How To Make Your Online Store Safe for Your Customers

You can’t take website security threats seriously enough — especially if your customers entrust you with their credit card information and other sensitive data. From using strong passwords to defending your site against images that attack, taking the important steps necessary to protect your website from cyber security threats isn’t a maybe — it’s a must. So, why is ecommerce security important? Under most circumstances, bad actors don’t manually hand-pick websites to attack since this is very time consuming. The majority of attacks against websites are automated and performed by bots who are looking for websites with known vulnerabilities. On top of that, if a merchant is found to be non-compliant with the PCI-DSS, there are a number of penalties & consequences ranging from fines, loss of time, and inability to process payments. The methods you use to secure your e-commerce websites will depend on whether your website is managed or self-hosted. For websites running managed stores, like Websites + Marketing, the server and all its software are proprietary — meaning you will not be held liable for security configurations. You pay the service provider a monthly fee for this luxury. If you’re a self-hosted store, however, you’ll want to reduce your attack surface. Keeping your website’s attack surface as small as possible is a fundamental first step toward improving your security measures. This means reducing the number of different points that bad actors can enter or extract data from your environment. These can come in the form of insecure credentials, unpatched third-party components, plugins, or extensions, software and CMS vulnerabilities, and even server configurations. Whenever you add new features or components to your website, you’re also introducing potential for a vulnerability which may be exploited. If you operate an ecommerce site, you’re required to follow the PCI-DSS compliance requirements. These requirements are governed by major credit card companies to securely handle cardholder information — and you’re obligated to follow them, even if you don’t process any payments yourself. When you gain an understanding of what it takes to run a secure online store — and embrace those principles — it offers peace of mind. You’ll also gain confidence that your customers’ data is safe and you’re staying on the good side of any regulatory agencies that might drop by. The Journey is what everyday entrepreneurs, like you, need to follow in the pursuit of online success. Our experienced GoDaddy Guides are here to take you through all the steps, both big and small, that you encounter every day.