Magento Security – 7 Tips to Protect Your eCommerce Portal

Magento is one of the world’s leading eCommerce platforms. It is looking to extend its B2B, Cloud, and 2.x offerings at a faster pace. Magento claims 19.64% market share among all eCommerce platforms. More than 250,000 merchants around the globe use Magento and this platform accounts to an estimated $100 billion business every year. On an average, businesses using Magento grow 3 times faster than those on competitive eCommerce platforms with almost 50 percent lower TCO (Total Cost of Ownership). Magento Community has 150,000 developers who contribute to building extensions and improving the platform.

The popularity of Magento has also considerably increased the threat of security breaches. Cyber attacks can lead to leaked financial data, vulnerable client information, and disrupted information that, in turn, affects the goodwill and credibility of your business.

In this blog, we have provided some tips to make your Magento eCommerce store secured and protected.

1. Update to Latest Magento Version and Security Patches

Magento periodically launches new versions with known bug patches, general maintenance, and security enhancements. Magento releases accompanying notes with every latest patch to specify the fixes that have been made to overcome previous flaws. However, it gives a clue to the hackers to exploit the outdated online stores. Therefore, in order to assure the security of your online portal, it is recommended to upgrade to the latest Magento version available that should protect from all known threats.

2. Ensure Magento Security with Secured Password

You can reduce the risk of security breach by simply following right password practices.

• Your password must be strong, unique, and completely random.
• Avoid using special dates, favorite places, pet names or any personal information as your password as these are easily crackable.
• Your password must combine special characters (like exclamation marks, dash, question marks, etc.), numbers, uppercase, and lowercase letters.
• We also recommend you to change your password frequently.
• Don’t use the same password for multiple logins.
• Saving passwords on the computer increases the risk of being hacked by the malware roaming around on the internet. Thus, do not save passwords on your computer.

3. Implement Two-Factor Authentication (2FA) and Change Your Admin Panel URL

Two-Factor Authentication (2FA) provides additional security to your Magento store. 2FA requires password and username as well as a piece of information (such as letter combination or a number sequence) that only the user knows, for login. Two-Factor Authentication extensions can be easily downloaded from the Magento Marketplace.

The standard URL of your online Magento store, by default, is yourdomain.com/admin. Obtaining access to your Magento admin page is not a hard nut to crack for the hackers. In order to reduce the risk and ensure security, we recommend you to create a custom path to your admin URL using Magento’s guide.

4. Prevent SQL Injection by Implementing Firewall

Hackers use SQL Injection technique to tamper the sensitive data or make changes to the backend of a site through coded commands. Though Magento takes all the possible measures to prevent SQL injection, you are advised to secure your online store against such attacks by implementing a firewall application.

Firewall defends your site against malware attacks in the following ways:

• Alerts the administrators by detecting unapproved SQL statements.
• Keeps check on out of policy SQL statements made in real-time.
• Blocks attempts of SQL injection before their execution.
• Tracks and analyzes the incoming threats by logging SQL activities.
• For user level flexibility, firewall creates whitelists of SQL statements per user basis.

5. Use an SSL Encrypted Connection

In order to ensure security of the data being sent from and to your Magento portal, use an SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) encrypted connection. Unencrypted data connections are vulnerable to data interception and theft. You can apply SSL through Magento’s URL setting found in the Admin Panel. Once you install SSL, an iconic green padlock will appear on your website in the browser, indicating the visitors that your online store is safely encrypted.

6. Implement Disaster Recovery and Backup Plan

Even after following all the security tips, your webstore is never entirely protected from hackers. In such circumstances, having backups of your website on the hard disk and cloud will help restore the previous version of your website. Backups are also useful in cases of configuration issues with newly installed extensions, deletion of critical files and other accidental errors.

Other Security Tips

• Directory Indexing should be disabled.
• Use IP whitelisting and .htaccess password protection for admin.
• File Permissions: Core Magento and Directory Files should be set to read only, including app/etc/local.xml files (Configuration Files).
• Never use paid extensions that are published on torrent or other sites. Install extensions from only trusted sources (preferably Magneto Marketplace).
• Monitor all system logins (FTP, SSH) for unexpected activity, uploads or commands.
• Review server logs on daily basis against suspicious activity.

Although Magento support team constantly works on security and maintenance updates to keep the web-stores secured, online store owners must stay cautious in their efforts for smooth and safe operations of their online businesses.

Ranosys, a leading Professional Magento Solutions Partner in Singapore with presence in the UK and the USA, has a comprehensive experience in rendering end-to-end Magento eCommerce development services, including Magento Security Optimization. Our dedicated Magento experts conduct website vulnerability audit to prevent security breaches.

Feel free to contact Ranosys Technologies or drop a line to sales@ranosys.com to know more about Magento services.