Securing the Digital Frontier: Best Practices for Enhancing E-Commerce Security in a Cloud Environment
In 2023, there were 2,365 cyberattacks affecting more than 343 million victims – There was also a 72% increase in data breaches between 2021 and 2023. No surprise there since 83% of e-commerce websites have outdated software, increasing their risk of cyber threats.
Plus, the cloud is expanding the threat landscape, with e-commerce stores using cloud-based platforms to expand and streamline their operations.
So, whether you run a small boutique or a large online marketplace, you must secure your digital storefront. Doing so lets you maintain customer trust and protect sensitive information. It also helps keep your business running smoothly.
In this guide, we’ll walk you through the essentials of e-commerce cybersecurity, the biggest threats out there, and practical steps to secure your store in the cloud.
What Is E-Commerce Cybersecurity?
E-commerce cybersecurity refers to the practices and tools that keep your online store safe from cyberattacks—or at least reduce the risk of those attacks.
It’s all about protecting every interaction and transaction in your store.
Because many e-commerce businesses operate in the cloud, security must be a top priority. The cloud's flexibility allows you to scale up quickly.
However, it introduces risks, like handling customer data, managing online payments, and relying on third-party vendors.
So, what does e-commerce cybersecurity cover? Here are a few key areas:
Data security: Keeping customer information such as addresses, credit card numbers, and personal details safe from unauthorized access.
Transaction security: Making sure you process every payment securely and without any interference from hackers.
Platform security: Ensuring your e-commerce platform is accessible from vulnerabilities hackers can exploit.
Tip: When setting up your cloud-based e-commerce platform, you need to consider not just security but also licensing. Microsoft's Dynamics 365 offers robust e-commerce solutions, but understanding its licensing can be tricky.
You can follow the Dynamics 365 licensing guide, which outlines the various options and their security features to choose the right license and make sure your e-commerce platform has the necessary security tools to protect customer data and online transactions.
The guide can help you select a plan that includes advanced threat protection, data encryption, and compliance features tailored to your business needs.
Remember, proper licensing isn't just about following rules—it's essential to securing your digital storefront.
The Role of Cybersecurity in E-Commerce
Customers expect a secure shopping experience. If they feel unsafe entering their credit card details on your site, they’ll abandon their carts and head to a competitor.
Earn Customer Confidence WIth Secure Transactions
Ensuring your customers know that their information is protected is one of the ways to help build trust.
Secure checkout processes, visible security badges, and SSL certificates (which ensure your site is HTTPS and not HTTP) all contribute to a safe shopping experience.
Protect Business Reputation
A single security breach can affect your brand’s reputation. Just ask eBay, which has struggled to recover from a high-profile breach in 2014.
For smaller e-commerce stores, a cyber attack can be even more catastrophic. By taking steps to secure your site, you’re protecting your brand’s reputation in the long run.
Ensure Legal and Regulatory Compliance
Any company responsible for credit card payment processes must follow security standards like PCI DSS (Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard).
Also, adhering to privacy regulations like GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) can help you avoid hefty fines and maintain customer trust.
Tip: It's not enough to just have strong firewalls and encryption anymore. You must think holistically about security. This means regular system checks, sure, but also training our teams to spot potential threats.
And let's not forget about DLP tools (data loss prevention) – they're crucial for keeping an eye on sensitive information as it moves through our private cloud systems.
To compete in a customer-centric market, businesses rely on a variety of data sources to understand their consumers better and adjust their products and messaging to meet their needs.
It's essential to carefully vet the sources of this data and ensure the data collection methods are compliant with industry regulations. This is especially important in the wake of a revolutionary shift in data privacy laws.
When e-commerce businesses rely on data insights from data collection tools, cloud security plays a critical role. E-commerce companies store a vast amount of sensitive data like customer information, payment details, and product inventory on cloud platforms.
A data collection tool, like Bright Data, which interacts with or collects external data, must integrate securely with these cloud infrastructures. This data collection method relies on proxy networks to gather competitor pricing, product trends, and reviews. However, improper proxy use or scraping can expose businesses to cyber risks like bot detection, blacklisting, or security breaches.
Cloud security protocols ensure only authorized systems can interact with the data environment. As online retail grows, balancing data insights with robust security frameworks will be critical for long-term success.
By combining all these approaches, you create a security strategy that's not just robust but also adaptable to new threats. After all, when customers trust you with their data, they're trusting you with their digital lives. It's your job to make sure that trust is well-placed.
Common Security Threats in E-Commerce
Running an e-commerce store opens you up to various cyber threats. Let’s break down the most common ones so you know what to watch for.
Data Breaches and Customer Information Theft
Data breaches happen when hackers steal sensitive information–like your customers’ names, addresses, credit card details, and passwords.
These attacks can cripple an e-commerce business overnight. In 2013, Target was a victim of a massive data breach that exposed the data of 40 million customers.
While Target was able to recover, the reputational damage and financial losses were huge. The total data breach costs amounted to $202 million.
Payment Fraud and Account Takeover
Payment fraud is another primary concern for online retailers. Cybercriminals use stolen credit cards to make unauthorized purchases, or they trick your customers into giving up their payment details.
This hurts your bottom line, and it puts your customers at risk.
Fraudsters often target e-commerce sites with weak authentication processes. This makes it all the more important to have strong measures in place to protect both your store and your customers.
Phishing Attacks
In phishing attacks, scammers pretend to be a trusted source, like your store, to trick customers (or even your team) into handing over sensitive information. This could come in the form of a fake website, a bogus email, or a misleading text message that looks legitimate.
