7 Essential Magento Security Tips to Protect Your Store from Threats

All over the world, USD $81.6 billion is the total expenditure spent for buying information security products in the year 2016, as per Gartner reports.

Moreover, by 2021, cybersecurity expense will exceed $1 trillion.

Recently, US president Donald Trump has expressed concern over increasing cyber theft crimes in the country.

No vendor or customer wants any data breaches during business time. Yet it occurs - one way or another.  

Magento is no exception when it comes about ecommerce attacks.

As per trustwave, an information security organization, 99% websites have at least one penetrability.

Now question lies at the center is why do hackers exist.

What’s inside for Hackers?A lot of things.

Such as:
credit card numbers
bank account details
shipment address
username & passwords

For years now, credit card details are the top target of hackers.There also exists a group of hackers who do it for fun or to make a social media buzz.  

Regardless of intention, you want to assure that your clicks and footsteps remain miles away from radars of penetrators.

A word about Magento 2 security, let hackers stop entering your web premises

Out of all ecommerce stores, only 38% online sellers confidently claim that they are ready to handle any complicated cyber attack.

8% ecommerce websites are made using Magento, i.e. it comprises thousands of internet shops.

If you own an ecommerce website built on top of Magento framework, I have compiled this text specifically for you.

Timely executed magento security check avoids fraudulent transactions.  

There are multiple techniques to resolve magento security issues, like:

You can download and install magento security extension - free or paidBring regular magento security updates to existing web store to close further doors that are highly visited by technocrats who are always seeking free food, i.e. hackers

I am mentioning here essential security tips for magento that are quick to implement by people having zero level knowledge on software programming.

1.Start by Protecting Magento Admin

We may not “put the cart before the horse”, that is highly technical solutions comes only after basic patches implementation. Not the reverse order.

Admin area is primarily a thing hackers constantly seek to break. Once they are in, believe that all good things have come to a deadly end, for hackers now can:

Change passwords for all users
Obtain customer data
Access financial information
Misuse above items
etc.

And exploit of Magento Admin panel simply puts forward that website owner is not serious about business and customers data.

How to strengthen this security aspect

All you need is to define tailored URL to log into Admin panel.

All prestigious CMS or ecommerce frameworks come with generic URLs to make us avoid remembering, like

WordPress: www.your-site.com/wp-admin
Magento: www.your-store.com/admin

We would alter it to create something like www.your-store.com/admin123

In this case, since hacker does not know destination place itself, can never even land there to disturb your proceedings.

Login to Magento Admin panel with currently given URL-Username-Password and browse to “Admin Base URL” section.

As per screenshot, change according to your like but beware, if you forgot it, there is no way for you to re-access your own website!

2. Ban Malicious Inputs into Website Forms

Here, attacker is technically sound and has grip over programming languages like SQL.

Because you need to keep website open for anyone to purchase, it can be equally operated by hackers.

There are many places such as:
contact form
search bar
sign up form
shipping address
that most websites include which if do not contain proper Sanity Check code behind the scenes, can be easily cross scripted and exploited by smart hackers.

3. Check for Copycat Domains

This is a classic and well tried option over and again by both - cheaters and competitors.

They buy a domain name and create website that looks just like replica of your ecommerce store. Same logo, same colors and same ambience.

Customers can mistakenly buy from their site instead yours.

Not only that, hackers at the same time come to know any typed username and password by existing customer which they will use later on actual website.

While there are tools available online to find scam websites, you will have to single out right one that displays all duplicate copies.

If you have found your website duplicated, reporting will go tediously as you will have to contact cross(duplicate site’s) hosting provider for official action and request them to hold-up scammer from anymore publishing , then it comes to contact Google, Bing etc. customer care to stop its indexing etc.

4. Make Two-Factor Authentication Compulsory for Log-In

After all, no password is 100% unbreakable as guessing and phishing attempts allow some luck opportunities to hackers.

Make traitors completely unfortunate by coupling a strong password policy framed with two-factor authentication.  

It asks end user to provide both: account credentials and one-time OTP before completing checkout or while doing signup before start purchasing.

Initially, as an ecommerce seller, you might feel little uncomfortable that visitors may abandon purchasing from your site due to minute work overhead but it creates trust and keep you/your clients data safe.

How to Enable:I really don’t want to take you halfway by serving only resolution ideas as opposed to ideas plus their implementation. But no Magento version, until 2.2.x -  provides facility for layered authentication by default.

There are many extensions available in Magento marketplace to achieve the same.

5. Use an Encrypted SSL Connection

Secure shopping experience is inevitable in this age of neck-to-neck competition.

If web visitors see an iconic green lock on similar other vendor’s website, it is a reason for them to buy from there rather from yours.

Connection with SSL (Secure Socket Layer) ensures that data in the transfer are protected and coded so that man in the middle even if snatches somehow, cannot trace it.

Non-encrypted transactions are vulnerable and carry risk of data theft.

How to enable SSL for Magento

It is a simple tweak.
Just go to Magento’s URL settings found in the admin panel.
Set options as are displayed in above screenshot.

6. Backup your Website Frequently

Even after taking all precautions, it pays to backup regularly.

There are two reasons of it:
1.Chance to reverse human error
          If some entry by you/staff went inappropriately in the system, backup provides an opportunity to correct it.
    2.  Least adverse effect in the situation of completely wiped out
Business faces almost NIL or little data loss if some virus or attacker makes intrusion and does mightier damage. In this case, when integrity of multiple components is decoupled, it is perplexing to think or go for step by step revamping. Backups assures piece of mind in one shot.

Magento website owner can restore database or full website to a previous version, at the clock time just when everything was in tact.

It is not trickier to enable scheduled backups from Admin panel.

7. Use Firewall

Basically, there are 2 kinds of firewalls utilized to protect Magento webshop.

1. WAF (Web Application Firewall) – It safeguards your online store from myriad of vulnerabilities such as Brute-force attacks,  malware, SQLi, XSS, Bot, spam, DD0S, etc.

2. System Firewall - This protects ecommerce store from unnecessary traffic by fending visitors from countries where you do not sell. Because you ban a set of public addresses, only allowed or non-restricted users can see or browse your website. Here, take care that you do not prevent web server of your site itself by typing its ip address in restricted set of users.

I am sure that above Magento security geeks will help you store, fetch and present data of your Magento website securely. If you have questions or complicated issues, MagentoGuys will help you resolve and enhance security measures of your site.