For thousands of South African consumers, Black Friday is the chance to clinch deals on big-ticket items, everyday essentials, and everything in between, but end consumers are far from the only ones at risk during this period where online sales climb by up to 30.4%.
Doros Hadjizenonos, regional director of Southern Africa at Fortinet. Image supplied
One of the most common initial causes of data breaches in the country emanates from third-party vendors and supply chain compromise, making the entire digital supply chain, from retail platforms to payment systems and logistics partners, a target for attack.
And while the damage may start with a phishing email or a spoofed login page, the ripple effects can undermine consumer trust, disrupt commerce, and strain actual, physical supply chains.
SA’s growing attack surface
That South Africa’s online retail revenue is expected to top R130bn this year will be very welcome news for retailers, indeed. From a security perspective, though, it also means more endpoints, more cloud services, and more data moving across systems.
In the race to ensure uptime and meet demand, IT teams understandably prioritise performance. However, making sure critical systems are protected is not something any organisation should leave vulnerable to exploitation.
Cybercriminals have adapted their own strategies to exploit gaps in retail systems as well as the infrastructure that supports them.
During the 2024 holiday shopping season, Fortinet’s Holiday Threat Intelligence Report found a spike in malware, phishing campaigns, and darknet chatter directly targeting payment portals, logistics firms and retail brands with many impersonating trusted vendors or leveraging leaked credentials to gain initial access.
What’s more, the report revealed a surge in holiday-themed deceptive domains. More than 2,500 domains were registered using ‘Black Friday’ keywords alone, which are designed to trick consumers into clicking fraudulent links and unwittingly handing over sensitive data.
The fact that retail supply chains are becoming more complex and interconnected with external partners and vendors is not lost on cybercriminals.
What makes third-party attacks especially dangerous is that they rarely hit retailers head-on.
Instead, adversaries often target the weakest link in the digital supply chain, typically a smaller supplier with a less mature cybersecurity posture. From there, they move laterally, using ‘legitimate’ access to infiltrate the systems of larger retail networks.
Threat Intelligence Reports reveal how criminals routinely offer access to admin panels of compromised e-commerce platforms, often exploiting outdated plugins, misconfigured cloud services, or known vulnerabilities in platforms like Magento, WooCommerce and Shopify, which means securing those connections has become just as important as defending the front door.
The biggest seasonal cyber threats
The most common cyber threats magnify for retailers during Black Friday. The most damaging include ransomware, DDoS attacks, and credential theft alongside social engineering.
Ransomware attacks are typically initiated via phishing, which then locks up critical systems like order management or payment processing at the most critical time in the year for many retailers in terms of revenue generation.
The urgency of the situation then makes retailers more likely to pay lofty ransom demands – which rarely solves any problem.
DDoS, or Distributed Denial of Service attacks, flood retailer sites or payment platforms to take them offline as transactions peak, causing immediate revenue loss and delays in order fulfilment and delivery.
Credential theft and social engineering usually take the form of attackers impersonating staff, suppliers or vendors and use stolen credentials to infiltrate internal systems.
Criminals now use AI-generated phishing emails that mimic the tone and branding of legitimate businesses, making them particularly difficult to detect.
Added to this is a sharp rise in the use of website cloning services and ‘sniffers’ as tools that capture credit card data and login credentials from compromised e-commerce platforms. These tools, once considered sophisticated, are now widely available and routinely deployed across South Africa’s digital retail landscape.
Retailers also face growing risks to their operational technology, including warehouse scanners, robotic systems, and logistics tracking tools. As the IT-OT convergence accelerates, these once-isolated systems now form part of an organisations broader attack surface.
Revenue and reputation
The commercial pressure of Black Friday is immense, and the pressure to keep consumer trust is just as significant.
A data breach that compromises personal information, or an outage that leaves orders unfulfilled has an impact on the bottom line while eroding trust in digital commerce more generally.
Given these realities, cyber resilience needs to be a core part of every retailer’s Black Friday playbook – but often isn’t. Proactive breach prevention, real-time monitoring, secure third-party access controls, and comprehensive threat protection aren’t terms from a corporate glossary anymore. It matters to every organisation selling online to lesser and greater degrees.
Whether a business operates as an online-only marketplace, a logistics provider, or a traditional retailer with a growing e-commerce presence, securing the digital supply chain is essential to business continuity.
Ultimately, resilience during peak season isn’t defined by website uptime alone. It is, importantly, also measured by the integrity of the entire interconnected ecosystem, from the payment gateway to the logistics partner and the warehouse scanner. Because all of them, digital or physical, have targets being painted on their backs.
