How to Know Your eCommerce Site Is Secure

In order to have a successful eCommerce website, it is essential to establish proper cybersecurity measures.

That’s because eCommerce websites are one of the cybercriminals’ most frequent targets. Research conducted by Akamai found that there were more than 62 billion credential stuffing attacks from July 2018 to June 2020, with over 90% of them targeting the retail sector.

Even though these numbers refer to only one type of attack, they expose the various implications of overlooking cybersecurity aspects of your eCommerce site. 

This article will show you how to check if your eCommerce site is secure. With this knowledge, you’ll be able to keep hackers at bay, protecting both your business and customers from cybersecurity threats.

Why eCommerce Security Is Important

eCommerce security consists of guidelines that protect eCommerce assets from unauthorized access, changes, utilization, or destruction, ensuring safe electronic transactions on the internet. It provides a secure environment for people to sell and buy goods or services.

People exchange sensitive information related to their privacy and finances on eCommerce websites, making them valuable targets for cybercriminals.

With proper security measures, you can prevent data breaches, payment fraud, and financial scams from happening on your site, establishing it as a safe eCommerce business.

Conversely, if your website is not secure, it may risk your customers’ data, leading to financial losses and, eventually, decreasing trust in your site.

Common eCommerce Site Security Risks

Be one step ahead of the attackers by identifying the security risks that may exist on your eCommerce website.

1. Phishing

Phishing is a type of cybercrime where attackers trick victims into providing private information, such as passwords or social security numbers. It usually disguises itself in the form of an email from an organization, which contains a malicious link that looks legitimate at first glance.

Hackers can pretend to be your shop and send phishing emails to your customers to obtain their data. To prevent your customers from being phishing victims, warn them to ignore suspicious emails containing a link and not click on it or download any attachments. Encourage them to contact your customer service for validation directly. Inform customers that legitimate businesses like yours would never ask for sensitive information through insecure channels such as SMS or emails. 

For further prevention, keep all systems up to date with the latest security updates. Also, educate your employees with cybersecurity training so that everyone in your business can identify this kind of threat.

2. Malware

Malware is a piece of software that attackers design to gain access or cause damage to a computer network. 

If your system is infected with malware, it will lock you out of all important data and systems. 

To avoid this type of cybercrime, never click on suspicious links or install software from untrusted sources. Also, make sure to conduct regular backups of your site to be able to recover it if an attack happens.

3. Financial Fraud

Financial fraud is a situation where someone takes your money or harms your financial health through deception or illegal, criminal activities. As an eCommerce site, this means you have to protect both your customers and your business against it.

Various financial fraud types commonly occur in eCommerce, including card cracking, refund fraud, and account takeover fraud.

To avoid financial fraud, use a fraud detection service to identify malicious transactions and protect merchants from various frauds. Also, maintain Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DDS) compliance to ensure your customers that your site is a secure environment for credit card transactions.

4. DDoS Attacks

Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack is a disruption where cybercriminals flood a network or system with lots of malicious traffic, making it overwhelmed and eventually crashing it. 

In terms of eCommerce sites, a DDoS attack means your customers cannot access your website. Your system temporarily goes offline, which means a loss in potential sales. 

To prevent DDoS attacks, use firewalls and routers to recognize suspicious traffic. I also recommend using cloud-based hosting to store your website files on multiple servers, enabling you to use files on other servers if the main one goes down.

5. SQL Injections

SQL injection is a cybercrime that refers to manipulating SQL queries that the application sends to the database. It lets them access your site’s data that they’re not authorized to see, including customers’ information. 

SQL injection can also cause further severe damages as it allows attackers to get writing privileges to the database, enabling them to update or delete data. From there, they could share and sell your customers’ financial and personal information, putting your site’s reputation on the line.

Protect your site from SQL injections by always being cautious of data from third parties. Only proceed if it’s proved to be safe through proper verification. We also recommend using Object-Relational Mapping (ORM) instead of writing SQL queries since most program languages nowadays have ORM frameworks that handle all database-related aspects for you.

How to Know Your eCommerce Site is Secure

Now that you know the common security risks in eCommerce sites, it’s time to evaluate whether your eCommerce site is secure. 

There are five main factors that indicate a secure eCommerce site. Let’s go over each of them.

1. Your Site is Always Up-to-Date

As cybercriminals continuously develop more sophisticated methods to take over businesses, it is essential to stay ahead of the game by constantly updating your site’s software and implementing security patches as soon as they are available.

This will protect your site from security breaches caused by bugs and other issues, also ensuring the safety of customers’ data.

2. Using Strong Passwords

Strong passwords consist of at least eight characters and include upper and lowercase letters, numbers, and symbols.

Requiring your employees and customers to use strong passwords significantly improves site security since 37% of data breaches happen because of stolen or weak credentials. Furthermore, encourage them to use unique credentials for each platform.

3. Applying Multi-Factor Authentication

Multi-factor authentication (MFA) creates an extra layer of protection for your eCommerce site by making the login process more complex.

To complete the login process, customers have to provide additional information to access their accounts, such as a one-time password (OTP) code or answer security questions.

Implementing this method will decrease the cybercriminals’ chances of accessing your customers’ accounts. Even if they have the customer’s username and password, they won’t be able to access that extra piece of information.

4. Switching to HTTPS 

Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS) is an internet communication protocol that establishes secure data transmission between the customer’s computer and the site. It’s the secure version of HTTP.

To use HTTPS, your site needs an SSL certificate, which helps authenticate and encrypt links among computer networks. For your customers, it serves as a signal that your site is trusted and secure.

For Google and other search engines, it’s a factor that helps your site rank better on the results pages. If your site still uses HTTP, Google will flag it as not secure, and you’ll lose valuable traffic.

5. Monitoring Plugins and Third-Party Integrations

Regularly monitoring plugins and third-party integrations that run on your eCommerce site helps to review whether you still need and trust them. 

If you no longer use them or if they no longer provide support and updates, remove them from your site. That way, you can keep the number of parties who have access to your data as minimal as possible, ensuring the site’s security while also ensuring that your business is thriving optimally.

Conclusion

Ensuring excellent security is essential for your eCommerce site since many financial transactions happen on the platform.

There are five factors you can check to know if your eCommerce site is secure:

1. The site is always up-to-date.
2. Your employees and customers use strong passwords.
3. Your employees and customers apply multi-factor authentication.
4. The site uses HTTPS.
5. Plugins and third-party integrations are regularly monitored.

By checking all those five security items, you can provide your customers with a reliable online shopping experience and maintain your site’s reputation.

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