How to secure your WooCommerce online shop?

WordPress is the ultimate option you can go with if you want to create your eCommerce store. Many of you might have seen the same thing and then created an eCommerce website with WooCommerce.

However, it’s also important to secure your website. As you are running an eCommerce store, it becomes a need to secure your WooCmmerce online shop. Even a slight mistake might cause you big harm. As money is involved along with customer’s data, it becomes an important part to solve all these problems.

Updates will Help a Lot

The first and easiest thing you can do to keep your WooComemrce store updated. Here, we don’t mean to update your WooCommerce. Instead, you will have to make sure that you update all the things on your website. This starts with the WordPress version. If you have not updated WordPress or you are not keeping WordPress update. You will have to update the version of the update whenever you see one.

The same thing applies to all the other stuff such as WordPress plugins, themes, etc. If you keep all of them updated, you will have a secure environment where you can manage your eCommerce website.

Let’s talk about the necessity of updates. New security flaws are coming in WordPress almost every single day. This could be in the plugins, themes, or it could be in the main version of WordPress. When the team comes to know about the vulnerability, they will update the script and give you as a form of an update. In this way, you will be out from the security vulnerabilities. This is the easiest way you can stay updated with the security and keep your website safe and secure.

Now, you can also set automatic updates. WordPress allows you to automatically use the updates. In simpler words, the updates will be automatically installed even when you are not using the website. So, this is will keep your website safe even if you are not using it.

SSL and Hosting

When it comes to security, you will have to make sure that you are using the best and reliable hosting provider. Choosing the right hosting provider is an important task.

We will begin with hosting and then we will head over to the SSL. At first, hosting is important because the security will depend on the server you choose to go with. Some of the attacks are carried out from the server vulnerabilities. In such a case, there are very few things you can do. Therefore, you will have to make sure that you are using good hosting.

If you go with the reputed hosting, there will be no such issues. All the reputed hosting comes with advanced security. You can see more details about it on the features page of any hosting you plan to go with. When you visit the features page, you will see all the security features as well. You will have t make sure that there are all the security features are provided here. If not, you can surely consider a different hosting.

Talking about the hosting, most of the hosting providers offer free SSL. Using the free SSL, you will get better security. It prevents most of the attacks and will secure your data. That’s one of the reasons why you will need to have SSL installed on your website. Not just for the security of the website, SSL will also help you in ranking your website better. Google has made it pretty clear that they will rank the website with an SSL certificate. So, this is the most important thing to keep in mind.

Security Plugin

Well, you should surely have a security plugin installed on your website. No matter what type of website you are working on whether it’s a WooComemrce store or something else but you should surely have a security plugin installed.

Now, depending on the size of your store, you might want to get the premium version of the plugin. If you have a huge store with decent earnings, you can surely go with the premium plugin. Whereas, if you have a small store, you can surely use the free version which is enough in most cases.

You can use any of the below security plugins.

• WordFence
• Sucuri
• ITheme Security

All of them have a free version as well as the paid version. The security plugin will add a firewall to your website to ensure that everything is safe. The firewall will filter out the bot traffic directly. A firewall is not the only feature you will get. Along with the firewall, there is a scanner. The scanner will scan the website and will allow you to point out all the security vulnerabilities. You can surely fix all the vulnerabilities when you use the plugin.

So, make sure you are using the plugin to ensure that all the plugins and themes are safe on your website. One more thing that you need to keep in mind is that never use more than one security plugin. If you use more than one security plugin, you will end up crashing the website. In most cases, two security plugins won’t go along with each other. This will create some issues on your website. So, it’s better to use only one plugin. You can surely test out the plugins one by one. You can install one plugin at first and explore that particular plugin.

Strong Passwords

This is the most common tip that all the people will be giving you. However, we will add something more here.

At first, you will have to create a strong password for your WordPress admin panel. Once you do it, you have successfully managed to get into your first task. Thereafter, you will have to make sure that the hosting password you are using is secure. Some people might get into your cPanel if you don’t have a secure password.

