High-profile data breaches have been rising recently, making thousands of eCommerce customers vulnerable to fraud and phishing attacks.
With mobile devices accounting for over 73% of all eCommerce traffic, it is no doubt that its users equally face a higher possibility of fraud and other security threats.
Leakage of personal information and user credentials affects eCommerce users and impacts online retailers through chargebacks on fraudulent transactions.
This calls for utmost security protocols and strategies right from the initial stages of mobile eCommerce app development to maintaining secure online payments and user experience.
Below, we dive into the top 10 mobile eCommerce security tips you should use in 2023.
Create Strong Passwords
ECommerce business owners and mobile eCommerce customers must adhere to this basic security measure. A Google survey showed that about 52% of internet users set the same password across multiple websites, which can pose security threats.
The best thing to do is to generate unique passwords across all your logins. Keep in mind that a strong password consists of special characters, numbers, and lowercase and uppercase letters.
You can encourage your employees to generate strong tool passwords by leveraging a password manager. This will store your unique passwords in a secure place, eliminating the risk of forgetting or reusing the passwords.
Secure any Data You Store on User Devices
You should encrypt sensitive information before storing it, even when using a reputable platform. Also, eliminate unnecessary temporary files as soon as possible to minimize the chances of some tools in the app generating cache data by default. It will be best to avoid storing sensitive data in temporary files or other unsecured locations.
Consider using cryptography if you plan to provide users with end-to-end encryption on sensitive data. It will help ensure that third parties or hackers do not access the data to use it for suspicious or illegal purposes.
Perform Regular User Authentication
Mobile eCommerce customer purchases pose fraud and security risks as most stores or companies fail to authorize, authenticate, and verify user identities.
User authentification can help you very the identity of users attempting to access your website portal. Through that, you can hinder unauthorized users from gaining access to cause system damage, steal information, and cause other problems.
The National Cybersecurity Center of Excellence (NCCoE) suggests that eCommerce businesses should include multi-factor authentification based on contextual risk and web analytics. This will help lower false online identification and authentication fraud.
Another option is using biometric authentication as a convenient access method and a way of adding a security layer for confidential data.
Secure All Your Online Payments
Keeping all the payments secure and convenient takes a lot of effort. Your customers need secure payment methods to transact with your business using their mobile devices safely.
Many eCommerce business owners rely on third-party payment providers like PayPal, Apple Pay, and Google Pay to keep their transactions under control. While choosing payment providers, ensure they are certified with security standards that meet your business needs.
Another way to secure your payments is to sell on reputable eCommerce platforms and marketplaces like Etsy. Such platforms have set up robust eCommerce payment processing security. You can list your products anytime, attract customers, and seamlessly track payments.
Work With Reliable Analytics Tools and Ads SDKs
You can secure your mobile eCommerce app by choosing a reliable analytics tool or advertisement SDK. Before settling for any provider to work with, confirm if they have experienced cybersecurity problems recently, such as data leakage.
Besides, pay more attention to the company’s reputation and the kind of businesses that use the tool. As a final verification, bring cybersecurity experts to audit those ads and analytics tools.
Perform Regular Security Audits
Maintaining a secure mobile eCommerce application isn’t a one-time process. It instead requires regular execution of security audits to ensure the existing security measures are still effective at protecting your app from malicious viruses and cyber-attacks.
A security audit involves systematically evaluating your business’s networks, information systems, and physical infrastructure by a team of security professionals. You can then use the security audit report to learn about vulnerabilities in your mobile commerce app and how to improve.
Considering that new threats appear each day, a security audit can help you lower risks and costs as well as prove compliance.
Review Codes
Since coding happens manually and requires monotonous effort, programmers and even code editors can make errors. Those mobile commerce apps with error-free and well-reviewed codes tend to be the most secure and popular.
Some website vulnerabilities in regard to coding include database access, authentication, authorization, and cryptography. The best thing to do is to assign a few professionals to review your codes and make these areas of your mobile eCommerce applications hack-proof.
Consider Using Binary Protection
Cybercriminals always look for apps with weak areas for easy hacking and stealing of information. You can use binary protection on your mobile commerce app to prevent that from happening.
This protection mechanism blocks attackers from accessing your app’s security flaws and spoofing attacks. It reinforces the app against any attempt to intercept its data from a compiled source code. Your platform’s software development kit might have binary safety tools, which may not be enabled by default.
Leverage Transport Layer Security (TLS)
All new mobile commerce apps need TLS protocol as a security measure. Transport Layer Security is a cryptographic protocol developed to offer data and privacy integrity for all your internet communications.
This protocol generates end-to-end encryption that prevents hackers and eavesdroppers from reading your messages even when you share them via an unencrypted channel like a WiFi access point. With it, you can converse with your mobile commerce customers about products over the internet without worrying about information leakage.
Filter User Data
Most eCommerce businesses request users to feed in information or data before logging into the eCommerce app to use it. But without proper security measures, hackers can easily inject unwanted or harmful data for various illegal reasons, affecting your business and customers.
By authenticating and filtering user data, you can identify and eliminate malicious data taking control of user identities. It is also a perfect way to enable only authenticated users to sign in to the mobile eCommerce app and legitimately use it.
With all these actionable tips, you should now start putting up strategies to boost the security of your mobile commerce applications. Call experts to access your current security posture and let this information guide you to selecting the most suitable security measures for your eCommerce business.
