How to Secure an Ecommerce Site to Assure Safe Shopping Platform for Online Shoppers

Small and Mid-sized businesses have endless opportunities to boost sales through e-commerce platforms, but on the other hand cybercrime and online fraud are also growing at an all-time high.  So e commerce security issues matter a lot if you are planning to start an ecommerce store and if you are the one who doesn’t want to become prey then Follow these simple steps to keep your site, your clients, and their data as safe as possible.

But before we actually look into it let’s do some basics and understand what is 

E-commerce Security Issues: Phishing and Spear Phishing

Today, the – e commerce security threats have become the serious cause of concern for every sector/industry and it has become a daunting task in dealing with two major security issues, i.e., phishing and spear phishing. Accordingly,

Phishing

Phishing refers to a hacking technique of various mass mailing of malicious emails, which trick people into clicking on various malware links or disclosing their financial/personal information. According to the analysis, total phishing attacks witnessed and reported during the recent few years increased by about or even more than 180%.

Spear Phishing

Spear phishing is a dangerous type of email phishing, and it targets specific victims by sending emails purporting as from their colleagues and friends. This phishing variant has consistently increased during the recent two or three years. As the entire e-commerce sector is virtual and distributed by nature, it creates a huge scope for spear-phishing hackers, as they rely on impersonation that is hard to perform when everyone works from a single workplace. For example, many e-commerce companies rely on independent entities, like call centers, fulfillment houses, and payment card processors. Indeed, this creates difficulty for a particular employee working in a single entity to ensure that any email sender is genuine or affiliated with any other link present in the big e-commerce chain.

Risk for running Ecommerce site owners through the holiday

We all know that the shopping season gives a pool of opportunities for shopaholics to buy their favorite items, but it also helps ecommerce site owners make money and boost their overall reputation and revenues. However, the e commerce security threats and solutions are rising rapidly and this shopping season also creates an opportunity for hackers to infect various ecommerce websites with varieties of malware practices. Especially, many attackers or hackers target various last-minute shoppers who opt to buy their favorite products online. Indeed, as an ecommerce website owner, you need to understand the risks towards which your website is prone, which include the following-

Credit Card Swipers

In the case of credit card swipers or credit card stealers, hackers do the swiping job whenever they inject a piece of malware into the checkout process of an online buyer. By doing this, the attacker may easily get the credit card information of the same buyer. These attackers inject card swipers to exploit vulnerabilities in the website extensions and software. Most of the attackers also exploit any website in advance, inject a backdoor for retaining access, and later on, stay dormant. And hence the privacy issues in e-commerce are on the rise.

Malicious Payment Gateways

Other than credit cards, hackers may even infect any ecommerce website or make changes in the place where payment takes place, even when the respective site uses a trustworthy type of external payment gateway. In this case, hackers redirect a particular payment gateway or clone the checkout page of any shopping site to perform phishing activity. Hackers thus intercept the buyers’ credit card details while they transit through the payment process. On the other side, ecommerce site owners lose their sales. To avoid this e commerce security issues, an ecommerce websites should possess a firewall to avoid attackers giving scope to attackers to change the respective payment gateway.

Malware Downloads

If any attacker succeeds to get access to a specific ecommerce site with the help of poor user credentials or vulnerable software, hackers may inject malicious scripts intend to infect the computers owned by the respective website’s visitors.

How to protect your ecommerce business from cyber attacks

• Use a secure eCommerce platform

  If you use an entirely new type of eCommerce platform or one that does not have a strong emphasis on security, you should step ahead to migrate to a developed platform. In this case, you have to choose/use a secured eCommerce platform capable of understanding the essential security requirements and taking steps to maintain security at the highest possible level.

• Don’t store sensitive data

  In most e-commerce security issues cases, you do not require storing any other information than the name of your website’s customers, home address, email address, login, phone number, and password. These aforesaid details are sufficient to drive your business efficiently. However, if you store or collect the respective information from your customers, you should store it on a highly secured yet encrypted type of database as a site owner. Simultaneously, you should instruct your customers about avoiding using the same password for your eCommerce store as they use for their bank accounts or email accounts.

