OLX, foremost E-commerce company in Nigeria, and Mobile Monday Nigeria partnered to organize a press conference tagged- Making E-commerce more secure in Nigeria- at V.I. in Lagos on Monday November 2, 2015. No doubt the E- commerce market in Nigeria is on the upward growth, hence, the increased risk and vulnerability to being preyed on by fraudsters. This further provided the need to step up the fraud-prevention game in the E-commerce market to assure players in the market of the safety of their transactions in order to engender the needed trust, hence, this press conference to highlight some of the steps being taken by the relevant players in the industry to stem fraud.
Speakers at the event were tech experts, security agents and E-commerce operators. They are Femi Taiwo, CTO at INITS Limited and Co-convener of GDG Lagos, Open Adeoye, Manager, Strategy and Alliances InterSwitch, Jameelah Ayedun, the ND/CEO, Credit Registry Services Bureau PLC, the representative of the Nigerian Police, CSP Charles Okafor and Lola Masha, the Country Manager of OLX.
Femi Taiwo highlighted the negative issues that can crop up when transacting business on E-commerce platforms and what E- commerce platforms should do to protect themselves and their customers from being defrauded through off-the-shelf as well as bespoke control and verification solutions. Some of these include restricting Admin Login access to systems, especially for unauthorized employees, by making the admin directories tough to spot, deploying it on another sub-domain or behind a VPN. Employing the use of token-based access, e.g., OTP via SMS.
Using Secure Socket Layer, SSL, being wary of plugins and untrusted 3rd party integration, carrying out validation at all levels as well as setting up 401, 404, 403, etc, alerts, trapping all errors and logging them, white-listing credible sources and setting up automatic back up and updating regularly are all protective measures E-commerce sites should now be embarking on.
Concluding his presentation, Femi stated that one of the good off-the-shelf protection solution against hackers is Open Web Application Security Project (OWASP). He also recommended joining Checkout Netsparker and Open VAS. Cloud-based DDOS protection as well as registering with Google’s Webmaster Tools and getting 3rd party security audit done often.
On her part, Jameela Ayedun stressed the cooperation that now exists between E-commerce platforms and the Credit Registry Services Bureau which has over 30 million individuals in its data bank. The Bureau collects data from individuals with their consent, analyse the data and make it available to E-commerce platforms for verification purposes.
Ope Adeoye, on his part, stated that any solution to check fraudulent acts on E-commerce platforms should have the quality of increasing the work factor for a fraudulent-minded person by making it more difficult to enter, pay or obtain goods on the E-commerce platforms. This will make the fraudsters rethink their actions. Identification through referrals and credit risk analysis should also be stepped up by E-commerce platforms.
Lola Masha gave a run down of the peculiarities OLX has faced and protective measures taken since it entered the E-commerce business in Nigeria 3 years ago. Of the over 40 countries all over the world where OLX operates, it is only in Nigeria that OLX employs additional staff to go and physically inspect goods for sale before placing the ad, employ the services of a company like Credit Registry Services Bureau for verification purposes and the Nigerian Police for apprehending fraudsters.
To further counter fraud on its E-commerce platform, OLX informs buyers never to part with money or meet sellers at night. In addition to these, it now reviews ads, using predictive intelligence, blocks sellers trying to extract funds from buyers before finalizing a deal.
The representative of the Nigerian Police, CSP Charles Okafor, stated that the Nigerian Police is capable of apprehending fraudsters, All the Police needs, he stated is for the populace to cooperate with them and report incidents.
One salient point raised during the question and answer session was that although adopting stringent security measures in Nigeria will be ideal to safeguard both the E-commerce companies and the customers, a fair balance should be struck to avoid scaring good intent customers away.
The night ended on a fun note as two DSTV Explora decoders were won in a raffle draw, of which yours truly, (Wale Oguntokun), won one of them. Other purchase vouchers of various amounts were also won by guests.
It is hoped that what was learnt at the event will further help in strengthening the E-commerce business in Nigeria.
