Achieving Complete E-commerce Security

Being able to provide customers with a secure ecommerce environment to make online transactions should be your number one priority as an ecommerce business owner. Without having the ability to protect online shoppers it's nearly impossible to have a thriving online store. The best way to gain a customer's trust is to provide them with safe web browsing and guarantee protection of personal and credit card data during checkout. Unless visitors to your site know that their confidential data will be protected, they will not make a purchase from you. There are several factors involved in e-commerce security, they include having secure hosting, having SSL encryption and becoming PCI compliant. For the highest level of protection, your e-commerce website must have all three.

E-commerce security begins with secure hosting. You must have an ecommerce hosting solution with enough 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 site. In addition you have to be sure to include a strong enough firewall to protect all of that data. Finally what 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 sites using their hosting are able to run smoothly. So before you start worrying about your customers' personal data you have to first insure that all the elements of your e-commerce website is working properly.

The next step in achieving e-commerce security is having SSL encryption. SSL stands for secure sockets layer and it is necessary for providing security over networks such as the internet. This encryption process provides coding and decoding of sensitive data on a secure channel to keep hackers away. Having SSL encryption enables your customers to share confidential information such as their mailing address, date of birth or credit card number without worrying about it being stolen. As of now all secure ecommerce 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 this level, you get double the amount of protection and the code is even harder to crack.

The final and probably the most important aspect 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 hopes to create better online payment security. Visa, MasterCard, American Express, JCB and Discover came together in 2006 to set a new standard for processing, storing and transmitting credit card information on the web. They ask that online merchants both big and small become PCI complaint so they can provide their customers the safest environment to carry out secure transactions. A number of people believe that being SSL certified is enough to counter fraudulent charges and credit card theft so there are still a large number of e-commerce solution providers and merchants that are still not PCI compliant. Even though you cannot be ordered by federal law to become compliant, many states are beginning to enforce this standard and cracking down on those who are not 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 sacrifice your ecommerce business, it's only wise to choose an ecommerce solution with PCI compliance.

Before you begin selling online, it's important to have the right security in place. Having sufficient bandwidth and disk space, daily backups, state of the art firewall protection and a 99.9% uptime is the initial step in achieving ecommerce security. With the right e-commerce solution, you can aim for even stronger security with a 256 bit SSL encryption and PCI compliance.

By: elogichick

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