11 Magento security tips to keep your eCommerce business safe

In a world where darkness can reach any eCommerce website. You can either run from it or face the demo with full force.

ECommerce websites store and process a lot of sensitive information such as customer and payment data. No wonder why they are such an attractive target for hackers. You cannot ignore security whether you own a small eCommerce business or a top retailer. 83% of top eCommerce businesses are vulnerable to cyber-attacks. Data breaches and hackers can quickly put your business out of the game.

So in this blog, we will discuss Magento security and best security practices.

Magento system and website:

Work on security should start long before your website goes live. It should begin with choosing a reliable hosting provider that adheres to security standards and provides automatic website backups that you can use in case of emergencies. Try working with tried and tested hosting provider is highly recommended.

If you are starting a new site, consider launching it over HTTPS, a communication protocol encrypted with transport layer security, formerly known as the secure sockets layer (SSL). If you already have an eCommerce website, make sure to perform such changes as soon as possible. In fact, HTTPS is a must-have for any eCommerce website. It not only encrypts data exchange between browsers and your server but also helps the website rank higher as Google uses it as a ranking factor. On the other hand, visitors of the websites without HTTPS will see a notice that the website is not secure to use.

Adobe takes on a huge part of security tasks. Magento development has access to the recently released security scan tool. It tells you if your website has any malware or potential weaknesses that might put your business at risk. In addition, it will notify you when you need to update your Magento website. Always keep your Magento up to date with the latest security updates. Adobe regularly releases updates that address recently identified security threats and vulnerabilities. If you don’t want to install the whole update, you can even install Magento security only.

Admin panel:

Admin panel can become another entry point for hackers. If they get over one of the admin accounts, they will be able to control all your business and access all information and even customer data. Such data breaches can destroy your business and lead to hefty penalties. Luckily, there are several steps take you can take to prevent such situations, and Magento developers provide a lot of features out of the box.

First of all, use a unique path to the admin panel. It’s simple, but not all eCommerce businesses remember to change the URL.

Two-factor authentication:

Adding two-factor authentication will add an extra layer of protection as hackers would not be able to hack into someone’s account.

Adding CAPTCHA:

For extra level security, you can add CAPTCHA to the admin sign-in and forgot password page. It will protect your panel from bot attacks.

IP addresses whitelisting:

If you know your admin’s IP addresses, add them to the whitelist. Any other connection would not be allowed to the admin panel.

Assigning user permissions:

Assigning user permissions might be helpful if many people work with the admin panel. For example, those who work with content don’t need access to sales information, and you can specify what blocks of the website they have access to.

Password security level and login attempts limit:

Magento also allows setting up the security level for passwords to avoid password mining.

You can also limit the number of login attempts and configure the length of the keyboard inactivity before the session expires, and even set up the size of session duration.

Admin account sharing:

Most important of all, do not allow admin account sharing. In Magento, this option is disabled by default, but it won’t harm to check it.

Going through all of these steps and enabling the mentioned protection protocols will make sure that no hacker will be able to sneak in through the Magento admin panel.

Checkout and user account:

Hackers can harm your website even without hacking into its code. All they have to do is create an army of bots and send them to the checkout page. And the consequences might be dire for an eCommerce business. For example, during carding attacks, hackers can use stolen cards and make thousands of attempts trying to guess a CV and password. Banks and other payment systems process every transaction, even if they fail. In the best-case scenario, the payment system will notice suspicious actions and block your seller account. Passing the assessment process to reinstall their services might be challenging. But in the worst-case scenario, you will wake up one morning to find that the bank has charged you with processing all these failed transactions. It may cost your business hundreds of thousands of dollars. And it’s not an example; it is a real case. That’s why protecting user accounts and checkout is so essential.

First, reinstall reCAPTCHA, which will show when customers try to log into their accounts. It will protect your website from bots that hack passwords. If you are afraid it might harm the user experience, consider adding Google reCAPTCHA, which Magento supports. However, ReCAPTCHA can be invisible to the customers, as it uses algorithms to rate user interaction and determine the likelihood that the user is a human-based on a score. You can also add Magento reCAPTCHA, which will only show up after customers enter the wrong password.

Installing a web application firewall:

Installing a web application firewall will help you keep your whole store guarded against DDoS attacks—Magento developers Fastly integration out of the box. The solution combines a number of features, such as protection again DDoS attacks, a CDN, and image optimization. You can use Fastly to block the traffic by country or region, for example, if you know that bots are attacking your website from a particular location. Websites on adobe eCommerce cloud must use Fastly to be PCI compliant. You can also use Cloud flare for the same purposes or go even further and use the Sucuri tool.