eCommerce security: Three Top tips

eCommerce security is often the forgotten pillar of a successful business. 

Why is it needed? Because your customers need the reassurance that their data is safe. People only want to give their money and their business to companies and organisations that they can trust.

If you have an unsafe website, it impacts their view of your company so all of your marketing and efforts won’t have the same effect. 

Here are some basic security practices that you should use to make sure that their website is secure.

SSL Certificate

An SSL is security technology. It is a protocol for servers and web browsers that makes sure that data passed between the two are private by using an encrypted link that connects the server and browser.

SSL certificates are small data files that cryptographically confirm this encrypted link between a web server and a browser. Ensuring that all data passed between the web server and browser stay private, it also shows your customers that you take your eCommerce security seriously.

DoS and DDOS protection

DoS (denial-of-service) and DDOS (distributed denial of service) attacks are when attackers attempt to block legitimate users from accessing information or services by flooding a network with requests. This overwhelms the bandwidth of the targeted system, preventing legitimate requests from coming through.

While both attacks work in the same way, the key difference is that a DoS attacker usually uses a single computer and internet connection, while a DDoS attack uses multiple connected devices, making it harder to deflect.

There are many ways to protect from DoS and DDoS attacks. One of the most common pieces of advice to stop these attacks is to buy more bandwidth. The logic is that attackers are trying to overwhelm you, so if you have a large bandwidth it is more difficult for attackers to overwhelm you. But, realistically it’s an impractical solution -especially for DDoS attacks – since in today’s day and age the attacks are just too large to overcome.

However, there are more inexpensive and effective other ways to mitigate attacks. We recommend using Comodo cWatch Web Security to help protect you.

Additionally, firewalls can prevent this attack traffic from reaching your computer.

Use a Firewall 

Firewalls are a hardware or software system that essentially works as a wall or gateway between two or more networks, permitting authorised traffic and blocking unauthorised and/or malicious traffic accessing your network or system. Creating a wall between them.

They protect your network from threats on the internet, for example, DDoS attacks. Since eCommerce websites have a lot of inbound traffic, you need firewalls to protect yourself from any malicious traffic entering.

The type of hosting you have can affect the type of firewall that you use. For managed dedicated hosting we recommend that you use a Cisco threat-focused NextGen Managed Firewall (NGFW) and for those with cloud hosting we recommend the CWCS ArcusWall.

For more ways to keep your eCommerce security up to date, get in touch with one of our hosting specialists.