• Provide tracking numbers to your customers

  Image Source: feedzai

  As an eCommerce website owner, you should ensure that hackers fail to use any stolen credit card to place online orders on your ecommerce store, while customers cannot submit fraudulent purchases from your shopping portal. Fraud claims and chargebacks may often take place from your account. Most of the hackers create this type of problem, while customers, in some cases, keep possession of their shopped products but file a chargeback with financial institutions or banks or claim about any fraudulent activity taking place on their accounts. To deal with this problem, you should use tracking numbers for each of the placed orders and the important shipping details. In addition, to check – e commerce security threats you should make sure to track locations, IP addresses, and other valuable pieces of information, which you may use in verifying the legitimacy of charges.

• Use a CVV verification system

  CVV is the acronym for Credit Card Verification Value, and it helps you put a limit on the exact numbers of fraud transactions. In this case, customers should possess a physical credit/debit card to read the required CVV number mentioned beside it. Most of the hackers do not have your physical credit/debit card with them; they fail to enter the CVV number appropriately to complete the transaction. Without a CVV number, hackers will not get any scope to commit fraud related to credit cards.

• Conduct vulnerability and penetration testing

  You should make sure to continuously assess systems to identify any endpoint vulnerability, weaknesses in the network, and ecommerce security solutions on a suboptimal basis. Even you should opt for ongoing assessments to strengthen networking, hosting, and data storage promptly. Penetration testing often detects missed vulnerabilities and makes companies competent enough to optimize log and patch management systems. Each of the addressed vulnerabilities helps in minimizing the ability of offenders to attack any online trade.

• Use layered security

  Layered security indicates different layers, which hackers have to pass through before they actually gain access to any sensitive information if you opt to store it. With the aim to layer the security, you have to make sure to get a firewall in the appropriate place and later on, should use a proper SSL certificate to encrypt the essential transactions to perform by using the online server owned by your ecommerce site.

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• Utilize a DDoS & PCI protection service

  DDoS is the acronym for Distributed Denial of Service Attacks, which although actually are not hacks, they are methods, which hackers often use to disable the store completely and capture it offline. Hence, the best way to deal with such attacks is to host the store on cloud platform and utilize a service capable to migrate the store to any other server in case it detects any event of DDoS. After this, PCI scans on any ecommerce store and server for every 3 or 4 months period is helpful in reducing the chances related to vulnerability of the store from hackers. PCI scan figures out the present vulnerable areas without any requirement to stay ahead of the complete hacking industry.

How Is Blockchain Crucial For E-Commerce Security?

Blockchain technology has not only influenced the financial, energy, health, and the ecommerce industry but has also employed the gaming sector; this Revolutionary Blockchain technology is transparent and efficient. e commerce security issues plays a major role in diffusing the data in the complete network by providing separate encryption for each type of communication. In this case, hackers require breaking millions of encryptions to gain access to the required amount of data, and it is virtually impossible. Because of this, you will assure the security of your e-commerce system so that it discourages hackers/attackers who intend to break it.

Conclusion

Irrespective of the extent of hacking activities prevailing over the internet on ecommerce sites, site owners may assure the security of their customers. However, ecommerce site owners should make sure to follow the steps above as much as possible to avoid eCommerce activities and provide a secure platform for their customers.

Being an experienced market player in the IT field, Coreway Solution has specialized in a bouquet of technology-driven IT solutions, including web and mobile app development, ecommerce solution, B2B portal development, and CMS solution since 2010. We have always strived for perfection, precision, and infuse pace in clients’ business processes to generate increased sales and conversion cost-effectively. As a result, we are trusted by some of the biggest brands across the globe. Firmly believing in customer satisfaction, our dexterous developers help you get the best value from your investment by providing quality and result-oriented service.