Steps Required to Achieve Secure Ecommerce
Providing customers with a secure ecommerce environment to make online purchases should be your number one priority as an ecommerce business owner.
Without having the ability to protect online shoppers it's impossible to have a successful online store.
The only way to gain a customer's trust is to provide safe web browsing and protection of personal and credit card information during checkout.
Unless visitors to your site know that their confidential data will be protected, they will not make a purchase from you.
There are a number of factors that go into having e-commerce security, they include having secure hosting, having SSL encryption and being PCI compliant.
For the best possible level of protection, your online store must have all three.
E-commerce security starts with secure hosting.
You will need an ecommerce hosting solution that has enough bandwidth and disk space to not only handle an onslaught of traffic, but also be able to hold all the products and information on your site.
Next you must make sure that there is a strong enough firewall to protect all of that information.
The final thing you should look at is the percentage of uptime the hosting provider is able to guarantee.
There are a few that claim to have up to 99.
9% uptime, which refers to how often sites using their hosting are able to run smoothly.
So before you start worrying about your customer's private data you have to first make sure that all the elements of your online store is working effectively.
The next important part of having e-commerce security is having SSL encryption.
SSL stands for secure sockets layer and it is used to provide security over networks such as the internet.
This encryption system provides coding and decoding of sensitive information on a secure channel to keep hackers at bay.
Having SSL encryption allows customers to share confidential data such as their mailing address, date of birth or credit card number with you without worrying about it being stolen.
Currently all secure ecommerce sites should have a 128 bit encryption, because that level of encryption is the industry standard for processing payments.
However some ecommerce solution providers are offering 256 bit SSL encryption.
At this level, you get twice as much protection and the code is even harder to crack.
The last and probably the most important part of having e-commerce security is PCI compliance.
PCI is short for payment card industry, it is an independent body formed by the major credit card companies in hopes to create better online payment security.
Visa, MasterCard, American Express, JCB and Discover came together in 2006 to set a new standard for processing, storing and transmitting credit card information over the internet.
They require that merchants both big and small become PCI complaint so they can offer their customers the safest environment to carry out secure transactions.
Many people believe that being SSL certified is enough to counter fraudulent charges and credit card theft so there are still a large number of ecommerce solution providers and merchants that are not PCI compliant.
Even though you cannot be ordered by federal law to become compliant, many states are enforcing this standard and punishing those who are not compliant.
For those unfortunate enough to be punished, they are faced with heavy fines, lawsuits and their right to accept credit cards will be revoked.
So unless you want to ruin your online business, it's only wise to choose a an ecommerce solution with PCI compliance.
Without having the ability to protect online shoppers it's impossible to have a successful online store.
The only way to gain a customer's trust is to provide safe web browsing and protection of personal and credit card information during checkout.
Unless visitors to your site know that their confidential data will be protected, they will not make a purchase from you.
There are a number of factors that go into having e-commerce security, they include having secure hosting, having SSL encryption and being PCI compliant.
For the best possible level of protection, your online store must have all three.
E-commerce security starts with secure hosting.
You will need an ecommerce hosting solution that has enough bandwidth and disk space to not only handle an onslaught of traffic, but also be able to hold all the products and information on your site.
Next you must make sure that there is a strong enough firewall to protect all of that information.
The final thing you should look at is the percentage of uptime the hosting provider is able to guarantee.
There are a few that claim to have up to 99.
9% uptime, which refers to how often sites using their hosting are able to run smoothly.
So before you start worrying about your customer's private data you have to first make sure that all the elements of your online store is working effectively.
The next important part of having e-commerce security is having SSL encryption.
SSL stands for secure sockets layer and it is used to provide security over networks such as the internet.
This encryption system provides coding and decoding of sensitive information on a secure channel to keep hackers at bay.
Having SSL encryption allows customers to share confidential data such as their mailing address, date of birth or credit card number with you without worrying about it being stolen.
Currently all secure ecommerce sites should have a 128 bit encryption, because that level of encryption is the industry standard for processing payments.
However some ecommerce solution providers are offering 256 bit SSL encryption.
At this level, you get twice as much protection and the code is even harder to crack.
The last and probably the most important part of having e-commerce security is PCI compliance.
PCI is short for payment card industry, it is an independent body formed by the major credit card companies in hopes to create better online payment security.
Visa, MasterCard, American Express, JCB and Discover came together in 2006 to set a new standard for processing, storing and transmitting credit card information over the internet.
They require that merchants both big and small become PCI complaint so they can offer their customers the safest environment to carry out secure transactions.
Many people believe that being SSL certified is enough to counter fraudulent charges and credit card theft so there are still a large number of ecommerce solution providers and merchants that are not PCI compliant.
Even though you cannot be ordered by federal law to become compliant, many states are enforcing this standard and punishing those who are not compliant.
For those unfortunate enough to be punished, they are faced with heavy fines, lawsuits and their right to accept credit cards will be revoked.
So unless you want to ruin your online business, it's only wise to choose a an ecommerce solution with PCI compliance.
