Is Your Ecommerce User Data Safe? Use These 8 Practices To Tackle Security Breaches
Ecommerce has revolutionized the purchasing experience in the present. With the increase in online buyers, the danger of data security breaches increased by a factor of two. According to reports by Verizon Business indicate that there were at least 407 incidents in small businesses and at least 221 incidents of data breaches that occurred in 2020.
Privacy is a key concern for online companies. Any activity that involves sharing customer data with third-party companies carries the risk of a breach of privacy. Thus, sellers must ensure that only the legitimate user (the one they have selected) can access personal data and credentials. Sellers must protect their customers and create a secure and safe environment. To ensure the security of your eCommerce website and secure users’ personal information, Here are the eight most effective practices listed below.
1. Only collect the relevant information
While registering, most eCommerce websites gather an enormous amount of information such as mobile numbers and social security numbers, email addresses, and more details. But are you required to have this much information?
Data breaches could lead to the loss of confidence that your consumers have in your business, along with substantial penalties from government agencies damaging your brand’s image. To prevent this from happening, you should adopt a clear policy on information and limit yourself to collecting only pertinent and essential details of your customers’ when you run your store’s website. Your policies should include access rights to the data stored for employees.
2. The HTTPS shift
As the owner of your online store, you should be aware of PCI-DSS guidelines. Following these guidelines will require you to move your eCommerce site to a safer HTTPS platform.
Have you seen an alert message “Not Secure” when browsing a site? These sites are not HTTPS, prone to downtime, and are more vulnerable to hacks and data breaches because of lower footfall. This could affect the conversion rate of your website. HTTPS plays a significant role in ranking on Google Search as these websites are preferred for keyword search rankings.
To safeguard the data of your customers in your eCommerce store, it is necessary to install the SSL certificate. This secures the communication between the server on your website and the user’s browser, resulting in a limit to access by third parties. It is possible to purchase a low-cost SAN SSL certificate, which lets you protect many domains (hostnames) using one certificate.
3. On-time Application updates.
Why is regularly upgrading your eCommerce application necessary? Every application is vulnerable and may cause chaos by permitting hackers to steal vital information from your website.
When you update an eCommerce application, you can use premium themes to design your website. Premium themes have more functions and features and are more secure over the long term. If you’re using a CMS system, it’s recommended to upgrade the CMS and make use of the most recent version that is safe, has time-to-time corrections to bugs, and also releases new features. This improves your site’s efficiency and ensures you have the most up-to-date security.
Check that your operating system is updated to the latest version. It is recommended not to download free plugins to safeguard your customers’ eCommerce data as they weaken your site. There are numerous themes and plugins that function as a conduit for hackers looking to hack into your website to gain access. Regularly analyzing WordPress themes, plugins, and other integrations with third-party vendors will provide greater security and reduce security risks and vulnerabilities.
4. Two-factor Authentication
Two-factor authentication or two-step authentication is a security process requiring users to submit two or more proofs to prove their identity to gain access to an application or system.
The 2FA protects the user’s credentials and the information that users have access to. Two-factor authentication provides a greater degree of security by providing users a password and a secondary factor like biometrics, security tokens or fingerprint, or facial recognition.
5. Access patterns
The majority of security breaches happen within. Therefore, if your website has adequate security measures, be sure to protect your eCommerce from external threats and internally. So, you must limit access to your eCommerce website to the appropriate user.
You can:
- Maintain a valid audit log to review users’ entries in the database
- Restrict access across networks using strong passwords
- Change the passwords regularly
- Find out who is unauthorized by using a proper audit trail
- Find loopholes in the audit trail
- Save eCommerce data by periodically conducting penetration tests across networks and web
6. Data encryption
For your ecommerce store, Secure sensitive information such as passwords by encryption using specific techniques. It is possible to use intrusion prevention systems like firewalls, the definition of roles, to provide basic security. Hashing is another method that is commonly used in network communications. Hashing is a way to add a layer of security and helps make your system secure from tampering.
7. Secure Payments
Securely store user financial information, as this could cause misuse of the information by hackers and cause fraudulent activity. Using third-party payment processors for transactions for the eCommerce store is possible. It is always recommended to use specific payment systems compliant and conform to security standards like Authorize.Net, and PayPal for secure and seamless processing of payments. These platforms have advanced security tools to safeguard your personal financial information.
8. Backup of data
For companies storing data online like ecommerce stores, backups can be a form of insurance. In the event of a data loss, it could result in the shutdown of your eCommerce site, and the loss of data could result from a malicious attack or human error.
If you do not have a reliable backup strategy, you could be impacted by revenue losses, frequently experiencing downtime, increased costs, and losing the brand’s reputation. Thus, online companies must include a backup and recovery plan as part of their business plan. To ensure a fully functional and secure online store, you must regularly back up your information, including categories, themes, products, customer information inventory, orders, and much more.
Wrapping it up
In the past, we’ve faced security attacks now and then. The eCommerce sector isn’t an exception and is tackling the threat of securing customers’ personal information. As an owner of a business, you need to protect your customers’ information and establish trust in your business. This can help you improve your company’s image and boost revenue.
You can seek out a top eCommerce development company to know and clarify the policies for protection and how they must be implemented for your online store to guard against data security breaches.
