1. What is e-commerce?

E-Commerce is merely purchasing and sale of goods and services via an electronic medium. Examples include the internet. The transactions also occur electronically in a way that the two parties, that is, the buyer and seller may never meet face to face. Most people know this type of dealings as online shopping. The availability of smartphones that connects with the internet makes shopping easy as you have to click and purchase a product or pay for any services without physically being present in the market place.

For centuries now, trading, be it barter trade or selling of goods and services, has become prevalent. The fact that no one can be self-sufficient brings up the need for the supply of products and services in the market place. We are in the 21st century, meaning that trading has transformed and evolved in terms of transactions and contact. This brings up the idea of E-commerce or E-business, or in a simpler term, electronic business.

2. Advantages of e-commerce

E-commerce online portals have simplified trading by reducing the cost and pricing of products.
Similarly, it provides lots of products for the consumer to choose from an at the same time, reducing the time to acquire the product or services by the consumer.

It’s easy to detect fraud and hacking or to crack passwords.

3. How to protect the e-commerce website

For any transactions and trading to take place via the internet, there must be portals that regulate and monitors these activities. This is whereby the E-commerce website comes in. These websites are the online platforms that facilitate transactions of goods and services between the parties involved.

Every field has got a different E-commerce website, but the most common one is known as retail selling. Others include auction websites, consultancy, finance, and music websites.

The following are some of the best practical ways of securing your website.

4. Use HTTPS

HyperText Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS) assists by protecting the confidentiality and integrity of data between the user of the computer and the website as most users usually want a secure connection when assessing the site. Using HTTPS ensures that the data sent is secured by TLS (Transport Layer Security) protocol. The primary purpose of the TLS is to provide three primary forms of protection.

They include authentication, data integrity, and encryption. Authentication means that the users will be able to access the website directly without being redirected to another website that the user did not intend to visit. Data integrity is whereby the users assured that his/her data cannot be manipulated or changed during the transfer and cannot be detected by any fraudsters.

Encryption means that the data exchanged is being encrypted as the two parties are making their conversations.
An SSL certificate is a must for any website to have before moving and starts using HTTPS. Therefore it is essential to first of all purchase an SSL certificate from a recognized vendor, then install it and customize the settings on the e-commerce website.

If you are running various subdomains on the server, then it is time to go for a cheap RapidSSL Wildcard SSL certificate as it can secure your primary domain and unlimited subdomains quickly.

Any website using HTTPS is deemed secure and guarantees that users protected from hackers. The addition of the “s” on the URL means that the site is secured.

5. Don’t store sensitive customer data

These sensitive data include things like a credit card. It is advisable not to store such information on the website as you never know when the site can be compromised. The consequences can be devastating as the website will be responsible for the losses that will occur. Also, the users will lose trust in the site. In E-commerce, customer privacy is very critical. It’s unethical and unprofessional to store private data of customers on online servers.

The best remedy for this type of problem is to use the process called tokenization. Unique identification symbols used to replace the sensitive data of customers while making sure that all the leading and essential data are retained and not compromised. This helps to prevent credit card fraud and hackers from assessing them.

6. Keep your website updated

Hackers are good at exploiting any weakness on a website, and a refreshed website is one of the defects. Ensuring that you quickly update your site when a new version realized is very crucial. It does not only reduce cyber-attack, but it helps to run efficiently without collapsing.

7. Run vulnerability tests on your website

A vulnerability test is generally a process that helps to identify the weakness and defects on the website. Running the test will help to discover the loopholes where hackers will try to exploit. Identifying the loopholes calls for mitigation process and therefore ensuring that the website cannot be attacked as there will be no weakness.

The most website has tools to scan for any vulnerability. It is desirable to use a tool that will not only browse your website, but as a tool, the will thoroughly examine your network so that you can be aware of the potential risks and how you can address and fix them.

8. Choose a secure e-commerce platform

Factors such as features, support, and performance are usually considered when selecting an e-commerce website. However, the most important thing to take into consideration is security. Without security, most, if not all, of the other factors will be useless.

It is advisable to choose a platform that emphasizes security and let the other factors come along. A secure platform will perform well, and the risk of attacks is minimal.

“Read about how RASP security can secure your website from hackers.”

9. Regular Backup

A regular backup is quite necessary for the even of any cyber-attack. If your website gets hacked, then you can recover your old data from backups. Hackers always try to infiltrate the server with new techniques, and in this case, you need to be aware of your valuable customers’ data. Many hosting providers offer this facility of automatic backup due to any unwanted disaster.

In conclusion, e-commerce has become a convenient and efficient way to shop. There are a lot of individuals using it daily. The fact that a lot of individuals are using it means that there is a lot of cash flow. There is also some individual who usually like to harvest where they haven’t sowed. It is, therefore, high time to ensure that there is enough security in the inline platforms so that these cases of cybercrimes reduced. The above measurements should be put into consideration for efficient and better performance of the websites.