5 Simple Tips for e-Commerce Security

With the spreading of the internet into every sphere of human life web space became a powerful tool for business. Sometimes it even seems real stores will be interchanged by virtual e-commerce markets.

And I’m not kidding, statistic of 2012 researches states $255,600,000,000 were spent on online sales in United States (source). Impressive number, isn't it? Going further we need to take into consideration the intensity of web trading: the world’s internet sales income reached $961 billion mark in 2011 and increased up to $1.25 trillion by 2013 (source). Sure, everyone may suppose the active growth, but, honestly, before I've seen this info, I wouldn't imagine the tempo is so insane. As you can see scope of e-commerce shouldn't be underestimated.

Nevertheless, every phenomenon has its dark side. In our case the true face of evil are hackers who strive to feather e-commerce customers’ nest. And the methods of these internet robbers are improving with every passed year. The problems of e-commerce security occur with more annoyance nowadays if remembering the sum of money, which are in the internet business. The importance of serious approach to security measures is obvious, so I decided to present main point that would be useful for that. Either you are one of the brave e-commerce pioneers or simply and ambitious novice, few simple tips would advise how to increase the security.

Image Source: Payment protection sign by Shutterstock

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Password

The first and the axiomatic recommendation – put a strong password. I mean the random complex of different letters and numbers. You may be surprising about this obvious advice, but practice shows most people choose passwords like "1234", "abcd", "1111", "qwerty" etc., or sometimes they prefer to include some personal information, which is easy to be identified: for example the birth date. Nuff said.

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Email

Email address is needed everywhere to login to administrate the website. And if a cunning hacker finds a way to access, he actually would have your website in full possession simply by reseting the password. A great solution here is using special non-public email address for registration and further access managing. How can they break you email, if they don’t know it?

By the way, back to the previous point: passwords to the admin panel and to the email should be totally different.

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Factor Authentication

This tip is about the direct proportionality. One factor authentication on back office is default and it’s good. However it’s not good enough, because you have a possibility to run a plugin with 2 step factor authentication. The profit is obvious: the hacking of the system would appear to be twice harder.

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Meta Generator

Software vendors use Meta Generator tag as a calling card of their companies. Well, that can disappoint only haters of free advertising, because this element doesn’t carry any utility. The main issue is this tag represents the name and the version of the product: in fact you give all the info about the shopping cart tool, the website exploits, to hackers by yourself. Please, don’t dig your own grave.

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PCI Tests

Hackers are like highbred bloodhounds, if talking about the obstinacy when they looking for the bugs in your website. These craftsmen can develop a small system error into the black hole that draws out the valuable data from your website, the commercial information in particular. So make hackers cry – test your server with PCI and eliminate all vulnerabilities.

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These recommendations are just the first aid to guarantee the strong immunity of eCommerce. So, I would be more than glad to receive some of your opinions and suggestions of deeper methods regarding the eCommerce security in the comments below.