The ballooning of digital transactions is giving eCommerce an essential place in the business world. A mammoth surge in buyer’s willingness to share personal information/data with online sellers for a new type of experience. This is the level of trust you shouldn’t take for granted as an eCommerce business owner. You ought to deploy the best possible defense line to guard customer data, especially with the increased sophistication of cyber-attacks and data breaches. Failure to protect buyer’s data can have far-reaching consequences such as an immense fall in sales and closure! Well, we have compiled some of the most effective practices you should leverage to boost your eCommerce business security.
Choose a Secure eCommerce Platform.
The best place to start is to pick a good eCommerce platform. There are several good eCommerce platforms, each with its pros and cons. However, there are those eCommerce website platforms that are known to offer better security than others. Secure eCommerce platforms such as Shopify, Magento, WordPress WooCommerce, and the likes have a great track record on security. They also allow numerous third-party security plugins that will make your online stores more secure. This way, you can boost your security against threats like malware, SQL injection, zero-day exploits, Denial of Service attacks, and cross-site scripting, among others.
Tip:
- Pick a good WebHost that will help protect your eCommerce site’s backend.
Scan for Malware
Now, viruses and any other malicious programs are a threat to your eCommerce files. Fortunately, plenty of good web hosts and eCommerce platforms do provide malware scanning services and tools. You should choose a service that immediately rings the notice when an infection is detected. With such services in place, you will swiftly avoid falling prey to malicious activities such as ransomware and data theft.
Deploy Strong Password Policy
Strong passwords offer a higher level of protection to a data breach. Strong passwords are complex to decipher as they entail a combination of letters, numbers, and special characters in random order. Although it is time-consuming and tiresome to enter complex passwords, it massively boosts a security breach’s chances. Besides strong passwords, you can also incorporate multifactor authentication systems like 2-factor authentication to boost security. The combination of strong password strategies and multi-layer authentication will prove a hard nut to crack for hackers.
Tip:
- It would help if you also changed the default URL paths like the admin login link often used by attackers targeting eCommerce business.
Improve your Mobile Device Security
With the skyrocketing of the use of mobile devices across the globe, plenty of organizations, including eCommerce businesses, have been forced to implement BYOD policies. But BYOD is security-averse without an excellent mechanism to manage the use of mobile devices by employees. It would be best to have proper policies coupled with good Mobile Device Management (MDM) software to secure your infrastructure. MDM software is like a central point where the company tech team can configure and push policies to end-devices like mobile devices used by employees. This way, applications can be deployed to the end-user and managed from the company’s central point. It is important to know the mobile device management software you need for your eCommerce business. In general, a good MDM software should offer inventory, productivity, and security and compliance features. Don’t let your employees be the loophole used to attack your business.
Train Your Employee about Business Security
Talking of employees, most hackers know that they are an excellent channel for business systems. Whether through email phishing or fraudulent websites, employees must be up to date concerning strategies used by hackers. There are plenty of organizations that have been breached because of rather avoidable employee mistakes. To prevent going in this direction, ensure you train your employees on the best security practices, possible threats, and how to curb them if they arise.
Protect your Customer Data
Now that you store some user’s data, you are a prime target, and you have to lay down proper data management measures. One of the simplest rules is to collect only the data you require. Once you have collected these data, keep them safe. Follow standards like the PCI DSS guidelines in handling data like payment information in your shop. That is just one standard; others will help you protect your customer data.
Encrypt with SSL
SSL certificates are also important to keep your business data safe in the web domain. It is essentially a chunk of code that adds a layer of encryption to data exchanged between the server and the user. When you install an SSL certificate, your web address will shift from “HTTP” to “HTTPS.” You can also get trust cues that will boost consumer trust in your shop. SSL is also a ranking signal in SEO; thus, you will improve your Google rankings.
Final Thoughts
That’s it! We hope our quick tips will help you boost your eCommerce business security. Remember, attacks keep evolving, and you will also need to stay a step ahead to keep your business safe.