One might argue saying that they won’t get the username of the cPanel. Let me clarify. Even if you have a single error on your website, some errors might show the username. Therefore, it’s important to ensure that all things are safe and secure. In this way, you will end up with no loss.

Of course, you will have to keep hard to guess your username. Don’t just keep “admin” as the username.

Further, you will also have to create strong passwords for the customers. Well, you won’t have to create them but you will have to put the restrictions. So, in this way, the customers will create strong passwords. Luckily, WooCommerce gives the functionality to create the same thing. So, you can surely set the restrictions with just a few clicks. If you set enough restrictions for the customers, their accounts will be secure and safe. This will help you keep your website safe.

Daily Backup

For an eCommerce website, we highly recommend you to have daily backups. Backups are great as it helps you to get back your original website with just a few clicks. You will have to create daily backups of your website. On an eCommerce website, you will never know when you will get the sale and when you will change the price of the product. Therefore, you need to ensure that you are taking regular backups. If you take regular backups, you can restore them anytime.

Most of the hosting companies offer automated daily backups. So, if your hosting provider is offering the same, you will have to enable it. Don’t just take the weekly backups. If you take the weekly backups, chances are that you will lose a lot of data in case you might want to restore your backup. You might not be updating the product but you will lose customer data. Sometimes, you might not have problems with the backup but the customer might be facing the issue.

Therefore, you should take regular backups. Even if your hosting provider doesn’t provide a similar service, you can do it by yourself. You can easily take daily backups with the help of the plugin. Some of them are premium whereas some of them are free. So, you can choose the one that is most suitable for you. In this way, you can have daily backups.

You can also take the daily backups in your cloud server. Plugins like Updraft plus will allow you to send the backup to the cloud service for free. In this way, you can be stress-free.

Limit Login Attempts

You can always limit the number of tries one can try the wrong password. If you visit any bank’s website, you might be knowing that there is a limitation of the failed attempts. You can set the same thing for your website. You can use plugins like Loginizer to do the same.

For example, if someone writes the wrong password, they will have to enter it again. If they exceed a couple of times, their IP will be blocked for a couple of hours. Thereafter, if they continue to do so, you can extend the ban. In this way, your website will be secure from hackers,

This type of security is generally used to prevent brute force attacks. Brute force attacks are attacks where the hacker will use a script to try out different combinations of the password. This will cause some serious damage to your website. So, the login limits will prevent this from happening. You can surely choose the number of times they can try the password. Thereafter, you can also choose the number of hours you want to bank the IP. In simpler words, you have the control.

Login Page URL

You can surely change the login page URL. The login page URL is the wp-admin URL. If you have a good running website, you might want to remove this. If you remove this, you can easily change the URL of the login page. If you change the URL, you are good to go. No one can now try to hack your website.

Therefore, if you have a decent website with a decent amount of sales, you should surely change the URL of the admin page. However, if you have a new website, you can keep it as it is.

Monitoring

The last and the most important thing to keep your website secure is to do the monitoring of the website. Security is not a one-time process where you just need to do. Instead, it’s a long-term process. You will have to keep a constant eye on your website. You can surely use the tools and plugins to secure your website. Other than this, you will have to keep an eye on the notifications.

If a security plugin shows you some notifications, you will have to make sure that you take the step to fix the error. For example, if a plugin is misbehaving which is causing issues in your website, you will have to keep in mind that thing and work accordingly.

You can also get the security services that will monitor your website and keep you in the loop with it. This is surely up to you. You can choose to go with any of the things. For small websites, we would recommend handling security yourself and once you have enough revenue, you can surely hire a company who can maintain all the things for you.

Final Words

To conclude, these are some of the security tips to keep in mind. If you follow all the tips, you will surely keep your website secure and safe. You can surely explore more security options depending on the type of the website and according to your needs. You can also hide your WordPress version and hide the fact that you are using WordPress. There are various plugins available to do all these tasks. So, you can surely try all of them and see if it’s working for you or not. Lastly, you still have the option to hire a company and have peace of mind.