Top 6 Shopping Cart Security Tips
Security and privacy are big issues for Internet users. Identity theft is
becoming more common place, and people fear having their information stolen, or
used in ways that it was not intended. Lack of security and privacy will cause
you to lose customers. You must be able to ensure your customers that their
privacy will be respected, and that their billing information is secure.
1. Have a secure certificate – and keep it up to date
A secure certificate ensures that hackers can’t spy on the traffic – such as
credit card numbers – traveling between your customers web browsers and your web
servers. You can tell if you have a secure certificate if the page where you
enter your credit card number has an address starting with https:// instead of
http://. If you don’t, and you want one, talk to your web host.
Secure certificates will also expire, normally after 12 months, so make sure you
renew it regularly.
2. Keep your customers data secure
Ensure that your shopping cart software encrypts your customers credit card
numbers automatically – or doesn’t store it at all. When searching for a
customer by an email address or invoice number, you should be able to see that
they paid with a credit card, but you should not be able to see the complete
credit card number. In most cases, only the last four numbers of the credit card
number will be shown.
3. Choose a good password
When choosing your password to let you control your shop, be sure to use a
combination of both numbers and letters. Avoid using words and numbers that are
easy to figure out. For instance, your only child's first name and year of birth
is easy information to figure out. Any word found in a dictionary is also easy –
there are hacker programs that will automatically try all dictionary words.
Something like d901ks237 is better than julie1987. You should also require your
customers to use a combination of letters and numbers when setting up their
passwords. Passwords should be at least eight characters long, and changed
frequently.
4. Don’t leave a paper trail
If you print out order forms, make sure that they do not contain any of your
customers identifying billing information. Set up a system for tracking sales
that does not include such information, and destroy the printed order forms and
order logs.
5. Be careful of employees
If you have employees, restrict access to customers billing information if
possible. However, if they must have access to perform their jobs, you need to
ensure that they are not sharing your customer’s information with anyone. Don’t
forget to close their accounts if an employee leaves. If you must provide access
to a third party, such as a programmer, make sure that you go in and change the
password as soon as the job is completed.
6. Stay up to date
For greater shopping cart security, make sure that you are using the most
up-to-date version of your shopping cart software. Check the developers site on
a regular basis for information about updates, known bugs, and security issues.
You will also need to make sure the server your website and shopping cart are
hosted on is up-to-date. Ask your webhost how often they update both the servers
and their operating systems, and keep an eye on the hosts site for information
about bugs and security issues as well. Also make sure your PC is up to date –
you’ll need a firewall, and to apply all the latest patches. Most operating
systems (including Windows XP) have a function to do this automatically.
You should also verify that your host is using a firewall to protect sensitive
information, and that a log is kept of all visitors to your website - even if
they do not buy anything. These files are not to be used to capture personal
data about your visitors. The main information you are interested in is their IP
number, which will be needed in case your site is hacked.
Talk with your webhost, shopping cart host, merchant account service
provider, and anyone else involved with the set up of your ecommerce website.
Work with them to ensure that you can guarantee your customers the greatest
amount of privacy and security possible.
Like this article? Want it on your site? Copy and paste below. You can do this without cost or notification
on the condition the HTML is left unchanged (minor formatting changes are acceptable).