All too often people install software applications such as Zen Cart, OsCommerce, WordPress or even Joomla and just expect it to stay working forever.

Unfortunately, with every software developer today comes their arch nemesis….HACKERS!

Nobody likes a hacker. They cause malicious damage, destory sites, data and even sometimes steal that data for their own further enjoyment.

With many of us running online businesses or e-commerce stores, customer security must always be our NUMBER 1 PRIORITY, especially considering many of us store private customer details and even credit card numbers.

No matter what type of business you are running, you should be taking customer security very seriously at all times.

As such, we have a few tips to ensure that you maintain maximum security of your site and software at all times.

  1. Have your hosting provider configure you with a dedicated IP address and add an SSL certificate. SSL certificates ensure that all data transmitted between you and your customer is encrypted and secure. It also prevents malicous users from intercepting transmitted data sent between your server and your customer.
  2. Change admin/root/superuser passwords regularly – All too often we see customers retaining the same passwords all the time, for a lifetime. This is not good security. You should be changing your passwords regular. Alteast every 30 days is ok
  3. Secure passwords a must! – All too often we hear “I have the same password for everything” This is probably one of the worst security issues known. What your basically doing by doing this is leaving the door open for anyone to destroy everything you’ve worked so hard to obtain. You should not be using the same passwords for everything and you should be using a different password for everything you log into. Sure, this means you have to remember a bucketload of passwords, but it’s much better than trying to remember all your customers and what each customers details were. It is also important to have a secure password that cannot be easily guessed or found in a dictionary.A password such as thisismypassword is obviously not secure, but a password such as th15iSnOtmyp45sw0Rd*# or Vat7ef#n is a secure password. If you are unsure about creating secure passwords, check out this free tool: http://www.pctools.com/guides/password/
  4. UPDATE UPDATE UPDATE! - Software developers are always finding ways to improve the security of their product, fixing security vulnerabilities and creating bug-fixes. No matter how much of a pain in the backside it might be for you to upgrade, it is important that you DO! No matter how long it takes you, remember, it’s an extra step to ensure your security is maintained and is worth much more than trying to recover from a crash, hack or bug. Don’t put them off!
  5. Backup Backup Backup! – Backing up your data on a regular basis is just as important as the data itself. If you don’t backup, you might as well drive at high speed down a busy highway drunk! Yes, a poor analergy, but you know it’s unsafe to do that, so why would you not protect/backup your data.

No matter how much you trust your software and hosting provider, the simple fact is, don’t trust your software. Sure, we’re not saying all software is bad; it’s not the software that’s bad, it’s the people around the world that cause/find/locate issues and utilise them to their advantage that are bad.

Do your bit and stop the bad guys before they stop you!! Secure your site today!