A few months ago I conducted an audit for a company in the fashion e-commerce sector. The owner was convinced his store was secure — he had SSL, an up-to-date WooCommerce installation, and payments handled through an external provider. After three days of work by our team, it turned out that a malicious JavaScript snippet hidden in an outdated product review plugin had been intercepting customers’ card data at every checkout for seven months. The store had no idea. Customers had no idea. Only an anomaly analysis in the server logs and unusual outbound network traffic pointed to the problem.
This is not an exceptional story. E-commerce platforms are one of the most heavily attacked segments in cyberspace — they combine payment data, personal data, and direct access to money, all in one place. In this article I have compiled knowledge from several dozen audits and security projects for online stores of various scales — from small boutique platforms to B2B platforms with multi-million turnover. I want to show you what the threat really looks like and how to address it systematically.
Why are e-commerce platforms an attractive target for cybercriminals?
An online store is, from a cybercriminal’s perspective, an ideal combination: high-value financial data, large databases of personal information, and typically weaker security than in the banking sector. It is no coincidence that attacks on e-commerce are constantly growing — technology, motivation, and a lack of security controls create a perfect storm.
Direct access to payment data is the primary motivation. The moment a customer types a card number into a checkout form, that data has market value — on darkweb forums, full card data (known as “fullz”) costs anywhere from a few to several dozen dollars per record, depending on the credit limit and country. A store with a few thousand transactions per month is, for an attacker, a ready-made wallet.
Alongside card data, e-commerce platforms collect extensive customer profiles: first name, last name, home address, phone number, purchase history, and preferences. This data has value in its own right — it is raw material for phishing attacks, identity theft, and personalised fraud. A single customer database leak can fuel hundreds of subsequent fraud campaigns.
The technical complexity of modern e-commerce platforms also matters. A typical store built on WooCommerce or Magento uses dozens of plugins and integrations: a payment gateway, a courier system, email marketing tools, live chats, loyalty programmes, and analytics trackers. Each of these integrations is a potential attack vector — especially when it comes from a smaller vendor who does not pay sufficient attention to the security of their code.
Key takeaway: E-commerce platforms are attacked not because they are particularly vulnerable from a technical standpoint, but because they combine three elements: high-value financial data, large databases of personal information, and complex technology ecosystems that are difficult to keep in a fully secure state.
It is also worth remembering the financial consequences of incidents for store operators themselves. In addition to regulatory fines (GDPR, PCI DSS), a security breach generates direct costs: chargeback handling, customer notifications, legal and forensic expenses. Reputational losses are harder to quantify but are often more damaging — market research consistently shows that customers who have had their data stolen from a specific store very rarely return to it.
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What are the most common attack vectors against online stores?
During e-commerce audits we encounter a relatively consistent set of threats. The scale and consequences vary, but the attack vectors are well known — which at the same time means that well-proven defence methods exist.
Web application attacks (OWASP Top 10) form the broadest category. SQL Injection in product search parameters makes it possible to extract the entire customer database. Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) allows malicious code to be injected into pages displayed to other users, including administrators. Broken Access Control — one of the most frequent flaws — allows access to orders and data belonging to other customers through simple manipulation of identifiers in the URL.
Magecart attacks (e-skimming) are a vector specific to e-commerce and particularly dangerous. The attacker injects malicious JavaScript into the payment page — typically via a vulnerable plugin or a compromised third-party library — which intercepts card data in real time, directly from the form, before it reaches the payment gateway. From the customer’s perspective, the transaction proceeds normally. From the store owner’s perspective — likewise. The malicious script can operate for months without detection.
Account Takeover (ATO) most commonly occurs through credential stuffing — the automated testing of login/password pairs from publicly available data leaks. Because a significant proportion of users reuse the same passwords across multiple services, even a well-secured store can become a collateral victim of a leak from another platform.
Software supply chain attacks are gaining in significance. An infected npm package, a compromised WordPress plugin, or a malicious update to an external library can introduce a backdoor into tens of thousands of stores simultaneously. This vector is particularly insidious because the attack does not originate from the platform itself, but from a trusted source — a code repository or a component vendor.
DDoS attacks are more operational in nature: the goal is to paralyse the store rather than steal data. For e-commerce, every hour of unavailability is a measurable loss — especially during high-traffic periods such as Black Friday or the holiday season. DDoS attacks are sometimes also used as a smokescreen for a deeper intrusion, diverting the attention of the IT team from the actual breach.
The most common mistake in e-commerce: Focusing exclusively on securing the server and infrastructure while ignoring client-side security (JavaScript, third-party scripts). This is precisely where most breaches occur in 2025 and 2026.
Beyond the above, in every e-commerce audit we encounter business logic vulnerabilities: price manipulation in HTTP requests, multiple uses of single-use discount codes through race conditions, negative product quantities leading to negative amounts payable. These bugs are not related to typical technical vulnerabilities — they stem from insufficient server-side validation of purchasing logic.
How to secure online payments — PCI DSS, 3D Secure, tokenisation?
Payment security is at the heart of e-commerce security. This is where the greatest risk is concentrated and where the strictest industry regulations apply.
