In the modern and digital era, technology has played an important role by shifting the manual work lifestyle of humans to completely automated that now many individuals are completely dependent on machines to complete their task. E-commerce is one of the popular industry in which one can take part as an entrepreneur. In past people used to do work by sitting physically in their offices and shops to earn bread and butter but now this trend is completely shifted in digital terms, a big thanks to technology and the internet humans have started shifting their office going business to digital business taking part into e-commerce.
Businesses started making their online appearance by designing websites for their business by adding creative content and up to the mark graphic designing to attract customers easily. There are many businesses who has their regular customer and now these customers are shifted to their online business.
According to the census of Zippia roughly estimated there are almost 24-27 billion websites for large-scale and primary-scale businesses across the world. While designing websites for any business the owner need to keep in mind that the security of their website must be their top priority, to keep away from cyber attacks. According to the census report almost after every 39 seconds, there is a new cyber attack on any website, Zippia claimed that almost 30,000 websites get hacked daily which is a great loss of the e-commerce industry.
There are millions of cyber criminals sitting in wait to attack and hack any website and e-commerce is their first target. It is recommended to every new business website that they have to be aware of all the risks associated with this website and they have to take some precautionary measures to avoid cyber attacks.
Companies need to hire any security agency to clear all the lacking security points through which any cyber attack can happen to their company. Owners need to spare some time and pay proper attention on the security measures of their company as its very sensitive point of any company because of cyber attacks, the hackers can attack the confidential data of your company leading to a huge loss. As a result of cyber attack, you are at risk of losing your money, you are at risk of loosing customers’ credentials, gaining reputation of years will get ruined in minutes, and all this because you haven’t paid attention to the proper security measures for your company.
Importance Of Security In E-Commerce Industry
There are many important points that you need to keep in mind and arrange the security measures according to that, few of the important aspects are mentioned bellow.
MAKE SURE CUSTOMER INFORMATION IS SECURED: to be the owner of an e-commerce store it is your utmost priority to make sure that customers’ data is safe and secure and that you are dealing with all the confidential information of customers in well well-regulated manner. Protecting your website from cyber-attacks is quite difficult but this is the owner’s responsibility to secure the website to avoid the risk of hacking, and risk of misplacement of customer data.
Make A Trust Relation With Company: Consumers and retailers always wish to work with a business that they can trust blindly. They always want a channel where they can enter their personal credentials without tensions like credit card number, bank details etc. if your business data is exposed to others it will decrease the chances of other businesses to invest with you in the future.
Save Financial Data From Hacks: if the business you are running is greatly affected by hackers, then you have to pay some amounts and struggle hard to fix and address these breaches. You have to include the payments for forensic investigations, data recovery services, and monitoring of debits and credits for customers.
Ensure Conformity: your business have to maintain security compliance that can easily meet the law of the state that is designed for online businesses. If your security measures are not up to date, then you have to pay other penalties to the state as the punishment of not following the designed rules and regulations to make the customer’s data secure.
Security Measures For Your Online Business
There are many security companies that designed specific security software that you can use for your online business or e-commerce store to secure your customers data from any cyber attack. This software send a notification to the owner that someone is trying to breach your security and they want to access your confidential data so you have to take precautionary measures. There are some proactive tips for security of businesses that you have to learn and teach your staff as well. Few of them are mentioned below.
Select Safe And Secure E-Commerce Platform:
As experts say, select the right basics for your business and the rest will fall in the correct place. The initial step is to select the best and secure e-commerce platform. There are plenty of e-commerce platforms available so selecting the best out of these is quite difficult. Owners must have to make sure that the platform they have selected has best security measures and the platform maintains the payment card industry conformity. To check PCI compliance you have to run its scans on your server to check whether you are compliant or not.
It is recommended to always use the updated version of the software so you have to stay aware that whenever the new version of your software came in the market you have to upgrade your current software to enjoy updated security features. There is best rated choice named as PrestaShop which own some of the best security measures that are quite convincing for customers and attract clients because of its updated security measures. There are other high ranked software like Magento and WooCommerce. These are the most popular e-commerce platforms.
