The world of online gambling is attracting millions of players worldwide and it’s worth billions of dollars. This is one good reason for all the names in the industry to keep an eye (or both) on the security, and also to tackle all the challenges and threats.
There are many ways hackers can do harm to the online casinos and to the players. For example, financial frauds, identify theft, and other sorts of data breaches are some of the threats a cyberattack can pose.
Luckily, the online casinos, gambling operators and platform providers have adapted and in most cases are one step ahead the cyber criminals.
But which are the security challenges for the online slot casinos? While the players can rely on the integrity and safety of the online slots, like the Online Slots PA, which are secured and very safe to play, there are some other threats to be fend off by the casinos.
Thankfully, the big online casinos where you can play slot games use secure connections to send encrypted information. This way, the data will be accessible only to those for whom it is intended. Also, a clear privacy policy from the online casino states which personal details will be kept safe, without being compromised.
Here are some of these security challenges:
Phishing
The phishing scam attacks are very rare, luckily, but such a data breach will mean almost sure the end of that online casino in the business. That is because the reputation of that gambling name will forever be compromised.
One incident of this kind is the 2016 cyber-attack on a casino in Canada. At that time, as many as 200,000 people may have had their personal information stolen. The hacker’s attack targeted one of the most popular casinos in its region. Some of the data was published online, and the class-action lawsuit included claims of up to USD$60 million.
The attack is based on fooling the users into actually giving access to their sensitive personal data. And it is much more dangerous when the victims are not clients, but employees of the casino.
DDoS attacks
Then, there are the Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks. These are brutal attacks from hackers, who use bots to overwhelm the site servers with requests. This leads to the sites crashing, and even to actual physical damage to the servers.
Site crashing is just a small part of the problems a DDoS attack can cause. The reputation of the online casinos can be damaged, and big sums of money can be lost, in a matter of minutes – the time a hacker needs to gain access to customer information using this type of attack.
Today, there are special dedicated DDoS mitigation providers, whose services are essential for many casino sites.
Account takeover
An account takeover isn’t anything anyone would ever want, regardless if it is an online casino or any other online activity.
In this scenario, a player can assume the identity of another player and can withdraw the winnings or the deposit of another player. As a result, the players start to lose confidence in the security of the online gambling, which also causes reputation issues for the online casinos, as well as important money loss.
The account takeovers are realized through other means, like large-scale password-cracking or phishing schemes. As a result, the criminals (or an entire network of organized crime) steal the information from the victim and then sell it to others who can actually use the stolen identity to withdraw the money.
To fend off this threat – and many others –, online casinos are implementing end-to-end encryption in the data transmission, in their attempts to keep all the sensitive information safe.
