As the world of retail and services becomes more and more accessible with just a click, businesses are turning to e-commerce to cement their position in their respective industries.
Statistics show online shoppers are expected to grow by 315 million YoY to 4.1 billion in 2022. And growth is expected to continue, reaching 23% by 2025, which translates to a 5.2 percentage point increase in just five years.
To connect with the exponentially increasing number of online consumers, e-commerce companies are stepping up their game. However, running an online business comes with some risks. For one, e-commerce companies are highly vulnerable to hackers, leaving their company and customers’ data in peril. They may also experience attacks and downtimes, which hurt workers’ productivity and company sales.
No customer will be comfortable shopping from a store that puts their data at risk. If your patrons believe that you aren’t putting any measures to safeguard their personal information, they’ll likely switch to your competitors. Consequently, you must promote data security to enhance the growth of your e-commerce enterprise.
You can implement various strategies to secure your online business data and manage entitlements. Some of these include:
#1 Leverage The Power Of Least Privilege Principle
Organize the way data is handled in your company and ensure security by enforcing the least privileged principle. It refers to the practice of granting relevant access to specific workers. In simple terms, it means allowing specific employees the right only to access the data or information required to do particular tasks. For instance, if a team member only needs to review an online material, don’t give them edit permission.
Likewise, what should be done by supervisors or managers should be limited to them. In other words, junior staff shouldn’t be allowed to access information meant to be used by seniors. That goes a long way in ensuring your e-commerce data isn’t compromised, thus enhancing your cybersecurity strategy.
#2 Encrypt Online Files
In most cases, running an e-commerce store means working remotely. Therefore, you’ll be sharing documents or files through online platforms, but that makes your documents vulnerable to online attacks.
One of the best ways to secure your online documents could be to ensure they get delivered to the correct recipients. But, that isn’t always the case, and sometimes, they can fall into the hands of the wrong people who can use them to their advantage. That’s why it’s advisable to encrypt online files before sending them to the intended people.
Encryption technology enables you to encode files to hide their meaning. As such, anyone who receives them by mistake won’t be able to understand the information in them. That helps hinder any person from using your company data without your permission.
But one may ask: how will the intended user understand your documents? They’ll use the provided binary codes to decode your files. Doing so helps convert your files into a standard or ordinary language. As a result, they can read, understand and use them. Always ensure you encrypt your online files before sharing them with workers and customers.
#3 Enforce Two-Factor Authentication Strategy
As technology evolves at high speeds, cybercriminals are finding other ways to attack online businesses. Some online security measures used to protect e-commerce companies against online attacks are no longer that effective. One of them is the use of passwords.
You can still create passwords to protect your e-commerce systems from unauthorized access, but remember that passcodes can easily get compromised. For that reason, you must enforce a two-factor authentication strategy. That means adding another layer of security on top of your passcodes.
With two-factor authentication (2FA), no one will access your e-commerce company systems with mere passwords. The added layer of security provided by 2FA ensures that only authorized people get access to your protected data.
You can adopt several tactics to establish a 2FA strategy. These include requesting users to answer some secret questions and using fingerprints or voice recognition to access specific information. That goes a long way in securing your data from unauthorized access.
#4 Update Your Systems Regularly
You must not skip regular updating of your systems if you want to protect your e-commerce company from online attacks. Hackers usually scan outdated systems to determine their vulnerability, so older versions of systems are more vulnerable to cybersecurity attacks. Some of the systems you should update regularly include the website itself, the various types of installed software, and any other automation tools.
While that’s the case, regularly updating your systems might not always be your top priority, with many other tasks to tackle. A system update also takes much of your time. For that reason, consider installing an automatic system update application. It helps keep your systems updated with less or no human intervention.
#5 Train Employees On Online Security Risks And Best Practices
Another effective way to boost your cybersecurity is to educate your workers on the risks that come with online attacks. You also need to train workers on how to spot potential online attacks and how to handle them.
Studies show that 95% of data breaches stem from human error. Although it is perfectly normal to make mistakes sometimes, this can be mitigated by properly training your staff and implementing best practices. Have periodic refreshers on cybersecurity so your employees will gain in-depth security awareness.
#6 Backup Your Files
Online criminals are busy finding new ways to attack e-commerce enterprises. Therefore, attackers can still access your data even after investing in all the mentioned online security measures.
Apart from online attacks, you can still lose data by mistake. For instance, you can accidentally delete some information necessary to run your company. For those reasons, you should consider backing up your files.
Data backup is the practice of copying and storing your online files or documents in another location. It lets you retrieve any lost files. Therefore, you won’t be worried about losing your data through online attacks or deleting them by mistake since you can always find them.
Takeaway
Data forms an integral part of your e-commerce company. It allows you to understand your customers and make strategic decisions.
However, your data must be secure from online attacks. You can achieve that by implementing the strategies described above.
