How to secure your WooCommerce website

While online theft works a little differently from it does in brick-and-mortar stores, it’s still a risk. Therefore, if you’re setting up a WooCommerce website, security should be a top priority. 

Recent research found that out of 8,000 infected websites, more than 74 percent of them were built on WordPress (despite the fact that the platform only powers 35 percent of the internet). Because of this, WooCommerce e-commerce store owners and administrators need to be wary. 

Here’s a quick rundown of what you need to do to secure your WooCommerce store: 

Use Strong Passwords

Hackers and other online criminals will sometimes use what’s often called a “brute force attack.” This is where they try thousands of different password combinations in an attempt to get into your site’s admin panel and steal data. 

As you might imagine, this strategy is only possible for guessable passwords, such as “mybusiness123” or, worse still “pa55word.” However, if you have passwords comprising longer sequences, like “F5823hfhe49edFG,” such attacks are far less likely to succeed. Always go with the latter, not the former.

Update To The Latest WooCommerce Version As Soon As It Releases

WooCommerce developers are continually fixing vulnerabilities in their software. However, their approach is usually reactive. That is, they fix weaknesses once hackers identify and exploit them. 

Because of this, it’s critical to download and install any new updates as soon as they arrive. If you don’t, you may be leaving yourself vulnerable to exploits. 

For WordPress, the final version digit indicates the security patch version. Hence, for WordPress 4.3.1, the “1” refers to the first security update of the version following the initial release.

Secure Hosting Helps You Improve WooCommerce Security

Where you store your WooCommerce website can also affect security. Easily-hacked servers are a risk. 

Because of this, invest in finding the most secure hosting providers you can. Good options, such as Liquid Web, Bluehost, WP Engine, DreamHost, and SiteGround, always highlight their security prowess.

Quality hosting providers offer:

• SSL protection
• Unique IPs
• Solid uptime
• Generous storage
• Automated daily backup
• VPS and shared hosting
• Local development environments
• Money-back guarantees
• 24/7 support teams
• Low entry-level prices
• High performance plans
• Staging environments

Add Security Plugins

WordPress security plugins for WooCommerce are among the best ways to protect your site. However, you shouldn’t use more than one as it can lead to crashes and bugs.

Top recommended security plugins include: 

• Wordfence
• Sucuri Security
• iThemes Security
• MalCare Security Solution

Use SSL Certificates to Secure WooCommerce Store

Adding SSL Certificates to your WooCommerce store helps bolster the security of your account login and customer checkout pages. Ideally, you want every page on your site to have an SSL Certificate. If it doesn’t, then popular browsers will warn users with a red unlocked padlock. 

Limit Login Attempts

Lastly, you might want to limit login attempts to secure your WooCommerce store in a good way. Usually, legitimate users won’t enter incorrect passwords hundreds of times. More than ten indicates a possible hacking attempt.