How to safeguard your e-commerce site with Magento Security patches?

We all love shopping. Who had thought that shopping can bring out some extraordinary business ideas? The e-commerce industry has now become a part of our daily life.

The e-commerce industry has seen a great pick up in the last whole decade. There are millions of e-commerce websites in the world. Among which only 10% generate good revenue. It is clear that this rapidly growing industry has huge competition.

With the increasing demand for e-commerce websites, the need for Magento development services is on the rise. There is a plethora of exceptional e-commerce website development companies worldwide.

Some of them have developed custom e-commerce websites. When it comes to e-commerce sites, the developers use Magento.

Magento is one of the best platforms to develop e-commerce websites. It is an open source platform where merchants can sell products online.

Merchants can decide the look of the online shop, manage the content, etc. Magento development is famous for its brilliant marketing tools, catalog management tools, and SEO.

Magento community offers great support to developers and hence a person with the non-technical background can easily access Magento.

As per a report by Foregenix, the 78 percent of Magento based e-commerce websites in Australia and New Zealand are at high risk of cyber crimes. The survey included more than 4,500 Australian and New Zealand Magento websites.

The report also shows that the 90 percent of e-commerce websites based on Magento 1 are at risk and only 35 percent websites that are based on Magento 2 are at risk. The stat clearly shows that using an upgraded version of Magento enhances the security.

A global survey examined 170000 e-commerce websites. All these websites were Magento based. 2548 websites were infected by malware. 1591 websites were infected to obtain card details of consumers.

Out of all, 79 percent of e-commerce websites of North America is based on Magento platform. 78 percent of these websites are at high risk of cyber crimes.

Magento found a new vulnerability in the year 2015. The vulnerability is called 'Magento Shoplifting'. Most of the e-commerce websites are not secured from the Shoplift vulnerability.

'Umbro Brasil' website suffered a cyber attack. The hackers used plain text javascript. Hackers successfully gathered payment card information of consumers.

The end users suffered a lot due to this cyber attack. It is clear indeed that all e-commerce websites must have high-level security.

Here we are discussing Magento development. Magento development community offers different security patches that can help in avoiding cyber attacks.

The remote code execution flaw affects content management system (CMS) and layouts of the e-commerce website. Hackers insert a malicious code when a new CMS code is created.

That results in 'arbitrary remote code execution'. Some vulnerabilities let hackers to access sensitive data of end users.

What are security patches in Magento? When certain security problems are discovered in Magento, the programmers create an update to block the loophole. Such updates are known as Magento security patches.

All businesses should update these patches for website security. You need not worry if you are using the latest version of Magento since it includes all available security inputs.

As we know that Magento is an open source platform. Though being an open source platform has numerous benefits, it also has certain disadvantages. Hackers can easily study the platform and discover security breaches.

Businesses should update the security patch as soon as possible. Since Magento is open source, the security patches are released publically.

Hence, hackers get all the information about previous security loopholes. Then the hackers immediately start targeting websites without an update and attack those websites.

Businesses should take help of any dedicated Magento Developer for installation of security patches. Before applying the security patches, businesses should take backups.

It might happen that certain plugins or elements of your e-commerce website are not compatible with the latest Magento security patch. Hence, a backup is important. Running a patch script on a non-production version of your website helps you to check whether the updates have been successfully applied.

Later you can move the code to your production server. Those with only a production system should go for backup. Before applying the patch, make sure you have all previous patches installed.

All new patches are based on previous patches. You can check the installed patches in app/etc/applied.patches.list. First, install missing security patches and then go for the latest one.

What else can you do to keep your Magento store secure?

Along with Magento security patches, businesses can follow these simple steps to achieve risk-free e-commerce site.

• Keep changing the admin password every few months.

• Keep changing the admin login path from default to custom.

• If you are working with third-party consultants, change the password after completion.

• Do not share the FTP or shell login details with anyone outside the company.

• Keep removing unused extensions.

• Keep all extensions patched.

• Evaluate and audit the quality of ready-made extensions.

• Avoid using shared servers as it increases the risk of security breaches.

• Use dedicated servers.

• Perform regular backups of the website and database.

• Use code repositories like GitHub or BitBucket to store your code. You can track the code easily for unusual modifications.

• Use only secure communication protocols such as SSH, SFTP or HTTPS.

Conclusion:

As there are millions of e-commerce websites, there are billions of end users. e-commerce businesses should keep updating the Magento security patches. It secures your website from hackers and protects from different vulnerabilities.

My name is Hemendra Singh. I am Managing Director and Co-Founder of The NineHertz, a Mobile App Development Company. My ideology is that, a clear vision and hard work builds a great company.