Cyber security is a common problem every e-commerce website has to face. A recent study has shown that the number of cyber-attacks has increased by 36% in the past few years.

That’s why every e-commerce site owner has to take several necessary measures to prevent security breaches. If you are an e-commerce website owner, you’ll be happy to know that there is a series of steps you can take to take your website security to the next level. Read on to find out how you can make your website a safer place.

1. Have a Reliable Card Payment Processing System

A card payment processing system is there to ensure successful transactions between the buyer and your website. There are several reasons why a reliable card payment processing system should be at the top of your website security measures list.

First, people can try to use stolen credit cards to conduct different types of frauds, and investing in a secure card payment processor will protect your business from these frauds.

Also, a reliable card payment processing system will ensure you receive money for your order without a glitch, and help you avoid any type of technical issue that can prevent you from receiving your money.

2. Pick the Right E-Commerce Platform

The majority of e-commerce websites out there run on platforms such as Magneto and Shopify. And there's a good reason for that.

Apart from robust functionality and numerous customisation options, these platforms also offer high levels of security for your e-commerce website, allowing you to focus less on security and more on running a business.

Although these platforms have security measures installed to keep your website safe, that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t take additional precautionary measures to keep your e-commerce extra safe.

3. Improve Data Security

Every time a person wants to buy something via an e-commerce website, they have to leave a plethora of data. These include some sensitive data such as their name, address, phone number and credit card numbers.

The security of this data should be every e-commerce website’s top priority, and it should be continuously monitored. There are plenty of tools out there that provide real-time visualisation of security status and security risks.

These tools will help you determine potential security threats and resolve them before you get in trouble.

4. Back Up Your Data

Many hackers steal data from e-commerce websites. Others corrupt your data so that you cannot use them properly. This is why backing up your data is extremely important.

Though there are many ways to back up your data manually, many people put off or even forget to do so. That is why most e-commerce platforms choose one of the many plugins that automatically back up data, just to be on the safe side. That way you’ll eliminate the problems of forgetfulness and human error.

5. Get Bot Protection

Bots can be quite useful for lead generation and customer support. But bots can be designed to insert malware and steal data, as well.

To protect your client’s data from theft, make sure to invest some money into systems such as Shield Square that will identify bots and prevent them from crawling your website and reaching your data.

6. Use Layered Security Measures

The more security layers your website has, the better. Firewalls are usually the first and most common defence against attacks, but that is not enough. To ensure better protection of the data on your website, you'll have to set up a content delivery network.

A content delivery network spreads the content of the e-commerce website across geographically diverse servers, making it more difficult to hack and steal.

7. Protect Your Security as Well

With so much talk about e-commerce security, it is easy to forget that the security of your business starts with you. If a hacker manages to steal your email address, he or she can easily gain further access to your site.

This is particularly the case if you are an admin of your site as well as the owner. Just one weak password can help hackers access your site, steal data and lock you out of your own site.

That’s why you should make sure to use a complicated username and password to make the theft more difficult. Also, don’t forget to change the way you access your admin panel, and change the typical WP-admin URL into something a little bit more complicated.

We have reached the end of our list of necessary security measures every e-commerce website owner has to take to improve the security of their site and keep it safe from hacker attacks.

Unfortunately, it is highly unlikely that cyber-attacks will disappear any time soon. That’s why you should make sure to invest some time and money into improving your e-commerce website security ASAP.