Ecommerce tips : Australian Cyber Security Awareness Week

Ecommerce tips : Australian Cyber Security Awareness Week

This is Australian Cyber Security Awareness Week, with over 500 organisations working in tandem to raise the awareness of safe shopping and online security for Australians.

As it’s the end of May and we move into June Stocktake sales across many industries, it’s time to take a moment to do a quick stocktake of your own security online. Here are some things to think about for the security of your online shop or shopping cart website.

1. Encrypted Checkout (SSL)

Customers are educated to look for the padlock in their browser when they go through checkout. Even if you don’t need it for compliance with Visa and MasterCard’s security standards, you could be missing out on sales if you don’t give your customers the reassurance and confidence of a secure checkout.

To check whether your checkout is encrypted, visit the front of your site, put something in your cart and go to checkout. Do you see the padlock?

A secure checkout will start with https:// and the padlock will not be broken.

If it’s broken:

  • Check your images – are any of your images hard coded with an http:// instead of an https://? If so try changing that hardcoded part to remove the http:// part and the domain name. So if your image was http://www.yourdomain.com.au/images/image1.jpg then change the reference to your image to /images/image1.jpg
  • Check your Javascript – sometimes there are links to images or other files referred to in Javascript files

2. Tell your customers

Your shop is secure, but your customers probably still don’t trust you. Tell your customers that your secure – display logos they will recognise from your SSL security certificate provider so they know they can trust you.

If you belong to a secure trust programme from an endorsed third party, tell them that too. Your customers may or may not be security savvy, it’s up to you to make sure they trust you.

3. Get a third party security scan

There are plenty of credible places that do free security scans – looking for common vulnerabilities. If you get one of those reports pay attention to the recommendations they placed.

Make sure your hosting provider is PCI DSS compliant, and if you are using a “download and install” type of shopping cart software program, make sure it is also PA-DSS compliant.

4. Change your passwords

Don’t use the same password for everything, and don’t use passwords that are easy to guess. There are automated software programmes that attack sites using password combinations that are commonly used by people, like dates, names, simple words. Likewise, don’t use your email user name as your password, or your name.

Think of a sentence you can remember and take the first letter of each of the words, then mix it up a bit. Use numbers, use punctuation, mix upper and lower case.

Open your calendar, and create a reoccuring appointment every month to change your passwords. When the reminder comes up do it. Why do banks and phone companies force their employees to change their passwords to something they haven’t used before? It’s not to be annoying, it’s because security matters.

5. Think about physical security

What do you do with credit card numbers you receive over the phone? Do you own a shredder to get rid of important things you print out but don’t use? Is your computer protected by a virus killer? What do you do with the data you save on your home laptop? You need to think about all of these things as you may not realise it but criminals only need a little bit of information to exploit you a lot in the online world.

6. Ask your ecommerce provider for help

Shopping cart providers take security seriously, and they’ll usually be more than willing to help guide you when it comes to security.

There are many things you can do to keep you and your customers safe online, the biggest thing is to never stop thinking about security.

Ozcart Ecommerce

Ozcart has been in business since 2006 and is an online, hosted shopping cart that you can use for your current or new online store. We offer so many features for the same low price. In fact, we are addicted to adding new ones to ensure that we remain one of the best choices for a shopping cart. https://ozcart.com

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