Security in eCommerce isn’t anything to be treated lightly. Over time, substantial data breaches have significantly eroded trust in digital security.

Developing an eCommerce website is easy nowadays. It’s not that easy to keep your site safe from cyber-attacks, fraud, and copycats. And as small business owners know this very well, one massive breach could mean the end of the business.

It is known that consumers are willing to make purchases via popular networks such as PayPal, Amazon, Google, Apple, but they don’t usually trust unknown companies.

Failing to secure an online retail company can affect revenue directly, or even worse, can destroy your credibility. Once it’s clear that a business cannot be relied upon to keep data safe, no one will want to purchase from them again.

That’s why getting serious with data protection is a serious matter for any online business.

We’ve put together the most common eCommerce security threats and their solutions.

Transaction fraud

There are 2 main types of transaction fraud:

• Stolen credit cards – the card details are used to make fraudulent purchases
• Transactions on insecure systems that are interrupted or redirected

Even though now customers have access to platforms that provide unprecedented financial convenience and bank support is almost always available, that doesn’t completely protect against this kind of fraud.

Solution – Make sure your website is PCI DSS compliant

Every online business that wants to secure its transactions and boost trust should comply with PCI DSS standards. PCI standards secure confidential cardholder information. They apply whether the data is at rest or in transit, protecting the customers from vulnerabilities and identity theft.

Direct site attacks

eCommerce websites can sometimes be the subject of direct attacks in the form of DDoS – dedicated denial of service. This means that the attackers will overwhelm the site’s hosting and prevent it from loading for the visitors. This is used to keep it so busy that the focus will not be on the visits that matter: the attackers. This form of attack can also run through hosting data allowances, causing many costly issues for businesses.

Solution

Your eCommerce company needs to make use of the DoS protection service. More exactly, to have the traffic monitored and parsed and when visits are identified to be fraudulent, to be blocked. This solution prevents the site to slow down and does not affects in any way the performance of it.

Password assault

For this kind of threat, the attackers can use a program to go through all the passwords stored in the hope of eventually getting some of them right. There is also another way: to guess the password based on the user’s life and information.

Keep in mind that if a password is discovered, the result can be damaging, especially if it’s not discovered in time. Considerable alterations can be made, systems can be taken offline, data can be compromised, and money can be transferred, all with minimal risk to the person with access.

Solution – implement multi-factor authentication and keep your site updated

In this case, the best solution is to discuss with your development team and implement more complex passwords to be used internally, alongside multi-factor authentication for the admin accesses (or for the changes that might occur to customer accounts)

Also, it’s better to create a regular site backup, and in case someone gains unauthorized access and makes changes, you can quickly revert to prior backups.

Phishing

This attack involves pretending to be someone trustworthy when contacting someone else and exploiting their trust to get something from them. Phishing mostly occurs through emails and phone calls.

Phishers can learn what kind of shops a shopper uses and spoof emails from them. By using different URL-s, phishers can easily steal data, if the user logs in with the link provided.

Solution

Phishing is extremely difficult to prevent, but the best way is for retailers to educate their clients about how they operate, using general marketing materials and inform them.

Shortly, here are the best eCommerce security solutions

• Trademark your company name and logo – registering the online business as a trademark protects against future copiers, infringers, and knockoffs who may try to steal your brand.
• Opt for custom made software to ensure data security. You will need custom software that addresses security needs at every level of design and build. Companies offering custom software development services ensure that with their latest methodologies they have constant interactions with the client. They also test and provide bits and pieces of custom software so that any security threats can be leveled against at its roots. In one of our articles, you can see why you should choose custom software for your eCommerce business: 11 Reasons to Choose Custom Software Development for Your e-Commerce Business
• Every online business should use secure hosting with an SSL certificate from HTTP. HTTPS offers more security (encryption)
• Online retailers should avoid having customer data stored and backed up – never hold client card data. Not only is bad practice. But it could land you a heavy fine if your system is compromised.
• Use hacking prevention software in case of attacks.
• Look at several different layers of security, such as firewall, which offers a defense against the most popular hacks, or CDN which is a geographically dispersed set of servers that store copies of your website’s pages. CDN can also prevent DDoS.

To sum up

Without any doubt, in the eCommerce business, security will always be an important issue. Keep in mind that security is not free, but it’s cheaper than getting hacked.

Finally, there is no individual solution to make an eCommerce website sound and safe. The optimal solution is one that takes into consideration the right choice of software and hosting platform and keeping everything up to date and secure.

Also, make sure you keep your site automatically backed up.

Take a glance at a layered approach by using different tools but also don’t forget that good old written procedures play an important role in keeping your eCommerce website safe and secure.

A competent software development company like WebChain will take all the necessary measures to avoid data loss.

Hiring a custom software development solutions provider is perhaps the best solution to ensure data security for your eCommerce website. For more on this and everything else, contact us today!