Providing customers with a secure ecommerce environment to make online transactions 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 only 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 store know that their confidential data will be protected, they will not likely buy from you. There are a number of factors that go into e-commerce security, they include having secure hosting, obtaining SSL encryption and being PCI compliant. For the best possible level of protection, your e-commerce website must have all three.
E-commerce security begins with secure hosting. You must have an e-commerce hosting solution with enough bandwidth and disk space to not only withstand large amounts of traffic, but also have the ability to hold limitless products and information on your site. Next you have to be sure to include a strong enough firewall to protect all of that information. Finally what you should look at is the percentage of uptime the web host provider can guarantee. There are some that claim to have up to 99.9% uptime, which refers to the amount of time web sites using their hosting are able to work properly. Therefore before you begin worrying about your customers' personal data you have to first insure that all the elements of your online store is working effectively.
The next step in achieving e-commerce security is having SSL encryption. SSL is short 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 information such as their mailing address, date of birth or credit card number without worrying about it being stolen. Currently all secure ecommerce websites should have a 128 bit encryption, because that level of encryption is the industry standard for processing payments. However some e-commerce solution providers are offering 256 bit SSL encryption. At this level, you get double the amount of protection and the code is even harder to crack.
The last and probably the most important part of having e-commerce security is PCI compliance. PCI is short for payment card industry, it's an independent body formed by the top credit card companies in hopes to create better online payment security. Visa, MasterCard, American Express, JCB and Discover came together in 2006 to create this new standard for processing, storing and transmitting credit card information on the web. They require that merchants both big and small become PCI complaint so they can provide their customers the safest environment to complete secure transactions. Many people believe that becoming SSL certified is enough to counter fraudulent charges and credit card theft so there remains a large number of e-commerce 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 punishing those who are not yet compliant. For those unlucky 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 ruin your online business, you must choose an ecommerce solution with PCI compliance.
Before you begin selling online, it is important to have the correct security in place. Having enough bandwidth and disk space, daily backups, state of the art firewall protection and a 99.9% uptime is the first step in achieving
ecommerce security. With the correct ecommerce solution, you can aim for even stronger security with a 256 bit SSL encryption and PCI compliance.
