The igaming industry is an appealing target for all kinds of fraudsters, hackers and assorted malicious types. With companies whose revenues are counted in the billions, even a minor data breach could cost millions in revenues and fines. The introduction of GDPR earlier this year has put igaming under even more pressure from regulations, so it’s essential for operators to secure themselves against potential threats to their customers’ wellbeing.
PAUL MARCANTONIO is head of UK & Western Europe at ECOMMPAY, establishing the payment service provider as a trusted partner to e-commerce merchants throughout the region. He has more than 18 years’ experience working for representatives of the payments industry, including popular e-wallets, and tier 1 interactive gaming brands, such as Ubisoft and THQ.
Risks to customer data from hackers are perhaps the biggest threat facing igaming businesses. As a hub for bank details and transaction flows, breaking into an operator’s website can prove wildly lucrative for determined crooks, who can sell the data or use it for identity theft. Even famous physical casinos aren’t safe from pernicious attempts by criminals to bust into their virtual data vaults. Witness what happened at the Hard Rock chain last year.
Fortunately, the toolsets to foil these kinds of breaches are constantly evolving, and businesses across the industry are already deploying methods such as two-factor authentication machine-learningenhanced firewalls and threat detection in their battle against cybercrime. Keeping abreast of the technological arms race between hackers and businesses is vital if you want to avoid the costly effects of data breaches.
Operators aren’t alone in their struggle. Partnerships with reputable and reliable payment service providers can safeguard not only data and revenues but also brand reputation. After all, it’s no good if the bits of your business you’re outsourcing are creakier than a haunted house and are at risk of fines from international payment systems regulators. Ensuring that your payment partner is up to speed on the latest security measures, holds PCI DSS certification, offers tokenisation encryption and complements automatic transaction monitoring with comprehensive manual monitoring of suspicious incidents can help boost profits in a very simple way: by protecting igaming operators from avoidable financial losses.
As a side note, tech-based hacking isn’t the only issue igaming has to grapple with. All the fancy security technology in the world won’t help if a criminal can get a hold of customer data with a phone call. Social engineering – a very nerdy way to describe having a conversation – is a pretty big secondary threat to companies operating in the igaming sector. Having a clear and strictly enforced set of guidelines as to what information staff can and cannot dole out over the phone or email (and the checks they need to run before they give it out) is crucial to preventing slip-ups that can cost customers and companies thousands. Briefing staff on proper email protocols, such as not clicking on weird links from unknown addresses, might sound obvious but can have incredible preventative effects.
So, in summary, combine tech and talk and you’re good to go.
COMPANY PROFILE
•NAME ECOMMPAY •FOUNDED 2012 •SECTOR FINTECH •WEBSITEECOMMPAY.COM