Cybersecurity in eCommerce:
Best Practices to Protect Your Store in 2024

In recent years, online shopping has become more popular as people have become more comfortable purchasing things they need on the Internet. And this has led to many offline businesses opening their online eCommerce stores. We also know that the eCommerce businesses are now adopting different marketing and operations techniques such as wholesale, dropshipping, print on demand, and subscription models to further grow their sales at speed. However, with this growth of eCommerce stores, hacking attacks are also at their peak. Today’s hackers use multiple techniques to break into these stores and steal customer data and other sensitive information.

In this blog post, we will discuss some of the most common cybersecurity issues in eCommerce and how you can protect your store from threats. We will also cover best practices for securing online payments and tips for protecting your customers’ data. So, let’s get started!

What is eCommerce security?

Ecommerce security is a cybersecurity practice that refers to the actions or preventative measures taken to secure any eCommerce store and its customers from cyberattacks. This includes data breaches, hacking, phishing scams, and other threats.

There are a few different aspects of eCommerce security:

• Data security: This refers to protecting customer data, such as their names, physical addresses, social security numbers, and credit card information.
• Payment security: This ensures that online payments are safe, secured, and well protected from any intrusion from the hacker during any financial transaction.
• Website security: This helps to protect the store’s website from being hacked or compromised in any way.

Some alarming eCommerce security stats

Before we get into how to protect your eCommerce store, let’s take a look at some of the current trends in cybercrime. According to a recent report by Cybersecurity Ventures Cybercrime, global cybercrime costs are expected to reach $10.05 trillion by 2025. That’s up from $600 billion in 2015!

What’s more, 43% of all data breaches in 2021 involved small businesses. This is a worrying trend, as small businesses are often ill-equipped to deal with the fallout from a breach. In fact, according to the US National Cyber Security Alliance, 60% of small businesses that suffer a data breach go out of business within six months.

These statistics make it clear that cybersecurity should be a top priority for any eCommerce business owner.

5 key benefits of implementing security for your eCommerce store

When we talk about the benefits of implementing a security practice for anything, we know it isn’t simply restricted to eCommerce stores. So, let’s take a look at some of the most important ones:

• Protects your and your customers’ sensitive information from being leaked online (or from a data breach).
• Ensures that online payments are safe and secure.
• Protects your store’s website from being hacked or taken down by cybercriminals.
• Builds trust between you and your customers.
• Helps you to avoid costly data breaches.

What are the most common cybersecurity issues in eCommerce?

There are uncountable cybersecurity issues one can name when it comes to identifying the attack types for a compromised eCommerce platform or store. Here are the most common ones:

• Data breaches: Data breaches happen when customer data is stolen or leaked. Here, an attacker or hacker gains access to your store’s database, or if an employee accidentally shares sensitive information and it gets publicly accessible to the entire world.
• Hacking: Hacking is a generic term for any attempt of intrusion from a hacker or hacking group. You can say your store is hacked when hackers gain unauthorized access to your store’s backend. They can then use this unauthorized access to damage your store further or steal sensitive customer data or make your online store unavailable for visitors.
• Phishing scams: This is when a cybercriminal poses as a legitimate company or individual in order to trick people into giving them sensitive information. This is often done through emails or fake websites. his is often done through emails or fake websites. Email domains without a DMARC protection protocol can also be used for phishing and spoofing.
• Denial of Service (DoS): This is when a hacker takes down a website by flooding it with traffic or requests. This can be done for fun or in order to extort money from the website’s owner.
• Malware Infection: This is when a computer is infected with malware, which can be used to steal customer data or take down the site.

Now that we’ve looked at some of the most common cybersecurity threats faced by eCommerce stores, let’s take a look at how you can protect your store from them.

13 simple ways to protect your eCommerce store from cybersecurity threats

One of the biggest challenges that people have when starting an online business and building an eCommerce website is the security of their online store website.

