, that could be a major red flag to look out for.

But the reality of fraud is that it's hard to detect and there aren't any real clear-cut signs to look for because a lot of potential signs are actually real shopping patterns of real customers so it would be pretty bad to accuse a customer of fraud when they really weren't committing any fraudulent crimes. You can purchase software that monitors for fraud for sure... constant monitoring is going to be the very thing that brings you a little peace of mind on the fraudulent front.