Impose SSL Certificates:
If you want to continue your online transaction then implementation of an SSL certificate is very important. SSL certificates basically show that the user, store, product, and transits all are authentic. SSL certificate is necessary because most customers check this before shopping from an online store. SSL certificate shows that the connection tunnel between user and the website is secure with end-to-end data encryption.
There are numerous Tech-savvy end users who are always in search of the HTTPS icon to paste in the address bar that will guarantee the customers the security details and all the credit and debit card information. These types of end users always degrade and humiliate popular brands who put a lot of their struggles and efforts into making their name by ensuring the updated security measures on their websites through the implementation of SSL certificates. Installation of an SSL certificate for your business is quite important but for this owners have to select the budget SSL for their business. There are different brands that can provide SSL certificates like Comodo SSL, RapidSSL, Sectigo SSL, etc. These all can be easily run on a low budget as well.
Two-Factor Authentication:
Comprised and stolen data and personal information of customers are the basic causes and marks that show the security breaches of the company. The hackers are qualified and skilled in their own field and they have updated strategies of stealing data and breaching the security measures of online stores. That is the point where the desire for a user authentication mechanism is important. Dual factor authentication is the basis or the initial preventive measure for protecting an online store from getting hacked. Many large-scale E-commerce websites use two-factor authentication as extra filling of security on their lacking points.
This is basically security validation process in which you have to cross two factors to get signed in on your store. In first step you have to provide your credentials in username and password and in the second step you have to provide autogenerated code, after that you will get verified and get access to your e-commerce store. This security layer is unable to breach by the hackers as they can guess the username and password by any means but its quite difficult for them to get the autogenerated code. This code has very short life it will expire after short time.
Access Vpn:
When you are doing work or your job is to do work with customers personal data and cash transactions and you are doing all this on public network then you have to be extremely careful as data you are using on a public network is highly vulnerable and easily entrapped by third-party users. In these scenarios you have to use secure connections on which no one can access your data like Virtual Private Networks(VPN), it provides end-to-end encrypted connection and secure server, no one else other than you and your customer can access the data.
Online store owners are concerned about the price of the VPN so in real its costly but if you get an SSL-based VPN then its cost-effective and cheaper. There is an option of an open VPN that is basically community-designed version but e-commerce store owners can give it a try before purchasing their own.
Give Lectures To Your Customers And Employee:
owner need to educate their customers and staff on what are the current laws, rules, regulations and policies of the state that will effect the customers data. Education on the security of information and credentials is important for client and staff. Explain the procedure that what preventive steps you take to secure the credit card information of customers and what are the steps they need to take at their end to secure the information. Educate your staff that never ever disclose the confidential data of the company in any email, conversation, or chat.
Employees must know that what are their points that they need to do and what are their don’t are just to make sure the data safety of customers. Let them know that you are working with the high ranked security protocols to protect and secure your e-commerce store from any hacks.
Security Threats For Online Store:
There are different security threats that online stores have to deal on a daily basis.
Phishing: Hackers try to use emails, and phone calls and they get few of the personal information of the owner by tricking them. They pretend to be part of an organization who is just checking the security measures or any updates and in this way they collect data and use it to hack your website.
Sql Injection: SQL is a crafty tool that hackers use to check the backend of your system. By these strategies, they can operate few integral parts of your system and you are unaware of them. These are similar to bugs and to avoid it you have to regularly update your system and ensure the safety measures are top notch.
Cross Site Scripting: in cross-site scripting the expert hackers try to use invalid codes at the homepage of your company. This strategy is utilized to directly catch the information from the consumer list. All the customers are completely exposed to the hackers. In this strategy it is recommended to use HTTP security policy to boost up your security measures.
E-Skimming: when your e-commerce store is completely exposed to hackers through any strategy like XSS, phishing etc now they reside on the checkout page where the clients swipe their credit card and use their personal information. When they e-skim that means they are checking all your payment processing information.
Conclusion:
When working on any website or any online store you have to make sure that the security of your site is updated and you are using updated security software because you are dealing directly with the personal information of your customers and your customers have trust in you that is why they access you, there are many hackers waiting to breach the security of your website and get the personal information of clients to decrease your number of customers and effect the reputation of your company.
There are many cybercrime cases reported on a daily basis and these are just because of poor security measures. There are different steps where you need to pay attention to security and many online security policies software are available that you can use to make sure that your online store is completely secured and protected.
