WooCommerce Security: 5 Steps to take to secure your store

If you are an eCommerce store owner then its security must be your topmost priority to fully protect it against today’s wide range of cyberattacks.

If your store gets compromised, you are not only responsible for your personal files and hard work but you are also responsible for the personal details of your customers by secure WooCommerce store. The last thing you want is to be responsible for a data breach that exposes sensitive details of your customers publically.

WooCommerce is a simple yet powerful and extendable eCommerce platform for WordPress. It uses the basic operating system of WordPress and turns it into an eCommerce store. It’s one of the most common ways to turn a WordPress website into an eCommerce store.

An SSL certificate is crucial for encrypting sensitive information such as credit card details and personal data, and it also helps improve search engine rankings.

Additionally, choosing a secure hosting provider that implements comprehensive security measures is essential for protecting your WooCommerce store. In this article, we will walk you through some steps to secure the WooCommerce Store.

Why You Should Secure Your WooCommerce Store

It’s probably no surprise that you should protect your WooCommerce store. But let’s take a look at a few reasons why security should be a top priority:

Protect Your Hard Work: You’ve invested much into your store’s design, functionality, and content. A security breach could lead to lost time, money, and peace of mind. Recovering from a hack may be difficult and time-consuming without proper protection and backups.

Keep Customer Information Safe: Running an e-commerce business means handling sensitive customer data like addresses, phone numbers, and credit card details. Your buyers trust you to safeguard this information and prevent it from falling into the wrong hands.

Avoid Legal and Financial Issues: If customer data is compromised, you may face legal and financial problems. Resolving these can be both costly and stressful, making WooCommerce security an essential part of your business.

Maintain Brand Reputation: A compromised or inaccessible website can damage the trust you’ve worked hard to build with customers. Keeping your site secure helps maintain your brand’s reputation and customer loyalty.

Protect Your Search Engine Rankings: A security breach can harm your SEO rankings. Search engines are less likely to send users to a compromised site, which could lead to a drop in organic traffic and visibility. Quick recovery is essential to maintaining your SEO position.

In summary, WooCommerce security is crucial not only to protect your store and customers but also to avoid long-term damage to your business — this isn’t the place for shortcuts.

Understanding WooCommerce Security

WooCommerce security is a critical aspect of maintaining a successful online store. As a popular e-commerce plugin for WordPress, WooCommerce handles sensitive customer data, including personal and financial information. Ensuring the security of this data is essential to protect your customers’ trust and prevent financial losses.

WooCommerce security involves implementing various measures to prevent unauthorized access, data breaches, and other security threats. By understanding the importance of WooCommerce security, you can take proactive steps to protect your online store and maintain a secure shopping experience for your customers.

Common Security Threats

WooCommerce stores are vulnerable to various security threats, including hacking, data breaches, and malware attacks. These threats can result in financial losses, damage to reputation, and loss of customer trust. Common security threats to WooCommerce stores include:

• Brute force attacks: These involve using automated tools to guess login credentials, potentially gaining unauthorized access to your store.

• SQL injections: Malicious actors exploit vulnerabilities in web applications to manipulate databases, potentially accessing sensitive data.

• Cross-site scripting (XSS): This involves injecting malicious scripts into web pages to steal sensitive data from users.

• Malware attacks: These involve using malicious software to compromise a website, potentially leading to data theft or site defacement.

Understanding these threats is the first step in implementing effective security measures to protect your WooCommerce store.

5 of the best WooCommerce security practices to adopt for your store

Although the in-built security features of WordPress and WooCommerce can take care of small-scale attacks. There are some basic security practices that a website owner must perform to add extra layers of security to your WooCommerce store.

Common Security Threats

• Brute Force Attacks: Brute force attacks are cybersecurity threats where attackers attempt to gain unauthorized access to systems, networks, or accounts by exhaustively trying every possible combination of usernames and passwords. This method leverages weak passwords, resulting in potential data breaches and significant damage.

Related blog – WordPress Security Checklist: Keeping your Website Safe

1. Try choosing a secure hosting provider

A poor choice of host can put you and your customer’s data at risk. They are the first layer of defense against cyber attacks.

Try to choose a secure hosting provider that implements comprehensive security measures, such as application & server-level security, and provides transparency about their security protocols to ensure the safety of your store.

Before choosing the host, make sure it has the following features:

• Monitoring and prevention of attacks

• Proactive reviews and security patches

• Updated software

• Ability to isolate and prevent malware infection

2. Create strong passwords and store them safely

Almost all security guides available in the market focus on creating strong passwords and securing user accounts safely. Hence, the next step after choosing a reliable host is to choose a strong password for your WooCommerce store. Crucial features to follow in order to secure your user accounts are:

• Try choosing a different password than your other accounts

• Mix alphabets (lower or upper case), numbers, and special characters.

• Avoid dictionary words, birthdays, anniversaries, pet names, etc; as your password.

• Make your password strong by prioritizing length.

3. Enable two-factor authentication

A strong password might not be enough to secure your WooCommerce store. If anyone is in possession of your email, it will be easier for him/her to gather information in order to reset your store’s password.

Two-factor authentication (2FA), is a part of multi-factor authentication that adds an extra layer of security to the login page of your WooCommerce store.

In normal circumstances, the person who has access to your email account will eventually be able to gain access to your login information. But with the help of 2FA, you can dodge the hacking attempts.

If you are looking for a two-factor authenticator, you can try Google Authenticator, it is a free plugin available for both Android and iOS devices.

