Back in 2019, before terms like ‘lockdown’ and ‘self-isolate’ became embedded in our day-to-day conversations, e-commerce accounted for around 11% of all retail sales and was growing steadily. Today, due to the pandemic and how it’s influenced consumer behaviour, eMarketer predicts that this figure will more than double to nearly 25% in the next 24 months.
Put simply, the pandemic has accelerated the uptake of e-commerce dramatically, either as a replacement for brick-and-mortar retail or as a supplement to cater for consumers that have made the switch to online shopping permanently as a result of the crisis.
In the US, for instance, e-commerce penetration was at 5% back in 2009 and steadily crept up to just over 15% in 2019. Three months into the pandemic, e-commerce penetration rocketed to nearly 35%. McKinsey described the technological leap as a ‘decade in days’ when reporting on the sheer pace of digital transformation in the sector. The direction of travel is clear.
We’ve been moving toward e-commerce steadily for years and the pandemic has acted as an incredibly effective catalyst in getting us there. But where there is disruption and rapid digital transformation, bad cyber actors are rarely far behind.
A recent report from IT security specialist, Sophos, revealed that retail is currently the one of the most at risk sectors when it comes to ransomware attacks. In the last year alone, 12% of online retailers have been the victim of an attack where customer data was held to ransom. While that may not sound high, it’s more than double the global average across all other sectors.
Retailers and other businesses moving to embrace e ..
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