Every day, we hear a new story about a cyber threat, such as a DDoS attack or phishing scam. This makes having an eCommerce security system in place more critical than ever.
Customers will abandon your website if they have the slightest suspicion that the financial information they enter during the checkout process is not handled with proper security. This will cause your business to decline and eventually collapse.
To earn the trust of your website’s users and thus boost traffic and revenue, we will go through eCommerce security best practices, threats, and tips.
We don’t say this lightly; the ability to secure online transactions is a must for online purchasing. It allows you to safeguard confidential and private data, protect company funds, and prevent fraud and other financial scams.
One of the most significant advantages of implementing security measures for eCommerce is that it puts you in a better position to gain your customers’ trust.
Customers are more comfortable making purchases from your business since you are taking the necessary security measures to safeguard the private data you obtain about them.
Security measures safeguard the integrity and privacy of users. Customers can feel secure knowing that no online information will be used without their knowledge or consent.
SSL certificates that encrypt sensitive data before transmission over the internet can be obtained. This makes it more likely that the information will reach its intended audience.
This must be done as it guarantees that many computers process shared data before being transferred to the intended server.
More than any other, the financial benefits of eCommerce security are easily seen. Data breaches damage your website’s reputation, and any negative impact on that reputation has a knock-on effect on your business’s finances, eventually leading to lower sales.
If your loyal customers feel that their sensitive data and personal information need to be correctly protected from unwanted access, they won’t even recommend your store to their friends.
A recent study’s findings indicate that cyber criminals mainly target the eCommerce sector, with bots responsible for 57% of all attacks on eCommerce websites in 2021. Being careless is not an option when it comes to protecting online transactions.
Always discover top-notch eCommerce security services to safeguard your online store, ensuring a safe and secure shopping experience for your customers.
Despite many cyberattacks, those targeting eCommerce sites usually try to steal passwords and customer data (personal or financial) or disrupt operations to profit financially.
eCommerce challenges, however, also involve a range of financial frauds that threat actors and private citizens can commit. These frauds come in a variety of shapes and sizes.
The most common e-commerce security threats are as follows:
Any dishonesty used during a transaction to gain financial or personal advantage is considered fraud in electronic commerce, payments, and finance.
The use of credit cards that have been stolen is a common component of credit card fraud.
Cybercriminals make illegal purchases after accessing a user’s account and doing illicit activities.
False requests for refunds and returns with several harmful intentions, including trying to exchange cash for stolen products, starting a return without returning the item, or lying to a credit card company to dispute a legitimately completed transaction (chargeback fraud).
Phishing attacks trick victims into disclosing private information (usually login passwords) or downloading malware or viruses that inadvertently break into networks and steal data. These attacks typically occur over email but can also happen over the phone or in text messages.
A generic term describing the practice of using some trickery or manipulation to persuade someone to do something (such as clicking a link in an email or commenting on a blog post) or divulging personal information.
Targets include both employees and actual customers (usually by posing as the company’s representatives) in an attempt to enter their computer networks.
Large amounts of bandwidth are sent out by these dedicated denial of service assaults (DDoS), making an eCommerce website sluggish and challenging to use. These attacks could be carried out by attackers seeking financial gain (blackmail) or to damage their reputation.
A code injection called SQL injection injects code into a SQL database to delete or steal data from it.
To gather user data, threat actors insert malicious scripts into the browser’s source code, which run on the client side.
Malware is software designed to attack websites intending to steal information, send spam from your domain, or facilitate lateral behaviour that could access other data areas.
Understanding that an eCommerce website has different needs than a regular website is the first step towards securing your eCommerce website. eCommerce websites hold more valuable data that hackers can use for fraudulent transactions or resell on the dark web.
Examples of this type of data include inventory, pricing, supply chain data, and sensitive user information, including usernames and passwords, contact details, and financial information. Supply chain, price, and inventory data are a few examples of this type of information.
The top eCommerce platform providers have proven their versatility in supporting various business models and sectors and their ability to provide security, scalability, and performance. A list of some of the most well-known safe online shopping systems may be found below:
With a 23.43% market share, WooCommerce is the second most popular eCommerce platform. This free plugin is made for WordPress to help small-to, large-scale retailers with some technical know-how—wooCommerce functions as a platform built on WordPress.
Shopify, known for being one of the simplest eCommerce platforms to set up and use, has grown to be a significant force in the worldwide eCommerce business. It offers a wide range of tools and plugins to facilitate customization.
Thanks to its inventory management capabilities and support for omnichannel and cross-channel selling, BigCommerce has gained popularity as a platform for large businesses expanding quickly.
Nowadays, most clients know the difference between HTTP:// and http:// and know that a legitimate business that values security would have a website with a padlock and a “s” in the URL.
A website that has received a security certificate is known as HTTPS. By encrypting critical data during transmission over a connection and using SSL/TLS protocols for user authentication, this certificate attests to the HTTPS website’s security.
Numerous eCommerce platforms provide hosting services for clients using off-site solutions like Google Cloud or Amazon Web Services.
Specialized web hosting does, though, also provide eCommerce features in their packages. These features include data support, email services, caching, automated backups, shopping cart software, and payment processing.
Seek out a web hosting provider that provides the following capabilities:
Administrator privilege refers to administrators’ access to restricted locations, like the database or the controls on the eCommerce website itself. To ensure the safety of these crucial servers and administration panels, take into account the following:
Staying connected with your consumers and their purchase history is essential for preventing disruptions, not just security breaches. Backups are the most obvious answer, but eCommerce companies must rely on something other than web servers to take care of this.
The options are either an automated backup solution, which backs up any new changes in real-time and ideally runs the backup process on a different server to prevent performance disruption, or a manual backup solution, which is time-consuming. There are two possible answers.
While it may be tempting to collect as much data as you can about your customers to help guide future marketing initiatives, several privacy regulations have made it apparent that data should only be limited to what is required.
It is nevertheless enticing to learn as much as you can about your clients, despite this. Furthermore, these same regulations stipulate that consumers have the right to access and know what data is being collected and the right to seek its removal (sometimes referred to as “the right to be forgotten”).
All company users need to be aware of authentication, which is figuring out whether someone is who they say they are. However, those with access to privileged data or systems must know this.
Determining the degree of privilege is also essential, particularly in larger organizations. This means that each account should be limited to accessing the systems, programs, or documents needed for that particular role and nothing else.
Two-factor authentication (2FA) and multi-factor authentication (MFA) require more than one step in validating that a person is who they claim to be because of the inherent weakness in password usage.
Users must provide a combination of factors, such as something they know (like a password), something they have (like a one-time passcode), or something they are (like biometric data), to perform two-factor authentication (2FA) and multi-factor authentication (MFA).
Using complex passwords is the first step towards enhancing password hygiene and increasing access to your eCommerce website. We could mandate complex passwords from users.
However, passwords remain an unsafe authentication method, making it easy for the threats we previously outlined to take advantage of them. Installing multi-factor authentication (MFA) or two-factor authentication (FFA) is therefore highly advised for internal employees and external clients.
To reduce the number of brute-force assaults that are made against the website, a limit on the number of times a user may try to log in must be implemented.
This could be an option built into the eCommerce platform itself, as a plugin, or as a service offered by an outside company.