How to enhance security on your Magento Store

The eCommerce industry is growing rapidly, and with the growth of the industry, security threats are inevitable.

Even with thousands of dedicated servers working 24/7 to protect a company’s private information, security concerns are still prevalent. Data is a honeypot for hackers, and eCommerce platforms are victims of attacks, such as:

• Stealing information and data
• Phishing
• Email Spams
• And to damage a company’s site

Hence, enhancing security on eCommerce platforms becomes of utmost importance in this day and age. 

Large-scale Magecart attack

Magento 1.x had reached the end of its life, & Adobe ended support for it in June 2020. This change had caused the attacks on sites running with deprecated Magento 1.x version. 

These Magento websites were attacked with a malicious script titled as gstaticapi. This MageCart campaign had compromised the private information of users in over 2,000 Magento stores, according to Sanguine Security (Sansec) researchers. 

This automated campaign is one of the largest Magecart attacks affecting tens of thousands of customers. The attack did not require any admin accounts for executions. Attackers gained access through the Magento 1.x zero-day vulnerabilities, by a user named z3r0day.

Adobe has made efforts to migrate Magento store owners from version 1.x to 2.x, thus reducing vulnerable stores from 240,000 to about 95,000.  But with stores still using the older version instances of attacks and vulnerability will arise.

Companies need to protect their Magento stores in order to protect sensitive data of clients, to prevent industrial espionage and protect your company’s reputation and credibility. 

Tips to enhance security on your Magneto Store

1. Update

The latest Magecart attack happened because of the usage of Magento 1.x version which resulted in the vulnerability of personal data. Hence, software updates become critical not only to enable new features to function but also to fix bugs and error while eliminating vulnerabilities. 

2. Backup Store Regularly

By regularly saving backup copies,  and not storing them on the same server with the original website and restoring copies on a sandbox to make sure they’re working well, will further reduce issues.

Backing up files on another server will save it if the server crashes, and if an instance of a hacker arises,  they would access to your server as well as the backup copies.

3. Passwords

The admin password is the last stand of your Magento store security, and this password needs to be strong. Hence a complex password with more than ten characters, lower and upper cases, and featuring special characters like ^$#%*, etc, needs to be used. The reuse of passwords must be minimal, as it increases the risk of losing accounts.

Furthermore, passwords need to be changed periodically and shouldn’t be saved on the PC as Trojan Softwares can steal saved passwords. Hence, one should be able to manage passwords efficiently and effectively.

4. Two-Factor Authorization 

Even the safest password can be stolen. Therefore, to raise the level of security it is recommended to make use of a second authorization factor, for example, an IP address. This will restrict backend access, and increase the security to your Magneto store.

5. Firewall 

There are two types of firewall that can be used to protect your Magneto Store:

• WAF (Web Application Firewall) – that protects the store from web security vulnerabilities like SQLi, XSS, Brute-force attacks, Bot, spam, malware, DD0S, etc.
• System/Network Firewall –this firewall will ban public access to everything except the webserver.
• Additionally, SUCURI can be used too for continuous security monitoring & protection for your Magento store

These firewalls will protect your system and keep sensitive information safe.

By taking the following actions, the security of your online Magento store will be enhanced. And the vulnerability and attacks will be minimized. For more information regarding your eCommerce and in order to fool-proof the security on your Magento Store, talk to the experts- contact us today.