In the last five years, it has been reported by the Identity Theft Statistics that more than 25 million people have been victims of identity theft. It is no wonder that the number of cases is still extremely high and rising. Most Americans have experienced identity theft. So what do we, as online business owners, do to protect our website and customers?  Get security vulnerability assessments.

Identity theft is defined as the taking of a victim’s identity to obtain credit, credit cards, steal money, apply for loans, establish accounts, rent apartments, file bankruptcy, and more.  The impersonator steals money from the victim using the victim’s name without the victim even knowing about it for months to possibly even years.

Most website owners underestimate the dangers and overestimate the costs of making their websites secure and safe from things like identity theft. Having a website taken down by malicious activity costs days worth of lost sales and thousands of dollars in time and effort to get it back up.  What many website owners don’t realize is that these kinds of disasters are easy to prevent because risks to their systems can be prevented by security vulnerability assessments. 

Vulnerability assessments, also known as vulnerability scanning, conducted by an approved scanning vendor, allow your site to be protected.  The scan checks your system for any vulnerabilities, and then sends a report to let you know if anything needs to be fixed.

Before a customer will buy from your site, they must trust you and be confident that you will be handling their information carefully and safely. You spend a lot of time and money ensuring that your product or service is worthy of trust. Promoting the security of your site to customers, will have one of the best returns on investment available.  Anything that benefits both you and your customers will produce the best return, so why not spend a tiny fraction of your investment on the security of your site and make sure that you are getting vulnerability assessments.