The most significant threats to a WordPress e-commerce site, and our advice.

As online shopping becomes increasingly mainstream among consumers, e-commerce businesses face new obstacles to overcome — including the well-known security threats targeting WordPress sites. Customers are placing more and more trust in online businesses and feel more comfortable sharing their money and personal information. But hold on! That does not mean they have no reason to be concerned.

Security threats do not only affect large-scale WordPress e-commerce sites. And in the vast majority of cases, we know just how important yours is. That is why it is better to anticipate the various threats. The key to prevention? Understanding what the threats are and detecting them so you can keep them well at bay. It is time, therefore, to get acquainted with the most common threats:

Common threats your WordPress e-commerce site may face

1. Spam

As you may have already read in our various observations on spam: blog comments and contact forms are open doors to spammers looking to leave infected links on your site, which can quickly get on the nerves of both you and your staff. This affects not only site security, but also site speed, which can be significantly slowed down as a result.

2. Phishing

Few things are more irritating than receiving fraudulent emails aggressively urging you to click a link. However, this method only works if you follow through with the action, which gives attackers access to your login credentials or other personally identifiable data.

3. Bots

Bots — short for robots — can be good or bad. Some crawl the web to help your WordPress site rank well in search results. But there are harmful bots that rummage through your e-commerce site to extract pricing and inventory information, for example. They then use these findings to manipulate information and hold inventory in shopping carts, resulting in a drop in your sales and revenue.

4. Malware

Cross-site scripting, SQL injections, malvertising, ransomware… These are different types of malicious software designed to infiltrate the backend of your WordPress e-commerce site with the aim of stealing sensitive data (both yours and your customers'). Willem de Groot demonstrated this with a study of 6,000 e-commerce sites, reaching a shocking conclusion: half of them were infected in 2015 with malicious JavaScript code. By the end of that year, almost all e-commerce sites were under attack. And that is not the only alarming case: eBay, for instance, was hacked several years ago and faced an attack that directly targeted customers, whose login credentials and passwords were compromised.

The same story unfolded with Target in 2013, where a partnership with a third-party supplier with unsecured systems led to a breach. Credit card details and personal data from tens of millions of customers were stolen, and Target was forced to pay over $18 million in legal settlements. Proof, if it were needed, that malware can go very far and represent far more than a minor threat to your online shop.

5. DDoS

Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks do exactly what the name implies: they overwhelm a site's server and take it offline. The 2016 bot attack against Dyn is one of the most widely reported examples of this type of threat.

Best practices to reduce the risk of attacks on your e-commerce site

It is important to note that security threats to e-commerce sites do not always target your customers' personal data or credit card details. Hackers and bots can also crawl your site to access your business data. Whatever type of security threat you face, you can imagine how damaging it could be to your revenue and your reputation. This is where a threat protection plan becomes essential.

1 / Managing server security

First and foremost, make sure you are using a WordPress hosting provider you trust sufficiently. This means there should be a server-side firewall in place, or an effective means of adding a CDN. You should also check for the availability of an SSL certificate and hosting plans that do not require resource sharing. To better protect your hosting server, apply Apache security best practices.

2/ Payment gateway security

It is essential to ensure that your payment gateway provider puts security first and foremost. This applies to all third parties connected to your site.

3/ Antivirus and anti-malware software

Equip your network operating system with anti-malware software.

4/ Firewall

Ideally, your hosting provider has a firewall in place for your server. You should also consider obtaining one for your computer as well as for the website itself. Many security plugins (such as the all-in-one WP Security & Firewall) come with a built-in firewall, allowing you to tick off several items at once while strengthening your WordPress security.

5/ SSL certificate

An SSL certificate is no longer optional for WordPress e-commerce sites — at least not by Google's standards. It is an easy (and often free) way to add an additional layer of encryption to transactions carried out on your site.

6/ PCI compliance

The PCI Security Standards Council has strict guidelines on how you must secure your e-commerce site. You can gain access to the various rules covering your web hosting type, the level of security required for payment processing, and more.

7/ Keep everything up to date

This may not be news to you, but it bears repeating: when software lacks the updates required or even recommended by your provider, it is your business that you risk putting in jeopardy. Do not forget to update:

• Your computer
• Your business network
• Your server software
• Your PHP version
• The WordPress core
• Your WordPress plugins and themes

8/ WooCommerce, for a more robust WordPress e-commerce site

WooCommerce is a plugin highly recommended by experts. It allows you to add e-commerce features to your site, giving you access to a clean, professional online shop.

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