How To Launch a Breach-Proof Ecommerce Platform with Ecwid

10 min read

Ecommerce has grown by leaps and bounds over the past few years, particularly in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. In turn, this has also brought about many different risks, particularly those related to ecommerce security breaches. Unfortunately, many retailers — even large retailers with supposedly robust digital security features — have been hit by security breaches. This underscores why both shoppers and merchants alike must be wary of the vulnerabilities to shopping online.

More than ever, consumers are going online to shop for anything and everything. Sales through ecommerce services continue to rise year over year, but so do data security breaches. For instance, the number of data breaches in the U.S. rose from 662 in 2010 to more than a thousand in 2020. And about 28% of data breach victims are small businesses.

With all this in mind, you might wonder: is it possible to run a secure ecommerce platform?

Ecommerce Security and Its Aspects

Ordinarily, in order to shield private data, a comprehensive ecommerce security system must be able to protect software, hardware, customers, resources, personnel, and procedures. Data are among an organization’s most important assets and resources. And with the growing technical sophistication among hackers and other bad actors, a company’s data can be exposed in a variety of ways, whether it be an email message, the outline of a new product, the blueprint for a product design, an invoice, financial statements, and so on.

To address these risks and remain secure, modern businesses like ecommerce platforms need to have a security procedure in place that includes the following elements: secrecy, availability and accuracy.

Secrecy

A company that embraces and practices secrecy works to prevent the disclosure of information to those who do not have authority to access it while ensuring the flow of data and information appropriately to authorized users. In business, confidentiality is key, as the protection of customers’ private information is among the most important factors to customer loyalty and company growth.

Accuracy

Accuracy is about the assurance of the integrity of organizational data. That can mean customer account information, payment methods, order details, and so on. As an ecommerce platform, it is critical that your merchants’ data is not corrupted or looked at by third parties.

Availability

These days, the importance of a reliable, uninterrupted online presence really can’t be overstated. Customers want to be able to shop when it’s convenient for them, and a robust ecommerce platform must efficiently and effectively ensure that the site is functional and operational as much as humanly possible. So, security enhancements to and issues with unauthorized attempts to access the platform mustn’t block your merchants from selling through their online store.

Building a Secure Ecommerce Platform

One key to success in the ecommerce industry is strong security. There is no one-size-fits-all approach to building and launching a safe, secure ecommerce platform. But studies suggest that there are certain things that customers believe are associated with strong data security, including authentication factors like PIN codes, passwords, or by simply having many positive experiences with a given merchant or retailer in the past, which builds customer trust in that business.

In the past, companies utilized a number of strategies to counter ecommerce security vulnerabilities, including intellectual property protection, communication channel protection, and client computer protection. But as digital threats have evolved, so too has ecommerce security to include things like risk assessment, security policy development, implementation plan development, security organization creation and security audit performance.

Launching a Breach-Proof Ecommerce Platform with Ecwid

At Ecwid, we take security very seriously so that we can provide you (and your merchants) with an ecommerce platform that is as secure as possible. The pressure on ecommerce platforms and service providers to mitigate the risk of theft and fraud is very high, as most merchants won’t want to stay with an ecommerce company after it has experienced a data security breach or seems vulnerable to an attack.

So how does Ecwid address some of the basic vulnerabilities ecommerce providers (and other companies) face in the digital space?

Well, to start, we’ve built strong security measures into our ecommerce platform. We’ve adopted We’re certified at Level 1 of the payment card industry data security standard, or PCI-DSS — the highest international standard for secure data exchanges for online stores and payment systems, which helps protect you and your merchants against fraud and other vulnerabilities. With this on your ecommerce website, you’ll be able to provide a level of assurance to your merchants that your website has the necessary security standards to keep their payment information safe and sound.

To protect our servers and mitigate any attacks, we’ve adopted a number of strategies to keep them secure, including:

Multi-factor authentication
Password complexity requirements
Automatic data backups
Regular, scheduled server updates
Partnering with reputable, reliable hosting services
Integration of various security plug-ins

We also know that communication methods are a big way that bad actors can access websites and platforms to commit fraud and theft. That’s why we’ve implemented a number of measures to safeguard communications, such as:

Firewalls
Content delivery networks
Verified payment gateways
HTTPS protocol usage
Multi-layer security strategies

Use of Multi-Layer Security

A valuable strategy for fortifying digital security is to employ several security layers through a content delivery network, which can block malicious incoming traffic and other threats and attacks through machine learning.

Another option is to use multi-factor authentication, which requires users to use both their logins and passwords as well as time-sensitive codes or other devices to verify their identity and access. This can help block fraudsters from accessing sensitive data, as they’ll need information beyond a basic username and password to do so.

Secure Socket Layer (SSL) Certificates

In addition to multi-layer security, Ecwid also makes use of secure socket layer certificates. Platforms and websites that use SSL certificates can encrypt your data and ensure that only the right people have access to the information. This is very critical because the absence of an SSL certificate encryption indicates that any electronic device may be able to access your information.

Use of Firewalls

At Ecwid, we take security a step further by using the best firewalls available to prevent attacks on our platform and ensure that only real users can gain access. This also helps our platform resist other security threats like data theft, denial of service, counterfeit sites, damages to networks of computers, malicious alterations to websites, and fraudulent access to users’ data. Firewalls give us the ability to block bad traffic and allow the right traffic in.

At Ecwid, we believe security is critical to success in ecommerce, which is why we take care of everything security-related. As a partner, you’ll never need to worry about manually installing program updates or security patches — unlike some of our competitors — enabling you to simply focus on your business. And all store data is hosted in the cloud through AWS, so your customers’ files and data will never be lost or corrupted, ensuring their stores are always up, running and selling 24/7.

We hope this has given you a bit of insight into how serious we take digital security and some of the various steps we’ve taken to keep our platform as safe and breach-proof as possible. Is there anything we missed? What strategies do you use with your website? Let us know in the comments!

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Jul 20, 2021

About the author

Colin Thompson is a content writer at Ecwid. He writes about marketing, business development, and promotion for our Ecwid Partners. He loves cats, Chicago sports, deep dish pizza and going on hikes.