Security

Is Your Site Safe and Sound?

Are You Protected?

In the wake of so many prominent websites getting hacked in the last year, it’s no surprise that security concerns are front-and-center in the mind of online shoppers.

By now as a responsible e-commerce site owner you’ve installed an SSL/TLS public certificate to secure your site and protect your customers.  You might think that’s enough, but unfortunately, it’s not.

Are Your Servers Up-to-Date?

Every year several security vulnerabilities in the Apache and OpenSSL are discovered and patched. It is imperative to make sure that the server hosting your site has applied the necessary patches and all their security is up-to-date.

How do you know if your hosting environment is secure?

Ask!  Contact your hosting provider or Systems Administrator (a.k.a. SysAdmin) and check to make sure all vulnerabilities have been addressed.

Is your SSL/TLS Certificate Active?

Check on your SSL/TLS Certificate to make sure it hasn’t expired, or isn’t about to expire so you don’t experience an interruption in service.

Is Your Website Up-to-Date?

Once you’re sure that your hosting environment and server have applied the latest security patches, it’s time to turn your attention to the application running your web store.

  • Is your e-commerce site running on the latest version?
  • Are all your extensions, modules, and plugins up-to-date?

If of your extensions, modules, plugins, themes, etc, need to be updated, when you log into the admin of your online store there should be a message notifying you about what updates are available.

Caution: Updating is a Technical Process!

If you have a Magento site, a word of caution about updating it: If you’re not an experienced Magento developer, don’t do it on your own.  Call a professional with experience working with Magento.

Any alterations to the Magento core could cause your site to crash, so before you do any updating to any type of e-commerce webstore, you’ll want to make a backup of the code and database – just in case.

We can’t say it enough: proceed with caution when updating your Magento site.  Consult with experienced Magento developers before undertaking an update.