6 Client-Side Security Concerns Enterprises Should Care About

Don’t play whack-a-mole: Banking Trojans, malicious JavaScript code, and other types of client-side attacks are not going away anytime soon. Once an enterprise begins looking for security issues on the client-side, it will find plenty of them, so it needs to decide for itself what action it will take if an end-customer attempts to access the application from a compromised device. If not designed wisely, any processes around this can soon lead to a never-ending game of whack-a-mole that will bury the security and fraud teams.

Focus on risk: It's important to treat information about a compromised client-side environment as just that - information. While that information may be helpful in understanding the overall risk to that particular end-customer’s account, it is not reliable as an indicator of risk. Why is that so? With so much compromised PII and stolen account information out there, there are many ways for a fraudster to accomplish account takeover (ATO). In other words, a compromised end-customer device doesn’t necessarily mean that ATO will occur, and it doesn’t necessarily mean a fraud loss will be incurred by the enterprise. That determination requires a number of different data points, with one of them being the state of the end-customer device.

Focus on transactions: When looking to mitigate risk and reduce fraud losses, focus on transactions. It is far too easy to get distracted by other data points that seem interesting but don’t tell us whether a specific transaction is legitimate, suspicious, or fraudulent. Helpful information on the end-customer device can add to our ability to determine whether a transaction is fraudulent, but it's not sufficient to make that determination without other important data points.

Focus on sensitive data: When an enterprise opens the door to client-side security, there is often an overwhelming amount of data to look at. All of that data, if not properly analyzed, may lead to an abundance of alerting and a slew of false positives. Remember what is truly important - sensitive data that may find its way into the attacker's hands and the potential to add, modify, and/or remove transaction data.

Remember user experience: In the effort to combat fraud, it may be tempting to institute strict, draconian measures, but it's important to remember that those measures may not always result in reduced fraud. They may, however, negatively impact the user experience to the point where they cost the organization in lost revenue. It is important to institute proper controls to protect online applications from fraud, but it is also important to remember that a user experience riddled with friction will cost the enterprise in other ways.

There's more than just Magecart: Although Magecart attacks are perhaps the most common type of client-side attack, they are not the only type. As enterprises begin to look at the client side, they need to plan for the evolution of client-side attacks. This involves understanding how they'll mitigate new risks that arise as the threat landscape changes.