4. Limiting brute force attacks on login attempts

Sometimes, even two-factor authentication is not enough to thwart the brute-force attempts of hackers. Limiting login attempts from a particular IP address is a simple way to keep them out.

Using security plugins like Wordfence and Jetpack Security can add layers of protection, including firewalls and login monitoring, to safeguard your WooCommerce store.

You can use Jetpack Protect to limit the number of times an IP address can make unsuccessful attempts to your WooCommerce store. If they exceed a specified number, their IP will be blocked for the required period of time (of your choosing).

You can also whitelist an IP address with the help of Jetpack, in case of forgotten and mistyped passwords.

5. Use a web application firewall from a trusted source

Checking and blocking every incoming malicious request is practically hard, if not for an automated tool. Web application firewalls can automate this for you.

Moreover, you can always rely on a rock-solid firewall from a trusted source to protect your website and maintain your site’s security. A firewall will protect your store from all forms of attacks such as XSS, SQLi, CSRF, spam, fraud, credit card hacks, and so on.

A good choice for a firewall is the Astra firewall for WooCommerce. Astra Security is your one-stop security solution for weeding out any malicious query and ensuring strengthened security all the way.

Keep Your Site Software Up-to-Date

Keeping your site software up-to-date is essential for maintaining WooCommerce security. This includes updating WordPress, WooCommerce, and plugins to the latest versions.

Updates often fix vulnerabilities and improve site security. Failing to update your site software can leave your store vulnerable to security threats. To keep your site software up-to-date:

• Enable automatic updates for WordPress and WooCommerce to ensure you are always running the latest versions.

• Regularly review and update plugins to the latest versions to benefit from security patches and new features.

• Use a staging site to test updates before applying them to your live site, ensuring compatibility and preventing potential issues.

By keeping your site software up-to-date, you can significantly reduce the risk of security breaches and maintain a secure WooCommerce store.

Regularly Back Up Your WooCommerce Store

Regular backups are crucial for maintaining WooCommerce security. Backups ensure that valuable data can be restored in case of a security breach or data loss. To regularly back up your WooCommerce store:

• Use a daily backup service to minimize the impact of security breaches and ensure you always have a recent copy of your data.

• Store backups securely, such as in a cloud storage service, to protect them from unauthorized access and physical damage.

• Test backups regularly to ensure they can be restored successfully, giving you peace of mind that your data is safe.

By regularly backing up your WooCommerce store, you can quickly recover from security incidents and maintain the integrity of your online business.

Recovering from a Security Breach

Recovering from a security breach requires prompt action to minimize damage and prevent further attacks. To recover from a security breach:

• Contact your hosting provider and report the breach. They can assist in identifying the source and mitigating the impact.

• Change all passwords and update plugins to ensure that any compromised credentials are no longer valid.

• Use a security plugin to scan for malware and vulnerabilities, helping to identify and remove any malicious code.

• Restore backups to a clean version of your site, ensuring that any compromised data is replaced with a secure copy.

• Implement additional security measures to prevent future breaches, such as enabling two-factor authentication and using a web application firewall.

By following these steps, you can recover from a security breach and maintain a secure shopping experience for your customers.

What’s the Best WooCommerce Security Plugin?

A high-quality WooCommerce security plugin is the best way to start securing your site. Selecting the right security tools for your WooCommerce store is crucial to defending against cyber threats. With various options available, here are some top security plugins based on your specific needs and preferences:

1. Jetpack

Jetpack is a multifunctional WordPress plugin developed by Automattic, the company behind WordPress.com. In addition to offering analytics and performance features, Jetpack provides robust security measures to protect your WooCommerce site from threats and vulnerabilities.

Key Features:

• Security Scanning: Monitors threats and vulnerabilities, offering malware protection.
• Brute Force Protection: Limits login attempts and adds enhanced login security to prevent brute force attacks.
• Downtime Notifications: Alerts you when your website experiences downtime, helping maintain availability.
• Anti-Spam Filtering: Automatically blocks spam comments, reducing the risk of malicious activity.

2. Sucuri

Sucuri is a cloud-based security solution that offers a Web Application Firewall (WAF) to protect your WooCommerce store from hacking attempts and Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks. This plugin actively monitors for vulnerabilities, malware, and blacklists, providing comprehensive security alerts.

Key Features:

• Security Scanner: Detects malware and site vulnerabilities.
• Malware Removal: Automatically cleans and restores your site if infected.
• Blacklist Monitoring: Alerts you if your website is blacklisted by search engines or other services.
• IP Access Control: Strengthens security by allowing you to whitelist or blacklist specific IPs.

3. WooCommerce Fraud Prevention

The WooCommerce Fraud Prevention plugin is a one-stop solution designed to protect your store from fraudulent transactions. It enables you to detect and block suspicious users based on customizable parameters, giving you flexibility in managing your store’s security.

Key Features:

• Block Suspicious Users: Blocks users based on their IP address, zip code, state, country, email address, and more.
• Fraud Score Check: Customize fraud scoring rules to assess and prevent fraudulent transactions.
• Bulk Upload Blacklist: Easily upload blacklisted user details in bulk to streamline security efforts.

By selecting one or more of these WooCommerce security plugins, you can automate many essential security tasks and protect your store from cyberattacks and fraudulent transactions.

Conclusion

Maintaining and securing a successful WooCommerce store can be a difficult task if you don’t know where to start. By following the above security guide you can strengthen the defense system of your WooCommerce store.

If nothing works you can always take the help of a security solution to audit your store regularly. A complete security audit will generate a comprehensive report of the vulnerabilities and security loopholes of your WooCommerce store.