On the internet, no one is safe, it is a world where cyberattacks and malware threats can unexpectedly cause your site to crash, or worse, put your customers’ private information at risk, an insecure system can make or break a business.
It is in light of this, continuing with our e-commerce series where we touch on a highly requested topic and one which should be a top priority for your considering even before thinking of launching your e-commerce website.
Security in mind, now what?
Hacking or hackers on the web use a broad range of techniques and scripts to explore various forms of vulnerabilities on the web. Armed with some basic security knowledge, your next task is to select a reliable web hosting service. But how do you know which one to go for? Let us take the guesswork out of it for you.
First, go for one that uses encryption technology between the user and the server, or between the Web host server and your business server. This is because you want your communications to be encrypted, thus protecting your data from theft.
Choosing a Web Host
You can go with several ways and options, including the cheapest hosting or zero hostings, shared hosting, cloud hosting or WordPress Managed hosting.
In this article, we will look at some of the most popular types of hosts in order of security potential from highest to lowest and ease of implementation.
Virtual Private Servers (VPS)
At the top of our high-security list are, Virtual Private Servers(VPS) which basically are computers located somewhere that is connected to a network you have access to. With this option, you need to build the whole hosting environment by yourself. Bearing this in mind, it really depends on your own skills as to how secure this system can be.
Cloud Hosting Platforms
Cloud hosting such as Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure can be an easier way to launch your e-commerce website. Their platforms help you to automate the set-up process as well as help you to manage your servers more easily. They are similar to Managed Hosting, which we’ll cover next, but the advantage is that they are able to offer more than just WordPress.
They also have better options for security modifications than shared hosting (see the last option on our list), but if you don’t know what you are doing it is a good idea to find someone who does, or go for fully managed hosting.
Managed Hosting (WordPress)
Quite a number of host service providers offer WordPress hosting. Their focus is on one specific framework, and because they know the ins and outs of WordPress, they can implement a more secure system.
Some fully managed web hosting companies really excel at site security. For extra security, some platforms also offer backup plugins. It is still possible for sites to get hacked on managed hosting, but it’s definitely not as frequent or as serious as shared hosting.
Shared Hosting
This is a very popular choice due to the simplicity in getting up and running quickly. It also has the added bonus of being one of the cheaper options. That being said, keep in mind that you get what you pay for. With this option, all the domains or websites on a shared hosting environment share the resources. This means that when you’ve got heavy traffic coming your way, your site may run a lot slower than you need it to.
In terms of security, a frequent problem with this option is that the other websites using this service are not sufficiently isolated from each other, which can lead to every website getting compromised when just one of the sites gets hacked.
Final word
It is important to remember that hosting companies’ prime concern is hosting, and not security. Security is a whole other field, and highly specialized. We hope this article helps you decide which option would be best for your eCommerce website in 2022 and beyond