Every organization and business that has websites and uses web applications for business, especially for online shopping, is a target for hackers. According to ePayment company CyberSource, the total revenue loss for online merchants in North America in 2012 amounted to $3.5 billion, up from $100 million in 2011.
With such high numbers of online attacks, businesses are finding it difficult to respond to them. Attacks are becoming increasingly sophisticated, such as the latest recordings of man-in-the-middle and DDoS attacks, as well as the theft of account details and payment funds.
Web session analysis is a very useful tool for monitoring online systems and discovering suspicious user behavior. The tool collects and analyzes data from the web, so that the monitoring is done in real time. An example of its function is to monitor the behavior of online users on a site. Based on statistics, fraudsters usually tend to browse a site much faster than regular visitors. Another example is comparing the IPs of visitors. The system can compare the location of an IP and when it sees that this IP comes back but from a different location, it notifies that the account may have been hijacked.
Web attacks and fraud not only cost businesses revenue, but can also cost them their reputation, as their customers may post negative comments on social media and the issue may become widely known. Analyzing the behaviors of visitors to a site and collecting and comparing statistics about their activity is a very useful tool in preventing attacks.
