7 Steps to Improve the Security of your Magento Store | Security Best Practices 2019

Ever since its launch back in 2007, Magento has grown to be one of the most popular e-commerce platforms around the globe. The estimated Magento market share is at around 10% and it just shows popular this platform is among businesses ranging from startups to large enterprises.
Magento Security Best Practices —
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It is all thanks to the fact that Magento offers a lot in the realm of functionality and customization capabilities, making it super easy to create and run e-commerce store on this platform. The major concern with store owners running on Magento has got to be security issues keeping in mind that attackers have found e-commerce sites quite attractive for harvesting sensitive personal data. Well, how do you ensure that you don’t fall prey to such attacks? Now, we have compiled a simple guide to help you secure your Magento store and protect your business from cyber-attacks. Let’s delve in...

Magento Security Best Practices

If you are a regular reader of ProBlogBooster then you might know that recently I was talking about; 6 Best Ways To Protect An eCommerce Shopping Site [Online Store] Against Hacks & Frauds | Best Security Practices and today we are going to learn some but best security practices that will help you to secure your Magento store.

Ensure your Magento Security - 7 Tips for a Secure Magento Store

Security is the question placed on high priority for any web developer. Every webshop owner is always focused on the website security and protection. But somehow the current improved business models are loaded with several safety instructions and protection methods with the help of which you can monitor website security and that why the web store owners have now able to broaden their strength to prevent e-commerce websites from hackers.

Here's our list of the seven security best practices to ensure your Magento store security for 2019:

1. Update Magento Frequently

The other way to ensure you are on top of matters security on Magento is to keep updating the platform frequently.

Yes, that’s right. Those updates from Magento are vital in fixing any security flaws that might be leveraged by attackers to attack your store. Thus it is important to keep an eye on the notifications you get from Magento and upgrade your system whenever there is a new version available.

As a professional you must aware; 8 Best Blogging Safety Tips to Make Your Website Safe & Secure

2. Use SSL Certificates

The first and the simplest way to start protecting your Magento store is to install what is known as an SSL certificate.

An SSL certificate is basically a piece of code installed on the server that hosts your Magento site with the aim of protecting the communication between your clients on the browser end and the server. In other words, the data sent between the server and the user is encrypted with a protocol known as HTTPS (Hyper Text Transfer Protocol Secure) making it hard for anyone to intercept.

You can get CA trusted SSL certificate from the authorized reseller such as Cheap SSL Shop to protect Magento store. An SSL certificate will come in very handy in protecting sensitive information such as credit card information, usernames, passwords and others within your Magento store.

You may also like to know; Wildcard SSL Certificates & Its Importance to Business | PR | DA | SEO | Security Certification

3. Use Strong Unique Passwords

It may sound like a cliché by now but strong unique Magento passwords can be the difference between losing your data or not.

As a rule of the thumb, here are the best practices when it comes to handling all your passwords:

• Pick passwords that are not easy to guess or decode using an attack like a brute force attack
• Change your passwords regularly
• Don’t store your passwords on your computer
• Tweak your passwords before and after working any outside developers

You should also refrain from using the passwords in other services. In fact, this is one of the main loopholes that could be used by attackers keeping in mind a breach in one of the services you use could easily lead to you losing every account associated with the login details.

4. Deploy Two-Factor Authentication

Passwords can no longer be relied upon to deliver top draw authentication to systems thus you should introduce another layer of authentication to protect your admin and user accounts from a breach.

One way to add this extra layer of authentication would be to add something like a message verification code or some form of authentication that you or only the users have on them, i.e. a piece of information only they should know or have immediately to hand - such as a physical token.

Also, check; Top 3 Challenges for Staying Safe Online While You Surfing The Internet | Beginners Guide

5. Filter Traffic

Filtering traffic is another very smart way of reducing chances of getting attacks coming your way. This can come in a variety of ways including, limiting the number of IPs that access your admin page and blocking bot traffic.

The former can be implemented if you are the only one who logs into your admin page where you can set a single or a few IP addresses that are allowed to access the page.

Consequently, anyone trying to guess your admin-password combination. As for blocking bot traffic, you can implement scripts to filter them out perhaps on the server side or using Magento security extensions. This way, you can prevent attacks or even your competitors from stealing data from your site.

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6. Use Magento Security Extensions

Talking of security extensions, there is more to protect your Magento store by just tapping into the power of Magento security extensions.

These extensions will help you block security threats, scan for vulnerabilities, limit malicious networks, apply a firewall to block common security threats, monitor which file changes and more.

There are a number of awesome Magento security extensions that can do these including spam Killer, MageFirewall Security, Two-Factor Authentication, IP Security, SecureTrading, Secure Frontend Cookie, Easy Contact Form Captcha among others.

7. Backup Your Store

Last but not least, you should always have an active backup plan just in case your store is attacked or facing any security threats beyond your control.

Good hosting providers do this for you but you could also set up your own backup just to ensure that you have a fallback plan in case of an attack.

You could go for hourly off-site backups and downloadable backups, a feat that should have your e-commerce site under a protective sheath.

Bottom Line

Magento is a cool platform for running an e-commerce store but that doesn’t mean that you are secure using this platform. You will always have to go an extra mile if you are to keep tabs on the ever-evolving cyberspace. As usual, you don’t have to go big, just start small and scale your security features as your e-commerce business grows.