The shopping peak tests safety. Is e-commerce ready for it?

Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and the pre-Christmas period bring increased traffic and more transactions. According to Shoper’s report “How Poles buy in Q4”, in 2023–2025, the fourth quarter was responsible for as much as 28-30 percent of full-year sales, and Black Friday alone generated more than twice as many sales as an average day of the year. As Exorigo-Upos experts note, increased traffic on sales websites is an opportunity for entrepreneurs to achieve record revenues, but also a serious test for the stability and security of the entire IT infrastructure.

Analysis of the Swym platform shows that during sales peaks, traffic and sales value on e-commerce platforms increase by an average of 50%, and sometimes more than 64%, above the standard daily average. The higher the traffic, the higher the costs of each failure can also be. According to global data from OutageCost.com, a large retailer can lose up to $1-2 million in just an hour of unavailability during peak traffic periods. In addition, as the website indicates, about 33% of customers may not return to a given store after experiencing a failure.

„Downtime is a serious, but not the only threat that e-commerce has to reckon with. An incident as a result of which unauthorized persons gain access to customer data or transaction-related information may have even more serious consequences. Importantly, the risk of such events increases with the increase in traffic, and yet security still often remains outside the main area of entrepreneurs’ preparations for a high sales season,” notes Radosław Opałko, Business Development Director at Exorigo-Upos.

During periods of increased traffic, the focus is usually on product availability, logistics or server performance, while the security of the entire e-commerce environment may take a back seat. Meanwhile, not only the storefront needs protection, but also the e-commerce platform that integrates key processes and systems. Importantly, a breach of one of these elements can mean not only technical problems, but also the risk of leakage or unauthorized access to customer data.

„The security of a store depends not only on the application itself, but also on the environment in which it operates. With hosting in a separate environment, a private cloud, or its own infrastructure, the company can have greater control over system configuration, access to data and logs, and monitoring, backup, and access-control mechanisms. A solution such as Magento (Adobe Commerce), on the other hand, offers security mechanisms at the application level, such as user roles and permissions management, two-factor authentication, data access control, and logging of administrative activities. Proper configuration of these mechanisms, regular updates and secure implementation of extensions help reduce the risk of unauthorized access to the store and customer data” – says Volodymyr Martynov, Head of E-commerce Development at Exorigo-Upos.

However, the choice of technology does not solve the security issue. Control over the environment and the platform alone is not enough if the security is not verified and updated on an ongoing basis. As the store develops, its infrastructure changes and new threats emerge, so you must constantly monitor vulnerabilities and how the entire ecosystem works.

„In e-commerce, there is no moment when you can consider that the store is already permanently secured and does not require further action. It is a continuous process. The platform must be constantly updated, access permissions must be regularly verified, and vulnerabilities monitored. That is why it is worth conducting a comprehensive review of the entire environment before the period of peak traffic, instead of waiting for the first failure signal or attack,” adds Radosław Opałko.

In e-commerce, security is not a one-time implementation but a continuous process that requires threat verification long before the first traffic spike. A properly configured platform, a secure environment and constant monitoring are among the foundations of preparing a store for the peak of the season. During peak traffic, sales depend not only on how many customers you attract, but also on the stability and security of the system that serves them.

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