Adding a customer portal to your online storefront gives customers more control over their shopping experience. A well-designed portal also saves time and money by allowing customers to update information and modify orders without the need for a customer service contact. However, you need to ensure that your customers’ information stays secure. Here are four tricks to make sure your customer portal doesn’t become a backdoor for fraud.

 

Biometric Identification

Thanks to the proliferation of fingerprint technology in mobile phones, biometric identification is an increasingly popular security tool. Fingerprints are a more effective identification tool than passwords, PINs and patterns because they are much harder to fake. Someone may steal your password or code, but it’s ridiculously harder to steal your fingerprints.

 

Name Matching

Name matching software is an effective security tool but often struggles when presented with misspellings, alternate spellings, nicknames and orthographic marks. Choose a name matching tool that can navigate these challenges with smart solutions like supporting names from a variety of languages and ethnicities, recognizing names that sound alike and accounting for diminutive forms of a name. These features can prevent name matching from bogging your website down with excessive security lockouts.

 

Geolocation

A customer’s location is valuable security information. Using a geolocation tool with your online portal can throw up red flags if your customer’s billing address and physical location don’t match or if the customer is located in an area that’s considered high-risk for fraud. Keep in mind that legitimate customers often make purchases far away from home, so use geolocation to throw up additional security steps rather than kick the customer out of the portal.

 

Device Fingerprinting

You already know that verifying your customer’s fingerprint is an excellent security tool, but what about the phone, tablet or computer they’re using? These devices can be identified by a digital fingerprint, which can be used to match a device to a customer or to block devices that have been flagged for fraudulent activity. Device fingerprinting can also save your customers a lot of time by recognizing their favorite device as safe so they can avoid extra security measures when logging in next time.

 

Are you ready to launch an online customer portal but don’t have the resources for fraud prevention? Consider postponing your portal launch until you can provide adequate security for both your website and your customers. While customer portals have many benefits, hosting an unsafe one puts your business and your customers at serious risk.

 

 

 

Meghan Belnap is a freelance writer who enjoys spending time with her family. She loves being in the outdoors and exploring new opportunities whenever they arise. Meghan finds happiness in researching new topics that help to expand her horizons. You can often find her buried in a good book or out looking for an adventure. You can connect with her on Facebook right here and Twitter right here.