Hackers are like vultures circling their prey…when it’s holiday season for online shopping websites (Remember the high profile hacks which happened against eBay, lately?). And the hungry eyes of these hackers show no mercy to small and midsized online shopping websites either. So if yours is a small or midsized ecommerce website…beware! Hackers these days have a general feeling that small and midsized online shopping websites are soft targets. So, let’s take a look at some tips to show those hackers that ecommerce websites are no small fries, which can be messed with!
1) Take the basic baby steps of security in ecommerce: Up the security of your servers and databases which host card data. Also take all possible steps to address all ecommerce security issues and ensure the safety of your payment channels, through which all monetary transactions take place. Now, you wouldn’t want to see holes in your customers’ wallets, would you? And of course, keep an eye on your product databases to prevent hijack of products right under your nose (yes, even that has happened to some unfortunate popular online shopping sites’ owners). You also have to be aware of the fact that your website can be misused to store illegal and stolen data…especially if the website is open to third party users (such as in the case of multi vendor online shopping websites). This can be prevented by ensuring thorough user verification at every possible level.
2) The shield: Use effective malware protection measures and trustworthy antivirus software to keep all sorts of peeves like malwares, viruses, Trojans etc at bay. Now don’t underestimate the power of good antivirus software…be aware that hackers are very much interested in valuable information from holiday online shoppers’ computers. So using good antivirus programs and other virus repellent methods can protect your customers, their credit card data and other sensitive information… as well as help you to protect website from hackers.
3) The cure: And if at all your database gets hacked due to the scorn of lady luck and general ecommerce security issues , be prepared to have enough ability to conduct forensics and post-incident investigations…so that the lost data, money or anything else can be retrieved back.
4) Take these important steps as well to ensure security in ecommerce : Have enough defensive ecommerce security tools and technology, which can match up with those of the hackers. Also ensure that your hosting providers and data centers have good security procedures, the content management systems are up to date, third party codes are thoroughly checked, website is frequently audited with vulnerability scanning and penetration testing…to prevent weaknesses etc.
5) Have a good system which can monitor all types of threats and the latest hacker trends. This will help you to be on the safer side and completely avoid all types of hacking. Prevention is better than cure…right?
6) Have in-house staff, completely dedicated to security causes and ecommerce security issues. Such staff can work day and night to ensure the security of your holiday shopping online sites.
7) Go for a cloud-based approach to both DNS management and DDoS protection. This can save your holiday shopping online site from going out of business, this holiday season.
8) Implement security best practices: Partner with a good security provider for holistic support. Such partners can easily identify security threats and help you take proper remediation tactics and measures.
9) Make sure that the platform you use for your holiday shopping online sites is safe and secure. Open source based ecommerce platforms are by far more trustworthy for usage, when it comes to security in ecommerce.
10) Go PCI compliant and stick on to using strong SSL(Secure Sockets Layer). Also avoid storing sensitive data of shoppers…as much as possible.
11) Some other ecommerce security measures you could go for are: Enabling an address verification system (AVS) card verification value (CVV) for all credit card transactions, persuade shoppers to use strong passwords, set up system alerts and alarms to detect suspicious activity, give effective ecommerce security training to all the employees, use tracking numbers for all orders etc.
Now, with all these security measures put in place, all that you can expect during this holiday season are…high revenue from a large number of sales and many happy faces doing safe online shopping from your popular online shopping sites!