Website security has become an essential ingredient for the overall safety of the users and customers who do online shopping through e-commerce websites. Cybersecurity is not rocket science; with little precautions you can provide a safe online environment for the customers. Cybercriminals often find it easy and weakly secured websites are vulnerable for cyber-attacks.
Though, there is a way out to this. Yes, installing an SSL certificate to your e-commerce website solves all the basic security threats.
As e-commerce website owners, you should be aware of the fact that Google has announced that is mandatory to have HTTPS for all the websites which help in better ranking.
Consequently, an SSL certificate creates an encrypted path between the web server and the client. The transmission of sensitive data like customer’s credit card details, and login details is encrypted to prevent any sort of cyber-attacks.
When an SSL certificate is enabled, the site domain starts with HTTPS automatically instead of default HTTP. Here S stands for Secure. Moreover, the padlock or the green bar in the browser, on the website shows that you have an SSL certificate installed.
1. Keep all your software up to date:
This is the easiest and the foremost step towards website security. Keeping all your software updated makes a huge difference in a positive way. Moreover, a lot of software patches and updates are designed to reduce the cyber-attacks and security vulnerabilities.
A manual or automatic software update is also required. It is always advisable to check the reminders and the notifications for any new software update alerts. By regularly checking your software, your website CMS update and all other security patches will lead you more results.
2. Use secure passwords and update frequently:
It is surprising to know that most of the cyber hackers find it easy to crack the passwords. It is quite evident that still most of the website owners use the basic passwords which are highly vulnerable to attacks.
Your password should have a combination of big and small alphabets, numbers, and special characters. You should avoid using the passwords which are related to names of your organizations, your name or kid’s name. It will be an easy task for hackers to try all the known information about you and the relevant passwords.
Be creative, select a unique password for your website. Make sure to change the password every 2 months to avoid the cyber-attacks on your data and the websites. Do not use the same password for the website and other applications’ login credentials. Maintaining the above steps will surely fetch good results.
3. Backup regularly:
It is a basic common practice that we back up our phone’s images, videos, and all the important documents. In the same way, take a backup of your website frequently. If anything happens to the website, you cannot spend your valuable time and money against building your website from scratch.
Backup software in the market will automatically backup the website and restores the same website if required. However, if you have a security team to manage all the website stuff make sure they do follow the regular backups of all the information related to the website and your business.
4. Invest in a malware detector:
Cyber-attacks are not just data breaching or stealing your information, it is also infecting the malicious virus into your website. The cybercriminals are interested to infect the website by injecting the damaging virus which means your website could be a victim for malware or even worse by further infecting your customers’ computers.
Your best move to avoid such situations to install a malware detector. These anti-malware programs protect the website as well as the customer’s computers from the attacks. Moreover, anti-malware can detect the malware fast and keeps away all the harmful programs from your website. However, your web hosting platform could provide the best anti-malware security plans.
5. Watch your permissions:
The more access given to people will end up bringing security problems. No matter how small or big the organization is, you need to control the access and give the permissions only to a few people.
It is obvious that less the people that have access permissions, the least the cyber-criminal activities are reduced. By limiting the access, you can control the damage to the website to a great extent.
6. Set up an SSL:
As discussed above, an SSL certificate plays a major role in deciding the strength of the website. Ecommerce website owners should install an SSL certificate at the earliest. Customers need to know that the website they are visiting, or purchasing is fully protected. SSL certificates are a way to boost the website traffic rate, thereby increase in sales.
An SSL certificate can be inexpensive. You should search for the best SSL certificate providers to get an SSL certificate. SSL certificates ensure that the websites start with HTTPS and have a lock symbol which means that all the transactions done here are strongly secure. The information is strictly encrypted that no hackers would be able to deal with it.
7. Use a Web Application Firewall:
Web application firewall is available in both forms like hardware device and software. As we all know that, a web application firewall has a wide range of applications from protecting the cyber-attacks such as force authentication, securing sensitive data leakage, backend running programs exposure and many more.
Apart from these, SQL injections, cross-site scripting, cross-site forgery, file manipulations, can be actively controlled and manage the website security by enhancing the website performance.
Conclusion:
By completing the discussed checklist, you can control the website malpractices and provide a safe and secure environment for the visitors and the customers.