For example, a scammer might send an email that looks like it’s from your store, asking customers to reset their password.
When customers click the link, they end up on a fake site designed to steal their login credentials. It’s a simple trick, but it’s shockingly effective.
Just look at this email, which is supposedly from American Express. Looks legit, right?
Screenshot provided by author
It’s not.
Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) Attacks
A DDoS attack happens when hackers flood your site with so much traffic that it crashes. This can lead to significant downtime, lost sales, and frustrated customers.
Imagine your site going down during Black Friday or a big holiday sale. That’s the kind of disruption a DDoS attack can cause.
In 2020, Amazon Web Services (AWS) reported a record-breaking DDoS attack, which was one of the largest of its kind. While AWS managed to handle the traffic surge, smaller e-commerce stores may not be so lucky.
Third-Party Vulnerabilities
Many e-commerce businesses rely on third-party services for payment processing, shipping, and customer management. While these integrations are extremely valuable, they can also introduce vulnerabilities.
Hackers can target weak links in your supply chain and exploit these services to gain access to your main e-commerce platform.
Tip: Cloud environments are complex, making e-commerce platforms vulnerable to security gaps. A cloud security assessment tool like Wiz helps online businesses identify risks, detect misconfigurations, and provide actionable insights to strengthen security.
These tools continuously monitor your cloud environment, ensuring vulnerabilities are addressed before they lead to breaches and keeping customer data safe.
8 Key Moves to Boost Your E-Commerce Security
Now that you understand the threats, let’s dive into eight actionable steps that can help boost your e-commerce security. .
1. Add Extra Layers With Strong Authentication
Strengthen the login process for both your customers and your team:
Multi-factor authentication (MFA): Requiring a second form of authentication, like a one-time code sent to a customer's phone, can reduce the risk of account takeovers. MFA protects sensitive areas, like customer accounts and your store’s backend, from unauthorized access. So, if a hacker manages to steal a customer’s password, MFA ensures that they can’t access the account without the second authentication factor.
Access control for admins: Only give access to those who need it. For example, your marketing team doesn’t need full access to payment information or customer details. Limit admin privileges to reduce your exposure.
2. Encrypt Customer Data and Transactions
Encryption is your first line of defense. With SSL/TLS encryption, all the data transferred between your customers and your store is encrypted. This can make it nearly impossible for hackers to intercept and steal.
You can quickly identify SSL encryption by checking if your site uses “HTTPS” instead of “HTTP.”
For example, when you go to a site with SSL encryption, you’ll see a lock icon in the address bar. When you click that lock, a message states that the connection is encrypted.
Take a look.
Screenshot provided by author
3. Use Real-Time Fraud Detection
Fraud detection systems can monitor transactions in real-time. This involves looking for patterns of suspicious behavior, like multiple failed login attempts or purchases from unexpected locations. Implementing these styles can save you from chargebacks and lost inventory.
Fraud detection services can automatically flag and block fraudulent transactions before they can go through.
4. Secure APIs and Integrations
APIs (application programming interfaces) connect your e-commerce platform with third-party services like shipping or payment gateways. While they’re incredibly useful, APIs can also be vulnerable.
To mitigate these risks, ensure that only trusted applications and users can access your APIs. You can also implement rate limiting, which restricts the times an API can be accessed in a given period. This helps prevent attacks that flood your system with malicious requests.
5. Conduct Regular Security Audits
Conduct routine security audits to find and patch vulnerabilities. This includes scanning your site for outdated or malicious software, misconfigurations, or weak passwords that could expose your store.
Penetration testing, where a security expert tries to break into your site, can also help uncover hidden vulnerabilities before the hackers do.
6. Prepare for the Worst With Backups
Even with the best security measures in place, things can still go wrong. A comprehensive backup strategy ensures you have all the required resources to recover quickly from an attack or system failure.
Regularly back up your store’s data securely in the cloud. If an attack happens, you can restore your data and get back up and running with minimal downtime.
7. Always Patch and Update Software
One of the easiest security measures that many overlook is regularly patching and updating your software. Whether it’s your CMS, payment gateway, or plugins, keep everything up to date.
Cybercriminals are constantly looking for outdated software as an easy way in, so don’t give them the opportunity. Ensure your platform runs the latest versions with the most recent security patches.
Tip: Today's security landscape demands a multi-layered approach. Think of it as building a fortress – you need strong walls (encryption), vigilant guards (real-time monitoring), and regular training for your defenders (employee awareness).
But here's the kicker: you also need to test your defenses. That's where techniques like breach and attack simulation come in handy, helping you spot weak points before the bad guys do. And let's not forget the importance of choosing the right cloud partner – after all, you wouldn't build your castle on shaky ground, would you?
By weaving together these various security threads, e-commerce businesses can create a robust shield against the ever-evolving threats lurking in the digital shadows.
8. Keep Bots at Bay
Attackers often use bots to automate attacks, scrape sensitive information, or flood your site with fake traffic (DDoS attacks).
Use a bot mitigation solution to detect and block malicious bots while allowing legitimate bots, like search engine crawlers, to work correctly.
Technologies like CAPTCHA help you add an extra layer of protection against bots attempting to compromise your system or manipulate your inventory, prices, or checkout process.
Wrap Up
E-commerce transactions require a customer’s payment information and other essential data. Because of that simple fact alone, cybercriminals will try to come banging at your (digital) door full force.
How will you stop them?
Simple.
You need strong security measures. But the key is to be as proactive as possible. Don’t wait for a cyber attack to happen to react. Act now.
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