If we have learned anything in recent years, it’s that cybersecurity is of utmost importance to all of us and especially you, the business owner.
After every high-profile data hack, we are left wondering about our data protection. Companies can face serious financial losses in such cases while customers lose their trust in them.
Regardless of what kind of website you’re running, providing safe content is paramount. This is especially important if you’re running an e-commerce website. The aim is to provide the best shopping experience for customers.
The better their experience, the more likely are they to come back and recommend your website to their friends. In order to do that, you need to take your website security to a whole new level. Here are some of the ways you can use to achieve that.
An SSL Certificate
One way to make your e-commerce website safe and secure is by having an SSL Certificate. An SSL Certificate or Digital Certificate creates a secure link between a visitor’s browser and a website. That means that all the data passed between them remains private and safe. No one can steal private visitor information, like names or credit card numbers. This is crucial for keeping your website safe.
In order to get an SSL Certificate, a Certificate Authority verifies the purchasing company (you) and your credentials and ensures that your business is legitimate and safe. On the other hand, customers who see that you have an SSL Certificate will immediately know they can trust you with their information.
A Reliable Card Payment System
Payment security is everything and we cannot stress this enough. If your customers cannot trust you with their credit card information, well, you get the picture. To step up the security of your website you need a reliable card payment processing system.
Some of the best online payment tools are definitely PayPal, Stripe, and Authorize.net. If you do your research, you will find that most trusted businesses use these payment systems.
These payment platforms guarantee to protect your customers from hackers. When you search for reliable card payment processing systems, look for those that use encryption during transmission and during storage too.
Encrypt Your Customers’ Data
Encrypting customers’ data is an excellent way to increase your website’s security and protect your customers’ sensitive information. Encryption is encoding sensitive data and making it unreadable to anyone else.
This means your customers’ data is protected from hackers as no one, except for the intended party, will be able to read the information.
Don’t Store Data
People Metrics advises that you do not collect sensitive customers’ data that you don’t need. You should only collect the information that you absolutely need and even in that case, don’t store the information for longer than necessary as it becomes a liability.
Only store data if you have a very strong business reason for doing so. Under no circumstances should you collect personal data for later use.
Offer Secure Logins
This is also very important when protecting your customers’ data. Yes, we all forget our passwords all the time and it is frustrating. However, legitimate users aren’t the only ones trying to get the password right.
If you allow an endless number of guesses on the login forms, there is a good chance someone will get it right at some point; this means your customers’ data is vulnerable to hackers attempting to steal information.
To prevent this from happening, limit the number of unsuccessful login attempts. That way, when someone exceeds the maximum number of allowed guesses, they will be blocked for a short period of time.
Password Rules
You have undoubtedly come across a website with those annoying password rules at some point in your life. The problem with password rules is that they can lead to reused passwords which is very bad.
These password policies have proven to be ineffective and thankfully, as of a few years ago, different password policies are recommended. Sources suggest that you should allow customers to include any character they want instead of limiting them.
It’s also not wise to force rules regarding special characters, numbers etc. Customers should be able to use anything they want in a password.
The aim is to help create increasingly secure authentication methods where customers are not obliged to follow strict rules.
An Address Verification System
To further increase your website security from phishing attacks and credit card fraud, you should use an address verification system. This is to compare the billing address that a customer has entered with the information found on the file of the credit card issuer.
Cybersecurity continues to be of utmost importance in 2019. These steps will help you take your website security to a new level and help protect your customers.
