While consumers may be looking to scam retailers as the cost of living crisis deepens, cyber criminals are also on the rampage through the sector, with a range of automated threats – from account takeover, credit card fraud, web scraping, API abuses, Grinch bots and distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks – all becoming a persistent challenge for the eCommerce industry, threatening online sales and customer satisfaction.The continued barrage of attacks on retailers’ websites, applications, and APIs throughout the calendar year, and during the peak holiday shopping season, is a continued business risk for the retail industry, finds The State of Security Within eCommerce 2022, the latest report from Imperva.Retailers need a unified approach to stop these persistent attacks, one that focuses on the protection of data and is equipped to mitigate attacks quickly without disrupting shoppers.”An automated adversary: bad bots & online fraud plague retail sitesIn the past 12 months, nearly 40% of traffic on retailers’ websites didn’t come from a human.In 2021, bot-related attacks on retail sites grew 10% in October and grew another 34% in November, suggesting that bot operators increase their nefarious efforts around peak holiday shopping periods.Exposed or vulnerable APIs are a considerable threat for retailers because attackers can use the API as a pathway for exfiltrating customer data and payment information."