Business-Facing Organisations Aren't Properly Protecting Their Websites

A new piece of research has cast some light on the subject of online domain maturity, and the gulf between B2B organisations, and businesses running consumer-facing domains.

The survey, conducted by Quocirca and commissioned by Neustar, took in the opinions of some 300 senior IT managers across Europe. It found that no less than 98 per cent of all European organisations now interact with customers online, and Quocirca pressed those IT managers on exactly how they ensured performance and security when it came to their sites.

While all respondents obviously recognised security as a critical element, Quocirca found that many of the non-consumer-facing businesses were reliant on outdated malware defence and intrusion detection systems. Consumer-facing organisations were found to be more likely to protect their online assets with outsourced cloud-based security, and were also more likely to have measures such as fraud detection, and continuous DDoS protection, in place.

The specific stats were that 87 per cent of consumer-facing businesses used continuous DDoS protection, compared to 71 per cent of non-consumer-facing firms. When it came to fraud detection, the percentages were very similar, namely 82 per cent plays 66 per cent respectively.

Consumer-facing businesses were unsurprisingly more concerned with spending money on improving customer service via user experience monitoring, and integrating user data with web analytics, with 43 per cent taking such measures. That was almost double the number when it came to non-consumer-facing organisations.

Rodney Joffe, senior VP and technologist at Neustar, commented: "Today's corporate focus needs to be about making it less appealing to cyber-attack your business, and more appealing to go elsewhere. Lessons can clearly be learned from consumer facing organisations operating at the sharp end of cyberspace."

"The key to successfully protecting your online domain is not to be able to outwit your cyber attacker, it is about outperforming your competitors with better protection – make it so the ROI for attackers is smaller in your company."