Magento E-commerce sites have become a commonplace these days for buyers. And with so many brands competing for attention, companies need to position themselves above rivals by offering highly functional sites excelling in three areas: – efficient, easy to use and security. Today, high volume of personal information is being shared across the World Wide Web. The change in purchasing behavior of the consumer has compelled them to provide crucial information such as entering their home address, card details and date of birth without giving it a second thought to the familiar websites. Well, despite advancements in the technology and economy, there are hackers who can harm you and your end-users by conducting fraudulent activities.
How to improve the security of Magento e-commerce website?
Magento is basically an e-commerce open-source platform used by small businesses and leading brands to develop functional and aesthetically pleasing websites for their end-users. The growing popularity of Magento gives the hackers a good reason to target such e-commerce sites especially an e-shop. Thus, it becomes quite essential for the owner to seek help from a reliable Magento development company to secure every part of your Magento deployment.
Tip #1- It’s all about being too complex and too secretive
This is one of the basic rules to follow while creating any e-commerce store. Being the store owner you will have a clear access to sensitive information of your valuable customer. Hence, you need to set a strong admin password so that it cannot be hacked easily. Now while creating a password most of the Magento developers recommend to :
- Create a password with minimum 10 letters
- Best combination of numerical and e-commerce characters
- Mashed up with upper and lower case letters
- The name of the company shouldn’t be included and password should not be reused
Tip #2- Change is hard at first and gorgeous in the end
By using the default admin path you are simplifying the job of a hacker of cracking the admin’s credentials. Therefore, experts highly recommend changing the admin path. Now, there are two ways of doing it:-
- Admin backend : Go to System → Config→Admin→Admin Base URL→Use Custom Admin Path→Click ‘Yes’.
- Or else you can make changes in your local.xml configuration file. After performing the modification, save the configuration and refresh your cache.
Tip #3- It’s a two-way process
I personally prefer using two-way authentication to ward off potential attacks. The method basically prevents unreliable sources from gaining access to your Magento backend. Two-way authentication adds an additional layer of security to your Magento site. Here, instead of entering username and password, you need to enter a security code that is generated on the random basis. So even if the hacker has your credentials he/ she cannot log into site as he won’t be having access to the security code.
Tip #4- Use genuine Magento extensions
There is no doubt in the fact that Magento extensions simply the job of several Magento development companies at no cost. But there are a few extensions that act as a gateway for hackers to penetrate. So before consulting any development company, make sure you do some research such as analyzing the developer’s background, go through customer reviews and ratings, before incorporating any third party interference to your e-commerce website.
Tip #5- Choose your defender and protector wisely
I have come across several Magento development companies using free antivirus software or one with a trail version which may work well for domestic PC’s but when we are talking about the enterprise level, one should definitely consider using superior quality anti-virus. The software must be potential enough to plug all the security leaks and protective sensitive information from pilferage.
Tip #6- Keep a close eye
It is always advisable to monitor e-commerce activities happening on your site. Look around for inconsistent financial transactions on a routine basis. Now when I use the word inconsistent, it means different billing and shipping information, IP address changes, purchase from an anonymous email account. Investigate in detail to save your business from such dangerous scams.
Tip # 7- Preview, view, and review
No matter how skilled your Magento developers are, it is always essential to get your ecommerce store reviewed at regular intervals. They won’t be just aware of the current security trends but also will carry out a security test to unravel flawed application codes and detect SQL injections, cross-site scripting, and many such security vulnerabilities.
In a nutshell, no site can be 100% secure. Trying the aforementioned steps can definitely provide a shield to your site from security attacks.
