In this episode of the podcast, sponsored by Signal Sciences: Cyber Monday may have been the biggest yet – and not just for shoppers and online retailers. Hackers use the year’s biggest online shopping day to cover their tracks. Brendon Macaraeg joins us to talk about Cyber Monday and the rising tide of e-commerce hacks.

Cyber Monday 2019 is in the rear view mirror and this year’s holiday shopping bonanza looks to be the biggest ever. Adobe Analytics estimated this week that sales from Thanksgiving through Cyber Monday will exceed $29 billion. And, in just one measure of how shopping habits are changing, the online sales platform Shopify, which is used by more than a million merchants, reported that sales on the platform had already surpassed $1.5 billion, which is more than the sales from the full Thanksgiving weekend last year, according to reports.

But the post-Thanksgiving weekend isn’t just big for shoppers and retailers. It is also one of the busiest weekends for cyber criminals, who find cover for their attacks and fraud among the millions of legitimate online shoppers.

Critical Flaws in VxWorks affect 200 Million Connected Things

Brendon Macaraeg is a Senior Director of Product Marketing at the firm Signal Sciences.

And it isn’t just during the holiday season that online criminals hide in the crowd. A recent study by the firm Signal Sciences* found that attacks on e-commerce applications jump on the 15th and 30th of the month — pay days when overall shopping volume is higher as well.

What does this mean for e-tailers? To find out, we invited Brendon Macaraeg of the firm Signal Sciences back into the Security Ledger Studios to talk about that company’s research which finds a rising tide of e-commerce fraud.

Data Breach Exposes Records of 114 Million U.S. Citizens, Companies

To start off, I asked Brendon about Cyber Monday and how e-tailers are struggling to balance a concern about security and fraud with the desperate need to have their e-commerce operation humming from Black Friday on. 

(*) Disclosure: This podcast was sponsored by Signal Sciences. For more information on how Security Ledger works with its sponsors and sponsored content on Security Ledger, check out our About Security Ledger page on sponsorships and sponsor relations.

As always,  you can check our full conversation in our latest Security Ledger podcast at Blubrry. You can also listen to it on iTunes and check us out on SoundCloud, Stitcher,