E-commerce Security

Providing customers with a safe ecommerce environment to make online purchases should be your number one priority as an online store owner. Without being able to protect online consumers it's impossible to have a successful e-business. The best way to gain a customer's trust is to provide secure web browsing and protection of personal and credit card data during checkout. Unless visitors to your website know that their confidential information will be protected, they will not make a purchase from you. There are many factors that go into e-commerce security, they include having secure hosting, having SSL encryption and becoming PCI compliant. For the best possible level of protection, your ecommerce site must have all three.

E-commerce security begins with secure hosting. You must have an ecommerce hosting solution with plenty of bandwidth and disk space to not only withstand large amounts of traffic, but also be able to hold all the products and data on your web site. In addition you have to be sure to include a strong enough firewall to protect all of that information. The final thing you should focus on is the percentage of uptime the web host provider is able to guarantee. There are a few that claim to have up to 99.9% uptime, which refers to how often web sites using their hosting are able to work properly. Therefore before you start worrying about your customers' personal data you have to first insure that all the different components of your ecommerce site is working properly.

The next step in achieving e-commerce security is having SSL encryption. SSL stands for secure sockets layer and it is used to provide security over networks like the internet. This encryption system provides coding and decoding of sensitive data on a secure channel to keep hackers away. Having SSL encryption enables your customers to share private data such as their mailing address, date of birth or credit card number and not have to worry about it being stolen. As of now all secure e-commerce websites should have a 128 bit encryption, because that level of encryption is the industry standard for processing online payments. However some ecommerce solution providers are offering 256 bit SSL encryption. At the higher level, you get double the amount of protection and the code is even more difficult to crack.

The final and notably the most important part of having e-commerce security is PCI compliance. PCI is short for payment card industry, it is an independent body formed by the major credit card companies in order to create better online payment security. Visa, MasterCard, American Express, JCB and Discover joined forces in 2006 to create this new standard for processing, storing and transmitting credit card data on the web. They require that merchants both big and small become PCI complaint so they can offer their customers the safest environment to carry out secure transactions. A number of people believe that becoming SSL certified is enough to protect against fraudulent charges and credit card theft so there remains a large number of ecommerce solution providers and merchants that are not PCI compliant. Even though you cannot be ordered by federal law to become compliant, many states are enforcing this standard and cracking down on those who are not compliant. For those unfortunate enough to be punished, they are faced with huge fines, lawsuits and their right to accept credit cards will be revoked. So unless you are prepared to sacrifice your e-commerce business, you must choose an e-commerce solution with PCI compliance.


Before you start selling on the internet, it is important to have the right security in place. Having enough bandwidth and disk space, daily backups, state of the art firewall protection and a 99.9% uptime is the initial step in achieving e-commerce security. With the correct ecommerce solution, you can aim for heavy duty security with a 256 bit SSL encryption and PCI compliance.


What you need is a full service all-in-one hosting, design, and marketing software made specifically for e-commerce businesses. One that lets you set up your store in minutes, and provides powerful tools for not only secure ecommerce, but also SEO, product marketing and mobile commerce. Check out the best possible e-commerce solutions available at http://www.makeanonlinestore.com and try them out yourself absolutely free, no credit card required!