With an increased ease in online buying and selling, there’s a parallel increased ease for online thefts trying to steal credit card information.
As a company selling products/services on the web, it should be your top priority to keep your customer’s information safe.
You’re probably wondering, how can I know my site is secure?
Well, my friend, that’s what we’re here for. Read on to learn about 5 ways you can ensure you have a secure website:
1. Require your customers to set more complex and secure website passwords
This one is simple, yet extremely effective when it comes to keeping a secure website. Studies show that 73% of people use the same password for multiple sites, and 33% use the same password for every site.
Requiring more complicated passwords make it extremely difficult for thefts to hack your customer’s information.
The more characters, including numbers and symbols, can significantly increase the number of possible outcomes.
For instance, an 8 character password with numbers and symbols has 6,095,689,385,410,816 total possible combinations. That’s huge! This will most certainly help keep user’s information secure.
2. Avoid keeping customer’s credit card information on file
People love to buy online, anything from shoes, electronics, services, to Celtics tickets.
While it can offer a form of convenience for you or your regular customers to have their cards on file, it is more dangerous. Having this information stored leaves room for hackers to access and use it.
If you are going to store this information on your site, it’s important to look into things like layering your website’s security.
The 5 most common layers include (but aren’t limited to): antivirus, reputation, behavioral analysis, remediation, and the human layer.
However, as stated before, it’s best to avoid keeping this information at all if you are trying to maintain a secure website.
3. Make sure the plugins you’re using are safe
This step is especially important for those who use WordPress for their websites. A huge chunk of successful websites are created on WordPress, in fact, 74.6 million sites currently depend on WordPress.
When using WordPress plugins, or any sort of plugin for that matter, make sure to ask yourself things like:
- How up-to-date or current is the plugin?
- How many people have downloaded it?
- What kind of reviews does the plugin have?
Doing this can save you from using something that can bring malware into your website and potentially put you and your customers at risk for fraud.
4. Use a reliable website monitoring service
Although there is a lot that you can do yourself to ensure a secure website, you can’t do everything on your own. That’s where Website Monitoring Services come in.
Not only does downtime of your eCommerce site affect your productivity, but it also makes your website an easier target for hackers.
Having a website monitoring service keeps constant watch over your site to ensure that it is safe from fraud.
5. Use a reliable eCommerce platform
A study from Google showed that there was a 32% increase in website’s being hacked from 2015 to 2016, with that number expected to increase.
That is why it is extremely important to use an eCommerce platform that is safe, reliable, and effective.
One of the safest and most popular of these is Shopify.
Shopify is certified level 1 PCI DSS compliant. That means that when using Shopify, your site (and theirs) is protected from inbound attacks.
Wrapping up
Making sure that you have a safe and secure website is one of the most important parts of an eCommerce business. If your customer’s information isn’t safe, you will face some consequences.
It’s not only bad for customer retention, but it’ll cost you in the case of a lawsuit if your site were to be compromised by cyber thefts.
That’s why using reliable plugins, platforms, and paying for a website monitoring service will save you big time in the long run. Don’t wait until it’s too late to secure your site, get the tools you need t
