In recent years, with the rapid growth in the online Gambling industry, which is expected to hit 172 billion USD by 2023, people wouldn’t play an online casino if they weren’t confident in the security measures of online gambling sites. EU online casinos are popular around the globe, not only because of their gambling options but also thanks to their security measures.
Unfortunately, many international casinos have been targets of illegal activities from the time they were born. Through various devices like chip-switching scams and card-counting teams, they are often cheated and deprived of their money. With the growth of online casinos, these hackers have now moved to cyberspace. Thus, online casinos always have to keep their security levels intact to fend off the latest threats.
The threat is even more real for games like roulette, poker, and blackjack, where customers share their financial information with the sites. A hacker can easily exploit payment systems, applications, and even registration forms to steal customer information, putting the sites’ reputation and the customers’ safety at risk.
Cybersecurity: Threats and Risks
An online casino is not only a playground with many games but also maintains databases with all the players’ personal and financial data. So, online casinos can be targeted by cyberattacks, leading to data breaches and disruptions in gaming services.
They work with payment systems and apps, all of which can be targeted by hackers.
Cyberattacks: Types of Cyber Attacks
Sites are always threatened by hackers who look for any loophole or vulnerability to exploit and target online businesses. Cybercriminals can harm both the players and the casino itself in many ways.
DDoS and Ransomware Attacks
DDoS stands for distributed denial-of-service attacks. In these attacks, hackers disrupt the normal traffic of a targeted server or network by overwhelming the target with a flood of Internet traffic. Online gambling sites are particularly vulnerable to these attacks, as well as ransomware attacks.
Such attacks bring tremendous harm to a brand and the goodwill of a company as well as the entire online gambling industry.
The casino itself can also be targeted, in which case the hackers may hold players’ data and demand a ransom for it. When this happens, a casino can be severely compromised.
Game Integrity
A casino is highly dependent on its gaming experience, and thus if its performances are compromised, customers will move on to other casinos, causing devastating losses for the casino. Players need to be convinced that they are involved in a fair game. If hackers exploit in-game software, then the results can be devastating for both players and casinos.
The casinos not only suffer heavy losses in this case, but it also calls into question the integrity of the games and may make the customers reconsider their trust.
Hackers can manipulate quality and game results to threaten the casinos. Thus it is very important for casinos to only feature games that have eCogra certification.
Fraud and Money Laundering
Threats can also come from the players themselves. Gambling sites can be fined and even closed down for not following anti-money laundering standards. Thus there should always be procedures in place to verify the source of funds when players seem to make large deposits. For example, if money is deposited from a stolen credit card the casino not only loses money but also its reputation.
Account Takeovers
It is very important to set a strong password for one’s account. In account takeovers, hackers manage to break into a player’s account, top up the account with saved credit card details, and spend the money.
What Steps Are Online iGaming Sites Taking?
Thus, it is obvious that the online casino has a great deal of responsibility, but so do the players. It is the players’ responsibility to protect information such as passwords, account numbers, and credit card numbers.
They should be aware that despite highly secure operators, their information can be compromised easily if they aren’t using a secure internet connection. Cybercriminals can commit identity theft by taking advantage of open Wi-Fi networks in cafes, for example.
Thus, the industry now routinely uses SSL encryption, which scrambles users’ connections with the web. Even if someone can intercept this data, they would be left with a string of useless and nonsensical letters, numbers, symbols, and other random data.
Conclusion
Casinos are under constant threat of hacking. Thus casinos must engage the best and latest defenses from such threats and also be affiliated with eCogra, and have a good software provider. Cybersecurity casinos should also always use SSL encryption so that no significant data threat can take place. But sometimes it is not enough to prevent attacks on databases and payment systems. Thus not only the casinos but the players should also be responsible for their information and preferable not to play these games from open networks and so on.
Also Read: How to Navigate Cybersecurity in the Digital Age.
