Increased consumer trust thanks to Trust Guard scans

The collaboration between Safeshops and Business to You is a good example of how two organisations can strengthen each other and together provide an even more complete service. Speaking is Greet Dekocker, Managing Director at Safeshops.

What is Safeshops?

Safeshops is the Belgian equivalent of Thuiswinkel.org. As a branch organisation, it is committed to the quality and reliability of online shops. The goal is to increase consumer and customer trust in online shopping and thus allow this industry to continue to grow and develop.

Legal trust

The quality and reliability of webshops is assessed by Safeshops on the basis of scans and screenings, among other things. A legal screening, for example, must show whether a webshop complies with national e-commerce legislation. For example, the general conditions, the ordering process, the complaints procedure and the privacy procedures are tested. To this end, Safeshops works together with an independent law firm, which in addition to its monitoring task also offers direct legal guidance to webshops. Webshops that meet all legal criteria and are therefore found to be in order, receive the 'Verified by SafeShops.be quality label'

Technical website security

The GDPR legislation stipulates that entrepreneurs in the e-commerce world are legally responsible for the security of their website. Safeshops aims to make entrepreneurs aware of online technical security risks and give them more insight into their current security situation.

Freemium scan as first awareness

Awareness is the first step to improvement, therefore Safeshops offers the 'Freemium security check': a free passive basic scan that gives a global technical status of the website security. The scan provides a score of the existing security level on various components (e.g. the validity of the SSL certificate).

Greet Dekocker: "We see this scan as a first step on the ladder of 'cybersecurity awareness', but emphasize that it is not complete when you really want to work on your security policy as a webshop. For the members of Safeshops who want more insight into their security risks, we offer, together with the professionals of Business to You, a more extensive and advanced website security scan."

Periodic scan with Trust Guard in accordance with professional standards

Trust Guard automatically and periodically scans for tens of thousands of known and unknown security vulnerabilities, in accordance with professional standards such as PCI/DSS, ISO27001, OWASP and GDPR. This gives you a good insight into the vulnerabilities on your site. But that is not the only thing that Trust Guard does. Additionally, the SSL certificate is checked and a malware scan is executed. Safety first!

Greet Dekocker continues: "We at Safeshops understand like no other that many security problems arise from the rapid developments such as Internet technology, hacker techniques, new versions of shop software. And this in combination with human errors or ignorance. This is logical: everyone has his or her own expertise and there is no company that can be an expert in security, marketing and website development at the same time. How nice is it then, if you can scan periodically - quarterly, monthly, weekly or daily - and stay ahead of major problems?"

Simple Trust Guard dashboard

The accessible and understandable Trust Guard reports provide every webshop with the tools to correct errors and to call in the right parties for this, such as a hosting party or the website builder.

Greet Dekocker: "Without having to have all the knowledge in-house, you can solve problems before they really go wrong. And if you do that well, you will be rewarded: namely with the Trust Guard Seal. A quality mark that a webshop can use to show its customers that they can shop safely and that their data is in good hands. Nowadays essential because the GDPR and therefore the correct handling of privacy-sensitive information is more important than ever!"

Collaboration

Dekocker is pleased that Safeshops can offer its members a complete service thanks to the collaboration with Business to You. "Trust Guard offers enormous added value in helping customers build the security policy that is so important to both us and our members.

• Safeshops: www.safeshops.be
• Safeshops Trust Guard webpage: www.safeshops.be/nl/partner/b2u/
• Freemium-scan: (with Trust Guard referrer-link): ecommerce.safeshops.be/freemium-security-audit
• Trust Guard free trial: safeshops.trustguard.eu

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