6 ways to ensure your website’s security and success

These days setting up an e-commerce website is easy. However, efforts to keep your site from fraud, hacking, and copycats are a bit harder. If you’re a small business, having just one breach, too many charge backs or someone stealing or copying your products or services could spell the end for your business.

From trademarking your company assets to applying WHOIS domain privacy protection, here are 6 ways business owners can protect their online stores from the above cases.

Trademark your company assets. Ensure that your site is protected by trademarking your company’s name and logo. There are many cases where website owners think that when a domain name is available or that they were able to have an LLC or corporation that the business name or brand is already trademarked.

The best way to make sure that no one else can lay claim your company name and logo, you must trademark them. This entirely separate process must be done through a trademark attorney. Registering the name as a trademark also protects you from any copiers, infringers, knockoffs, etc.

The best practice for all small businesses is to register a trademark for their business name and any product that can be copied by a competitor or a Chinese manufacturer.

Use only trusted e-commerce platforms. Building your store on trusted platforms will ensure you won’t have a lot of issue with security. A good e-commerce provider will constantly monitor all stores on their platform for security problems and readily deploy solutions as problems arise behind the scenes to take care of any security issues before they become a real issue.

Use SSL (HTTP with SSL = HTTPS). Secure Sockets Layer or SSL is the standard security technology when creating an encrypted link between a web server and a browser. This ensures that all data passed between the web server and browsers stay private. SSLs are crucial to e-commerce transactions to keep sensitive financial and personal information protected throughout the entire purchase process, building trust for your online store and providing shoppers with peace of mind.

HTTP over SSL is known as HTTPS and offers tougher encryption. Regrettably, many websites still don’t support HTTPS. HTTPS adds protection to your customers and your business from virtual attacks and impersonations.

Ensure that your site is PCI DSS compliant. You must make sure that your site is PCI DSS compliant especially if you’re processing online payments. Many payment integrators today encrypt and store credit card info for you, so any critical payment data won’t be stored on your side.

Keep your website upgraded.  Having outdated applications and extensions will make your e-commerce slower and easier to target. Hackers love unprotected and outdated websites and often use automated web crawlers to find sites with unpatched applications. Keep your website and backend software updated with the latest security patches to ensure that your business can protect itself from cyberattacks.

Add domain security. Having a website means having your personal information uploaded and readily available in the WHOIS database for the public. The name, address and phone number when you register your domain can be collected by a spammer, hacker or identity thief.

Keep your personal data private and secure through WHOIS Domain Privacy Protection. This will shield your personal information from the public and the global WHOIS database. This is recommended for businesses of all sizes.

 That’s it. There’s more that goes with protecting your online business from cybercriminals and security threats, so continue being on the lookout to ensure your business stays on top of the game.