Business-facing websites lack maturity in security and user experience

Fresh research commissioned by Neustar into online domain maturity that reveals huge differences in the way customer facing and non-customer facing businesses manage and protect their websites. The report, compiled by independent analysis firm Quocirca, reveals the challenges faced by organisations transacting with customers online, and in particular, highlights a surprising gulf in domain maturity between organisations running consumer facing domains and their B2B only counterparts.

Almost all European organisations (98 percent) now interact online with customers. An organisation’s online domain forms an essential part of its overall reputation, if a website performs badly or its security is compromised, the brand suffers. Presenting new research into what motivates these organisations to protect their online domains, Quocirca interviewed 300 senior European IT managers on the challenges faced and the measures they are taking to ensure domain performance and security.

The report reveals a massive gap between the security measures deployed by consumer facing and non-consumer facing organisations, with the latter lagging well behind their consumer facing counterparts in areas such as Continuous DDoS Protection and Fraud Detection Technology.

All recognize security as being of high importance, but according to the Quocirca report, many non-consumer facing organisations are guilty of relying on outmoded malware defence and intrusion detection systems (IDS), both of which are legacy technologies that have long since been superseded. Consumer facing organisations, however, were found to show greater website maturity and be more likely to protect their online assets with outsourced, state-of-the-art cloud-based security services.

“With their greater tendency to outsource management of on-demand services in general, consumer facing organisations consider security to be part of a service level agreement from their outsourcer and would not expect to pay for it separately,” said Bob Tarzey, Analyst and Director at Quocirca, who believes that consumer facing organisations’ propensity to outsource services has helped to heighten domain maturity.

“By outsourcing, the more mature consumer facing organisations have, in effect, freed themselves of both technology and security burdens to focus on business issues,” He added. “Today's corporate focus needs to be about making it less appealing to cyber-attack your business, and more appealing to go elsewhere. Lessons can clearly be learned from consumer facing organisations operating at the sharp end of cyberspace,” said Rodney Joffe, senior vice-president & technologist at Neustar “The key to successfully protecting your online domain is not to be able to outwit your cyber attacker, it is about outperforming your competitors with better protection – make it so the ROI for attackers is smaller in your company.”

Covering the UK, German and French markets, the report concludes that the modern consumer is an increasingly capricious individual who is growing less tolerant with poor service. To this end, consumer facing organisations have had their hands forced, compelling them to develop a more mature, robust online presence.
Below is a breakdown of key findings and statistics from the report:
· Over 98 percent of European organisations now transact online at some level
· Just 71 percent of non-consumer facing businesses employ continuous DDoS Protection compared with 87 percent of consumer facing businesses
· There is a 16 percent difference between customer facing organisations and non-customer facing organisations when it comes to the use of Fraud Detection Technology with 82 percent of B2C deploying Fraud Detection Technology compared with just 66 percent of non-customer facing
· 43 percent of consumer facing organisations are likely to increase spending on customer-related issues such as user experience monitoring and integrating user data with web analytics, almost double the number for non-consumer facing
· Just over 77 percent of all European organisations now interact online with consumers (B2C), often alongside dealings with other businesses (B2B)