The close of summer in the United States brings with it one of the most important online selling seasons for Internet retailers: Back-to-School (BTS) shopping. This critical shopping season trails Cyber Monday closely as the most important for online generated revenue for many retailers. According to a recent study by Field Agent, a research firm specializing in retail, nearly two-thirds of U.S. consumers plan to purchase at least some of their BTS goods online. So, naturally this is a time of year that the security teams for major online retailers need to be on high alert, keeping an eye out for any attacks that can disrupt operations or breach sensitive data. It’s also a time they need to worry about malicious actors targeting customers with phishing attacks, even if there’s little they can do directly to prevent them. With average consumers in U.S. planning to spend between $500-$1,000 on BTS shopping, any impediment to consumer sentiment and quality of experience can have dramatically bad effects.

Given the timeliness of the topic, let’s explore some of what we, at Radware, are seeing as significant trends both in the threat landscape targeting online retailers, but also changes they are making in their IT and business that play into the cyber threats.