How to Secure Your E-Commerce Website: 8 Basic Steps

Dreaming of having your own e-commerce store or you have it, the process might not be so pleasing and overwhelming as you have fanaticized.

There are people involved in malicious activity to harm your business and earn themselves your profit. Having an e-commerce store might be as easy but then the security aspect of being on internet might bother you.

Hackers and cybercrimes are always hovering to attack your website.

What is eCommerce security?

Ecommerce website security is all about giving your users a platform that is secure and safe for shopping. Your website should be able to match the definition of cybersecurity.

Still there are a good number of people who aren’t that confident to use these online stores. You can be the icebreaker for these audiences by aiding them with a secure ecommerce website.

Before getting into the details of how you can protect and secure your website, it is essential to understand what threats do you have for your ecommerce website.

Threats that are attached to your e-commerce website?

There are so many threats that accompany your e-commerce website, and it is equally essential to be familiar with them. Cyber-attacks, hacking and manipulation with the payment gateway are some very common issues but we will highlight some of the complex issues that can harm your e-commerce website.

Here are a few threats from which you should be alert:

DDoS:

The Distributed Denial of Service attack is the very first one that clicks our mind in the list. It is one of the most common yet intelligent attacks, as it overwhelms your website with a disproportionate volume of traffic.

This blocks the website from working and portrays as if the website is unavailable. Initially these attacks might knock as ransom, but it doesn’t take time to mingle with other attacks to accomplish various other objectives.

SQL Injection:

One of the most serious threats that an e-commerce website can ever get is SQL Injection. It allows hackers to collect the data of your customers that involves personal ID and bank transaction information.

Online submission form or other data entry points are used by the thieves to inject SQL codes to get access to the data backend of your website.

Brute Force Attack:

One of the most traditional ways to attack any e-commerce website is brute force attack but it has evolved over time to be more destructive. To access your website using this technique, hackers use “guess the password”.

There are several tools that can automate attacks using the stolen data from the database with the help of SQL injection attacks for example.

XSS attack:

Decked with malicious code injection on the website, cross-site scripting or the XSS attack redirects users. This can allow the hacker to take over the customer accounts or spy on it to get the personal data of your clients.

Read also : Top Headless Cms Platforms That You Should Check Out

These are some of the attacks that you should be aware of while managing your e-commerce website.

Now, here are some of the tips that will help you to make your e-commerce website secure than ever.

8 ways to make your E-Commerce website secure:

Pick-up a secure hosting provider:

As we discussed the threats above, these both directly target your e-commerce website, but it is possible that they might redirect to target your hosting provider. In such a case you need to have a secure hosting provider like a proprietary CMS or an open source.

These both terms are very unlike solutions. Where proprietary CMS takes care of securing your website, open-source CMS allows you to secure the site yourself.

You can choose according to your basic needs to choose which one.

PCI Compliance:

This security aspect helps you reduce your fraud and increases website security. Payment Card Industry Data Security (PCI DSS) is mandatory for almost all companies who are into such online payment, transits that involve credit and debit card data online.

Having PCI compliance enhances your loyalty to your clients also, as it ensures security for your clients and their money.

Install an SSL Certificate:

With the help of SSL certificates, you can ensure that the data transferred between the website and your user is encrypted. You and your customers can easily recognize the SSL certified website as you can easily see the lock icon next to URL.

Once the data of your client is safe and secure, they are in your business and can be considered the maximum chances of them being your permanent shoppers.

Use Two-factor Authentication:

You can strengthen the security of your login when you log in to your admin interface and when users log in to your website by using two-factor authentication. This is essential for preventing hackers from accessing your administrative area, as well as the data and payments of your customers.

This type of authentication, often known as “multi-factor authentication,” combines the use of a password with another method of authentication. In this manner, even if a hacker succeeds in obtaining your password, they are prevented from logging in due to the second authentication factor.

Web Application Firewall:

It is a hardware or a software system that filters, monitors and restricts HTTP traffic to and from an online service. Web application firewall serves as a gateway between two or more networks, letting only allowed traffic onto the website and preventing unauthorized or possibly harmful traffic from reaching a network.

Web application firewalls defend web applications against several assaults like DDoS attacks, SQL injections, and cross-site scripting (XSS). These firewalls are better at defending eCommerce websites from malicious assaults since they receive a lot of inbound traffic.

Application gateways and proxy firewalls are the two most common and efficient firewalls for e-commerce websites.

Keep-up with the regular updates:

Developers of CMSs, plugins, and other tools continuously enhance the security of these products in the same manner that hackers create new methods to uncover security weaknesses.

Because of this, platforms, programs, plugins, and other software are often updated to fix flaws and enhance user security. These changes aren’t always automatic, though.

Hence, it’s critical to constantly check that all your tools are updated, and if not, to upgrade your CMS, software, and plugins to make sure they are current and safe.

Real-time bot detection technology:

It is generally agreed that higher website traffic equates to higher conversion rates. This, however, is not always the case.

According to a study, 30% of internet traffic is bot-generated, and 50% of that traffic is used in eCommerce website fraud. A small portion of the traffic you believe to be legitimate may really be harmful bots sent by scammers or your rivals to steal your product pricing, product catalogue, or customers’ private information.

In fact, putting real-time bot technology in place will help your eCommerce website be more secure overall and avoid online fraud.

Install security plugins:

There are plugins for CMS that can optimize various security features for your e-commerce website. The Wordfence Security plugin is highly effective and well-liked by users when used on WordPress.

Its multi-task security plugin enables the implementation of two-factor authentication, the blocking of spam, the analysis of your e-commerce site to safeguard it against dangerous codes, and the defense against brute force assaults.

Securing your e-commerce website requires doing an analysis of your website to find security holes that hackers might exploit. This analysis is made simpler by security plugins like Wordfence Security.

These were some of the hacks that you can use to protect your e-commerce website.

Why should you have a secure e-commerce website?

All this time we were talking about safe and secure websites, but why do we need a secure website? There are certain essential elements that can highly affect the performance of your website. These factors can be maintained with the help of having a secure website.

Here are some of the additional reasons why you should have a secure website:

Customer loyalty:

Once your clients are to trust you with their security, they will be permanent customers of your website. All they need is security with their data and payment.

Customer Addition:

Mouth to mouth promotion is the best way to lure new clients. If your existing clients are happy and satisfied with your website and its security, they will pass on the suggestion to their family and friends.

Hence you will easily be able to have new traffic with potential conversation.

Improved performance:

Once hackers fail in their motive of disrupting the performance of your website, it will work flawlessly. When the loading time is less and page transition is smooth, your clients will enjoy browsing and probability of conversion also increases.

These are a few benefits of having a safe and secure website. This is the reason that it is essential to choose the best ecommerce web application company.

Conclusion

In nutshell, having any website that has to deal with clients and their personal data must be safe. When it is about e- commerce websites, a place where sensitive information should be secure.

It is essential for you to protect your client’s details so that they cannot be used for malicious purposes.

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