We hear about the big commerce sites and banks having data breaches all the time. It may seem like if you are a small-time ecommerce store owner that you don’t have to worry about such things. You probably feel that nobody would want to steal your data since there isn’t much to gain.
Well, some hackers go for the big fish and others are happy to catch a minnow. You need to take your security seriously anytime you have a business online.
In this article, I will go over several of the ways that you should be taking care of security for your ecommerce site.
- Secure your payments
If you are accepting payments on your site then you are responsible for making sure that nothing can happen to your customers data. It is up to you to strengthen your payment system to make sure of it.
The first way is to only accept payments from valid processors. Make sure that your payment processor for credit cards has a reputation of being secure and pay more if you need to to make sure that your merchant service is not going to be the weak link in your security.
Also, accept payments from PayPal and even Bitcoin. PayPal has very good encryption so the data should be safe. Safest of all is the blockchain where Bitcoin can be used to pay. Even if you don’t know how to sell Bitcoin online cashing it out into your local currency is easy and safe.
Lastly, use https as you want the security certificate that allows customers to understand that their payments are encrypted and their data is safe when using your site.
- Keep a strong password
Most security breaches happen because a hacker is able to guess a password. All they have to do in many cases is find the name of the owner of the site. Do a quick search on social media. And then go with the names of their kids or pets and in most cases, this is enough to gain entrance.
Instead of using an easy to guess password, make it an auto generated one that is impossible to guess. And change the password often.
- Choose the right platform
None of your efforts to secure your site will do much good if your site is on an ecommerce platform that doesn’t offer security in its code as a default.
This is the weak link for a lot of e commerce site owners. When looking for the right platform, make sure it offers encrypted payment gateways, has an SSL certificate capability, and offers authentication methods for customers.
With these basics, you can build your security foundation and make sure that you can’t be hacked to begin with. It’s also a good idea to go with a reputable platform that can handle bigger ecommerce sites so it can grow along with your business. If you outgrow your site, then you’ll need to move it and this can present a lot of security problems in the migration process.
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