How safe are your e-commerce transactions?
Details
India has long been a global hub for ITES and BPO services. Huge amounts
of institutional data have been processed, and our corporate security
systems have evolved from intrusion detection systems and firewalls to
high-tech data driven security setups.
While the contractual
clients for these businesses ensure that security services are
up-to-date, the RBI and IRDA have enforced regulations to secure banking
and insurance transactions respectively. However, other sectors may not
be doing so well.
"There is healthy development across some
sectors while others are caught with their head in the sand in terms of
data security", Ashish Thapar, Executive Consulting Partner,
Professional Services, Asia, Verizon Enterprise Solutions says.
Anxiety about the safety of using Indian mobile apps reached the peak
recently post alleged data breaches in popular apps like Ola, Zomato and
few others.
"In such cases data may have been stolen from
back-end servers, not from the mobile applications. It is advisable for
users to have a different risk approach to these online accounts",
Thapar says.
While experts may advise one to refrain from using
banking credentials, the fact remains that bigger e-commerce players
like Flipkart, Amazon and Snapdeal have made tall claims about the
revenues generated from the mobile platform. Snapdeal claims around 70%
of its transactions are done with a mobile device. Given the whopping
numbers, what is the effective safety quotient behind conducting
financial transactions with these mobile apps on public Wi-Fi?
"The safety factor is varied across companies. Today's apps must feature
sandboxing to ensure safety against existing malware and strong
encryption to safeguard data in transit", Thapar says.
While
Apple and Play Store have ramped up security guidelines to prevent
malicious or deficient applications from entering the platform, the fact
remains there is not much data protection enforcement unlike European
countries.
A third reason for genuine concern is that while
India has germinated into a fertile ground for many online startups,
there are concerns that these compromise on security, and hence its
consumers are exposed to potential security threats.
"This is
where the role of a possible regulator may come in handy to establish a
baseline for security. Until then users may be at a risk of sharing data
with organizations that may be compromising information security to
make a quick buck in the initial stages of their business"
