Magento became one of the leading CMS platforms for building eCommerce websites after the launch of Magento 2. But being at the top comes at a price and as a Magento merchant, you have to pay that price. The eCommerce platforms are a common target of many hackers and spammers around the world. So, securing the Magento store becomes the highest priority of yours as an eCommerce store owner.

Hacking technology is advancing along with the technology used for securing the eCommerce store. Therefore, most of the hackers get success to find a breach into a website. When a cyber-attack happens on your website, then all of the site data including customers’ data, financial data, and other data will get compromised. This will jeopardize your company’s reputation and credibility, which you can’t afford at any cost. So,

How to Secure Your Magento Website from Cyber Attacks?

Hackers are constantly looking for vulnerabilities in eCommerce websites around the globe. To save yourself and the revenue you generate from your Magento eCommerce website, read this guide till the end. We have come up with 7 essential Magento security tips to protect your eCommerce store.

1. Upgrade Your Magento to Latest Version

One of the things you should immediately do is to upgrade your Magento 2 store to the latest stable version, which is Magento 2.3.4 as of April 2020. Magento rolls out upgrades of its platform every quarter now, which is one of the best benefits of using Magento. These upgrades include lots of performance, platform, and security enhancements. Also, these upgrades range from general maintenance to bug fixes.

The cross-site scripting and remote code execution are the common issues found in eCommerce platforms. And because of these issues, hackers can easily breach into your eCommerce website. Magento, in its every upgrade, addresses these issues and resolves them. Thus, making it one of the secure platforms.

Magento also releases the patch notes for the general public, which includes what’s new in the latest version. It also includes what issues the previous version had with their solutions. This piece of information is like a goldmine for hackers and they can exploit any website running on an outdated platform. All these implicates that it is very very necessary for you to upgrade your Magento platform to the latest version with hire magento developer service.

2. Use Strong Complex Magento Admin Password

If your password is common and can be easily guessed then your Magento website will be on the mercy of the person who had figured it out. To stop that from happening, you have to follow some best password practices.

The first thing you need to do is to create a very strong and complex password. This password should include lower and upper-case alphabets, numbers, and special characters. Do not add any personal information like birthdates or anything else. Also, make sure that the password you have set is completely unique. It means that you must not use that password for any other logins. If you use identical passwords for many login accounts, then chances of figuring it out increase. And now some hackers can access all your accounts with the same password.

Do not store the password on your desktop or any other place. Because it would be better to retype the whole password than succumb to the malware attack on your desktop. Also, you need to change your password periodically to stop hackers find a breach into your store. Doing all of these steps will safeguard your Magento store.

3. Opt-in for Two-Factor Authorization

To add an extra factor of safety for your Magento eCommerce store, enable the two-factor authentication. Because the world is full of advanced hacking technologies. And with phishing and brute force attacks, every password is crackable. The two-factor authentication will add an extra layer of security along with a strong password.

Two-factor authentication requires a username, password, and security code, which will grant you access to your Magento backend. You can use third-party modules available on the Magento marketplace to enable two-factor authentication.

4. Implement reCaptcha

ReCaptcha records the login attempts and identifies if it is a human or not based on the score. It will make sure that no other entity except for humans is trying to interact with the computer. It is more advanced than the Captcha, which needed to enter letters, or numbers, or both to confirm the human. But reCaptcha stays hidden and customers will get verified based on Google’s algorithm score.

To enable the reCaptcha, first, you need to generate API keys from the reCaptcha site. Once you generate those, go back to your Magento backend and follow the path Store>Settings>Configuration. Select Google reCaptcha from the security section at the left panel. Enter keys and configure the whole thing to enable the reCaptcha on your site. You can choose pages on your site where Captcha will stay enabled. With this, you have enabled another security feature on your Magento website.

5. Change Admin Panel URL for Login

By default, Magento’s standard backend URL is yourdomain.com/admin. So, when you have to access your backend, you have to type in this URL, which is quite easy and gives easy access to hackers. It helps them to launch a brute force attack more easily on your website and crack the password, which is still quite an effort but not an impossible task. So, for the sake of your customers’ safety, change the URL from /admin to a unique URL that you can easily remember and hard for others to guess.

6. Secure Magento Site with an SSL Certificate

To gain the trust, reputation, and confidence of your customers in your brand, it is imperative for you to secure their shopping and transaction experience. And for that, you have to integrate an SSL certificate to your Magento site. A Secure Socket Layer (SSL) will encrypt the connection between you and your customers so that the data sent and received is safe. Unencrypted connections tend to be vulnerable and can be hijacked easily and lead to more severe consequences.

You can lose customers’ data like their login credentials, credit card info, or other things. But with an SSL certificate in place, all your connection will be encrypted. It can be quickly installed from the Magento backend and once installed it will show a green padlock that indicates the site is safe for browsing.

7. Take Regular Backup Your Website

All of the above precautions are mandatory to secure your website from hackers and spammers. Still, they are able to find some vulnerability in your site code and get access to it. So, your website is never completely safe from those hackers and stealers.

But a backup of your site can restore your Magento store to the last safe version even if it gets compromised in any circumstances. This essentially means going back into the time when your website was safe and sound. You can backup your Magento eCommerce store to your cloud storage or external hard drive too. You can backup your whole site by accessing your hosting environment.

Another great benefit of backing up your whole website is that you can restore your website anytime your site crashes. Errors due to critical files get deleted or problems with the new plugin or version upgrade happen.  But you can easily overcome these errors by restoring your Magento store from a backup file.

Wrapping Up

Magento is one of the best platforms you can choose to build your eCommerce store. The team of Magento is constantly working on improving the security and performance of the store. Therefore, it releases new upgrades of the platform every quarter to safeguard it from hackers and spammers.

Also, there are few steps mentioned above that can help you to make your Magento eCommerce store most secure. But you have put an effort like a vigilante to fend off hackers. Still, if you need any help regarding this, then you should consult an eCommerce expert.