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What do Facebook, Yahoo and Amazon have in common? They have all experienced severe security breaches in the last few years, such as personal data breaches, credit card information theft and identity fraud.

When it comes to hacking, websites’ sizes don’t matter. In theory, eCommerce managers all agree: website security must be a priority. However, the sad reality is that most of them do not take the time to understand the stakes at risk or look for proactive solutions to prevent catastrophic situations.

Therefore, the first step towards a “safe website” is education: understanding the underlying eCommerce security issues and what these threats can entail is crucial. Aside from logic flaws, password management schemes and third-party supplier intrusion, hackers come up with dozens of creative ways to breach your platform every day.

What are the main eCommerce security issues?

Distributed Denial of Service Attacks (DDoS)

A DDoS attack is a CEO’s nightmare. Hackers manufacture a flood of traffic to your website, which quickly overloads, causing it to crash — and your sales to go down the drain. Attacks can last several days and are often seen as ransom notes.

As CloudFare explains it, from a high level, a DDoS attack is like an unexpected traffic jam clogging up the highway, preventing regular traffic from arriving at its destination.

DDoS attack example

Metaphor of a DDoS attack

Memory Scraping Malware

Malware can target data that are stored temporarily and copy it in RAM. Worse, some targeted JavaScript malware that understands your payment process can make its way to your customers’ credit card numbers.

SQL Injection

When fishing for information, attackers can probe web-based applications with SQL queries. Some databases are more at risk than others. At the end of the day, this depends on the strength of the platforms they’re built on.

Cross-Site Scripting (XSS)

This situation takes place when applications provide different browsers with untrusted user data. Concretely, XSS can help achieve wrongful redirection while enabling invaders to take over users’ accounts.

Why is eCommerce security important?

The growth of eCommerce is followed by a rise in fraud, and ​​no business is immune to security issues. According to a Juniper Research report, by the end of 2021, the value of losses due to eCommerce fraud will increase 18% to over $20 billion from $17.5 billion in 2020.

If your online store is not protected, you risk losing the trust of your customers in the event of cyberattacks and fraud. Also, cyberattacks can make your website go down. Each moment that your website is not accessible, you are losing money as customers can’t purchase. By ensuring the necessary security protocols and measures, your brand will uphold its reputation, and your customers will be able to enjoy a smooth and safe shopping experience.

Preventive eCommerce security solutions

Now that you have an idea of the major threats your website can experience, we wanted to go over a few cautionary measures to keep you safe:

  1. Choose a highly secure e-commerce platform
  2. Work with strong passwords
  3. Partner up with reliable associates
  4. Set up system alerts for suspicious activity and unauthorized code changes
  5. Consider a web application firewall
  6. Use a secure connection for online checkout
  7. Ensure your website is PCI compliant
  8. Scan your website regularly for vulnerabilities and make sure your hosting partner is too
  9. Avoid sharing login information (create a unique ID for each employee).

Conclusion

Ecommerce security should be a business’s top priority. Companies hire security guards and have alarms and surveillance cameras to ensure that their customers can shop in a secure environment when it comes to a physical store. The same precautions should be taken when it comes to eCommerce security measures. Having the proper actions and protocols to keep hackers at bay will allow businesses to get an uninterrupted stream of online sales and keep customer trust.

Need to improve your eCommerce website security?

If you want your business and your clients to be safe and sound, get in touch with Le Site’s technical team. We have in-house experts who will help you to protect your website from eCommerce security issues.