But there are many different ways to protect your eCommerce from cyber threats. Some of these include:

1. Choose a reliable hosting provider: You must choose a reliable hosting provider  and no logs VPN provider that offers protection against online threats such as DDoS, malware, and phishing attacks and has a solid reputation for maintaining your eCommerce business.
2. Installing an SSL certificate: Installing an SSL certificate for your domain will encrypt all the transactional customer data and help prevent data breaches. You can get a Secret Socket Layer (SSL) certificate from your hosting provider or a 3rd party SSL certificate provider.
3. Using strong passwords: Using unique and difficult-to-guess passwords or passphrases for all of your accounts, including your eCommerce store, payment processor, and email account, will help you keep your accounts safe.
4. Enabling two-factor authentication: Enforcing two-factor authentication (2FA) helps you prevent brute force or password cracking attacks. The 2FA adds an extra layer of security to your account by asking a user to verify their credentials twice.
5. Regularly updating your software: Keep your eCommerce platform, payment processor, and security software up to date with the latest security patches (it may require hiring skilled software developers experienced in security measures).
6. Backing up your data: This will help you recover from a data breach or hacking attack.
7. Monitor your store for suspicious activity: Use Google Analytics or another analytics tool to track the activity in your store. If you see any unusual activity, investigate it immediately.
8. Installing an eCommerce firewall: This will help to protect your store from hacking attacks. It will also help your store stay secured against any bot attacks.
9. Regularly scanning your store for malware: Use a malware scanning tool like Sucuri to scan your website for malware. If you find any, remove them immediately.
10. Keeping yourself updated with cybersecurity news: This will help you to stay up-to-date on the latest threats and how to protect against them.
11. Securing your login page of the store backend: Securing your login page can help prevent unauthorized access to your store.
12. Hiding specific pages on your eCommerce store: By hiding particular pages on your store, it can help to prevent them from being hacked or taken down. You can use a page lock manager plugin or app to do this.
13. Allowing users from a specific region: Allowing users from only a specific region to see your store can help prevent fraudsters from accessing your store.

By following these simple ways, you can help protect your eCommerce store from cybersecurity threats.

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What are the best practices for securing online payments?

There are a few different best practices for securing online payments. These include:

Using a reputable payment processor: Payment processors allow you to take payments online without having to store customer credit card information on your website. Make sure you choose a trusted payment processor that has good user reviews and is able enough to provide good security for the transactions on your store. But if your eCommerce store uses a recurring payment model, such as subscriptions, it’s even more important to choose a payment processor that can handle the complexities of recurring billing, (since it stores payment details of customers) such as failed payments and updating customer information. This will ensure a seamless and secure experience for your customers.

Enabling SSL: As we mentioned before, SSL will encrypt customer data and help to prevent data breaches.

Storing credit card information securely: If you choose to store credit card information in your eCommerce store, ensure it is stored in a secure database. You should also encrypt this information using an SSL certificate and activate a no log VPN to protect your database network from hackers..

Using a PCI-compliant payment gateway: Payment Card Industry (PCI) compliance is a set of security standards for online businesses that accept any kind of financial transactions in their stores, such as credit card payments, etc. If you use a PCI-compliant payment gateway, it will help to keep your customers’ information safe.

Checking for signs of fraud: Be on the lookout for any suspicious activity in your store, such as orders from new customers with high-value items. If you see anything suspicious, do not ship the order until you have verified the customer’s identity.You should also watch for certain types of fraud that occur after the transaction, such as friendly fraud. Friendly fraud happens when a customer asks for a chargeback from their bank for a legitimate transaction instead of going through the retailer first. And while you can’t completely eliminate friendly fraud, you can guard against it via a great refund policy or by disputing these charges./span>

Keeping your plugins and extensions up to date: As we mentioned before, it is important to keep all of your installed plugins and extensions up to date with the latest security patches or at least to their latest versions.

As you can see, there are a few different things you can do to protect your eCommerce store from cybersecurity threats. By following these best practices, you can help to keep your business, your customers, and your eCommerce store safe.

Summing Up

Despite the increasing trend of eCommerce, a surprising number of businesses still do not take eCommerce security seriously. In light of this, it is more important than ever for business owners to be aware of the various threats their eCommerce stores face and take steps to mitigate these risks. Implementing robust security measures will help protect your customers’ data and your business reputation. So, we recommend you implement at least basic security for your store. We hope you find this article helpful. Thank you for reading!