Don’t Let Your Website Plunge into Darkness this Black Friday
Black Friday, one of the biggest shopping days on the calendar, is nearly upon us.
Consumers will soon be flocking online and hunting for bargains, taking advantage of the promotion’s organisations are running on their sites.
Traditionally seen as a retail phenomenon, Black Friday now spans all industries—from hotel chains and restaurants to car dealerships and even utility providers.
This wider adoption is exciting for customers, but it also presents a major challenge: organisations must ensure their websites are prepared to handle the increased demand.
With soaring traffic volumes and a heightened risk of cyber attacks, businesses must be ready to deliver a seamless online experience. But what threats should they be aware of?
Low Prices = High Traffic
In 2023, Black Friday generated a staggering £13 billion in revenue. Given the potential for such lucrative returns, it’s no surprise that businesses across all sectors are slashing prices to capture customer interest. However, with prices going down, traffic volume tend to spikes in tandem, which can overwhelm unprepared websites.
High traffic peaks can flood websites, causing slow load times or even complete outages.
When customers are met with a broken website instead of a great deal, the damage to reputation can be significant.
A Content Delivery Network (CDN) can be a game-changer during traffic spikes. CDNs distribute content across a network of servers, allowing them to scale up dynamically in response to increased demand. This ensures that even when bargain hunters flock to websites, the user experience remains fast, smooth and available.
The DDoS Threat: Masking Malicious Activity with Traffic Spikes
Black Friday also sees an increase in Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attacks, where attackers flood a retailer’s servers with an overwhelming amount of traffic.
These attacks can cripple a website, making it unavailable to genuine customers. Cyber criminals often exploit the natural traffic surges of Black Friday to hide their malicious activity, making it even harder for businesses to distinguish between legitimate customers and attackers.
DDoS attacks surged during Black Friday and Cyber Monday last year and this trend is expected to continue in 2024.
A successful DDoS attack can disrupt services at the worst possible time, leading to lost revenue and frustrated customers. A new report from Fastly revealed that in 2024 52 percent of organisations suffered significant revenue losses following a DDoS attack, while 70 percent suffered a spike in operational costs.
CDNs are not only useful for handling high traffic but also play a crucial role in mitigating DDoS attacks.
CDNs can monitor traffic in real-time, detect unusual activity and filter out malicious requests before they overwhelm servers. By relying on a CDN, businesses can protect their sites from these devastating attacks and maintain service availability.
Increased attacks on APIs
APIs are a critical part of modern web applications, and during high-traffic events like Black Friday, they become prime targets for cyber criminals. APIs are essential for handling various backend processes, including retrieving product information, processing payments and integrating third-party services. According to Fastly’s API Security 2024 report, 95 percent of the companies have experienced API security problems in the last twelve months, which reinforces this growing problem.
To safeguard APIs during high-traffic events like Black Friday, businesses should implement Web Application Firewalls (WAFs). These tools can help filter malicious traffic and validate requests to prevent malicious abuse.
Bots and automated attacks
Another key threat during Black Friday is the increase in automated attacks and bots.
Bots and automated attacks could be used to disrupt genuine sales, steal data from websites, knock systems offline or scrape pricing data. This can seriously harm organisations and interrupt to shopping experiences of genuine customers.
To protect against automated attacks and bots, organisations can adopt Next Generation WAFs. These tools detect automated attacks and bots, blocking them before they reach websites and cause disruptions or harm.
How can Barrier help organisations this Black Friday?
As the complexity of cyber threats grows, partnering with a trusted cyber security service providers like Barrier Networks can make all the difference during high-traffic events like Black Friday.
Barrier can manage security for organisations, alleviating the burden from internal teams, while offering unparalleled expertise to ensure websites remains secure and available.
By working with our team, businesses can confidently capitalise on the benefits of Black Friday, without fear of downtime or data breaches, while ensuring their websites never plunge into darkness.
