When you own a website, especially, an e-Commerce site, it becomes essential to secure it from hackers in all the ways possible. It is utmost important for you to protect your data which, if being stolen, may lead you to incur heavier costs in your business. Therefore, it is vital that protect your website from any kind of fraud or any trouble that may cause you a great loss.
Here, we will have a look at some tips that will guide you to protect and secure your e-Commerce website from hackers and everything else.
Select a secure e-Commerce platform for your site
It is important that you choose an e-Commerce platform that uses a sophisticated object-oriented programming language. When you use a secure platform, your half of the worries get solved.
Choose a secure hosting service
It is a significant decision for the website owners as to which hosting service they should opt for their site. Most of the site owners take this decision so lightly, that they may choose a cheapest hosting service provider, and then they repent later.
A hosting service should provide a secure platform that keeps hackers at bay. It should also have a good backup system that will provide you with a secure storage for your data. Moreover, these backup systems should be such that they should provide you with your data in the case of sudden loss of the same. A well-maintained and secure web host provide a high uptime guarantee, a secure data center, sufficient backup programs, RAID data protection, and manual reboot. Therefore, you can check with your current web host about the services we mentioned here. If you miss on any of these services, you can consult for the same with your service provider or can switch on to a better one.
Keep your data encrypted
It is critical that whatever data that passes from the web server to the customers’ website has to be in an encrypted form to avoid any kind of loss of data or any fraud. To accomplish this, an SSL (Secure Socket Layer) certificate is to be taken which assures your customers about their online transactions. A seal of an SSL on a website makes it an authenticated one.
To have security for their customers, many corporate and search engines have started to adopt an SSL certificate for their websites. It reduces the fraudulent purchases and also keeps financial information secure over the website.
Do not store confidential data/information
When you own an e-Commerce website naturally you have lots of customers, and so, it is important that you do not ask for their confidential information. It is very risky to store any kind of confidential or personal details of the customers, as this information may be leaked any time by the hacker. So, it is advisable that every e-Commerce site should take and use the minimum information of its clients so as to avoid any kind of fraud. In this case, if the site is being attacked, then too, the hackers won’t be able to get any confidential data to use.
Ask/instruct your customers to keep long passwords
When you have an e-Commerce website, sure your customers are going to register themselves with your site to build a long-term relationship. So, their future purchases are going to happen on your site, and for this, they will need to log themselves in. It is advisable that when your clients register themselves with your site, you ask them to keep their passwords long, so as to protect them from the hackers. Also, you can notify them to change their passwords every 15 days or on a monthly basis. Moreover, to create the passwords, it is advisable that you use a mix of numbers, small alphabets, capital alphabets, and special characters. It is hard to assume a password perfectly created using these details.
Set up a system alert
You can set up a system alert which allows you to identify a person who is suspicious during their transactions. It enables to identify such transactions and you can take the necessary steps regarding that. For example, if a person places an order with multiple addresses, credit cards, and phone numbers, then you can trace that IP through which you get a multiple order request. Further, you can inform your server administration to take the required steps. It is advisable that you always check that the order recipient name is matched with the credit card or debit card to avoid any suspicious transactions.
Educate your employees
When you have an e-Commerce website and have employees who work in your company, it is advisable that you educate them regarding the online thefts and frauds. It means they should be aware of the fraudulent cases that happen on the web so that they do not become victim to such cases. Moreover, when you educate them, it will make them aware of taking precautions while working online, and take precautions regarding customers’ security, and prevent any cyber-attacks that may happen. You can also make a security protocol and policy that will educate your employees about their customers’ security.
Use a firewall security
A hacker can attack your website in lots of ways like creating and sending a virus to your system which can crash it. The most common ones are Trojans which can come into your system anytime if it is not properly protected. Therefore, it is advisable that you protect your system and server with a firewall. A firewall is a layer of your network that alerts you when anything goes wrong or suspicious on your server.
You can avoid frauds like SQL injection and cross-site scripting attack, by having an extra layer of security to your customer’s login page, contact forms, and search queries. The functionality of firewalls is to monitor the traffic coming onto your server. Moreover, you can also set a predefined access control list to allow only consented communication.
Keep your system updated
Today, a majority of the software companies frequently release the latest versions that fix bugs in software, apart from providing smooth functionality, to avoid getting a cyber victim. Therefore, whenever you get an update to your system, it is necessary to update it because cyber criminals take advantage of these loopholes to attack your system. So, make sure you update it at regular intervals or whenever there is an update available for the same. The systems that are not updated are highly exposed to cyber attacks and crimes.
Check your website at regular intervals
It is significant that you check your site regularly and monitor your traffic activity. When you check your website at regular intervals, you can be alerted of the suspicions arising on your server from any angle. So, you can protect it from any kind of attack or fraud.
Take regular backup of your data
It is advisable and inevitable for you to take a backup of your data so that whenever you face any worse situation, you can have your confidential data safe with you.
It is vital that when you are in the e-Commerce website development, you protect and secure your site from every direction with the help of the ways we discussed above.