Hacked for the Holidays? 4 Website Security Tips for Safe Retailing

With the holidays quickly approaching and online shopping expected to hit record highs, it’s the perfect time to make sure your customers, and your bottom line, aren’t at risk. In fact, shipping experts like FedEx, are predicting another record-breaking year of shipments driven by eCommerce purchases.

With the push for holiday shopping about to begin, we conducted a survey to take a closer look at trends in online shopping and how that relates to what we’re passionate about: website security.

Our survey revealed the importance of website security for online retailers both big and small as they prepare for the critical holiday shopping season. Most telling, two thirds of consumers surveyed will no longer shop at the site where their information was stolen, indicating a huge potential loss for retailers in the event of a breach. And nearly 20 percent of Americans do not plan to shop online this holiday season due to fears that their information will be stolen.

The fear of shopping online is not unfounded. In fact, recent data indicates that websites are attacked an average of 22 times per day. Even more alarming is the fact that eCommerce sites are 1.5 times more likely to be breached than sites that do not offer checkout. The need for security has never been greater, yet only six percent of websites report using any type of security measures.

So what’s an eCommerce retailer to do? Our experts suggest the following:

1. Clean house. Keep all systems you use for business malware and infection free by regularly scanning and updating software and apps.
2. Don’t store it if you don’t need it. Hackers cannot steal what you don’t have. Eliminate any private customer data that is not essentialto your business.
3. Reassure shoppers. When asked what the most important thing an online store can do to make them feel more confident, Baby Boomers, Gen Xers and Millennials alike said they want to know which security company protects the sites they shop on.
4. Instill confidence. A secure payment process and a recognized security logo also rated as top confidence boosters so be sure your eCommerce site is on a secure network. Look for HTTPS or SHTTP and the padlock symbol in your URL. If you use a security company or tool, display the logo.

To learn more follow @SiteLock on Twitter and check back for more tips throughout the holiday season.