PCI DSS (Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard) is a mandatory standard for every organisation that processes, stores, or transmits payment card data. This obligation also applies to stores that use external payment gateways — as long as any interaction with card data occurs on their pages or infrastructure. PCI DSS v4.0, published by the PCI Security Standards Council, introduces significant changes for e-commerce: the direct requirement to manage JavaScript scripts on payment pages (requirements 6.4.3 and 11.6.1) is a direct response to the epidemic of Magecart attacks.
PCI DSS defines 12 requirements grouped into 6 objectives: building and maintaining a secure network, protecting cardholder data, managing vulnerabilities, implementing strong access controls, monitoring networks and systems, and maintaining an information security policy. For a small store that exclusively uses a hosted payment gateway (iframe or redirect), the requirements reduce to SAQ A — the lightest self-assessment questionnaire. Stores with their own checkout page must meet the requirements of SAQ A-EP or SAQ D, which means a significantly broader scope of controls.
Tokenisation is one of the most effective risk reduction techniques. It involves replacing the actual card data (PAN — Primary Account Number) with a unique, one-time token. Even if an attacker gains access to the order database or the store’s cache, stolen tokens are useless outside the context of the original transaction. Tokenisation is offered by all leading payment gateways — PayU, Stripe, Adyen, Przelewy24.
3D Secure 2.x (implemented as Visa Secure, Mastercard Identity Check) is an additional authentication protocol for card transactions. In version 2.x it is significantly less disruptive to the user than the previous version — it dynamically assesses the risk of a transaction and requires additional confirmation only when the transaction profile is suspicious. From a financial liability perspective, implementing 3DS2 shifts the burden of chargeback liability for fraud from the merchant to the card issuer.
Important rule: Never store full card data (PAN, CVV, expiry date) on your own servers — even temporarily. If your store’s architecture has ever touched card data, commission a PCI DSS audit. The fine for non-compliance and a payment data breach starts at several tens of thousands of euros and grows with every month the problem remains unresolved.
Beyond PCI DSS and 3DS2, proper management of connections to payment gateways is essential: verifying cryptographic signatures of webhooks (callback validation), protection against replay attacks, TLS 1.2+ encryption on all payment API connections, and IP restriction on access to merchant API keys. Each of these elements has featured in our findings in real-world projects.
How to protect customer data in an online store in accordance with GDPR?
GDPR (the General Data Protection Regulation) imposes specific obligations on online store operators, the non-fulfilment of which creates risk both from administrative sanctions (up to 4% of global turnover or €20 million) and civil liability towards affected customers.
The first principle is data minimisation. The store should collect only the personal data that is necessary for processing the order and managing the customer relationship. In practice, this means reviewing every registration and order form for questions whose answers are not actually needed. Collecting a date of birth “just in case” or a national identification number without a legal basis is a ready-made problem during an inspection by the data protection authority.
Also critical is data retention management. Customer data cannot be stored forever — the store must have a retention policy that specifies how long personal data is held and when it is deleted or anonymised. Transaction data is typically retained for 5–7 years for tax and accounting purposes, but marketing data, purchase preference profiles, and data from abandoned carts have different justifications and different retention periods.
The right to erasure (“the right to be forgotten”) in e-commerce is technically particularly complex. A customer may request the deletion of their account and personal data. The store must be technically capable of fulfilling this — which requires that personal data is not “spread” across dozens of tables without a clear map of where it is stored. During audits we regularly discover stores that cannot fulfil such a request within a reasonable time because a customer’s data is duplicated across the order database, the reviews table, the login history, the newsletter table, and an external marketing automation system.
Audit insight: In e-commerce, GDPR is not just a privacy policy on the website — it is a set of technical requirements for the database architecture, consent management system, and procedural mechanisms for handling data subject requests. The most common compliance gap is the inability to technically fulfil a data deletion request within 30 days.
Marketing consent management requires particular attention. The store must be able to prove when and how a specific customer gave consent to marketing communications — overly general checkboxes such as “I accept the terms and conditions and privacy policy” do not meet the requirement of freely given, specific, and unambiguous consent to marketing. The consent registration system should log: date, time, IP address, the content of the form at the moment of consent, and the session identifier.
Technical security of personal data, required by Article 32 of GDPR, covers the encryption of personal data both in transit (TLS) and at rest (at-rest encryption for databases and backups), pseudonymisation where possible, access control based on the need-to-know principle, and regular security testing. This GDPR requirement and the PCI DSS requirements overlap considerably here.
What vulnerabilities are most commonly revealed by penetration testing of e-commerce platforms?
During e-commerce pentests we work with a specific methodology — we begin by mapping all platform functions and then systematically test each one for both technical vulnerabilities and business logic flaws. Below I have compiled the most common findings from projects carried out by the nFlo team.
Insecure Direct Object Reference (IDOR) in orders and customer profiles is the most widespread class of vulnerability. An attacker changes an order number in the URL from orders/10253 to orders/10252 and gains full access to another customer’s order — delivery address, contact details, products ordered. In platforms based on custom development it appears in every second project.
Client-side price manipulation is possible when a store accepts the price from the HTTP request rather than calculating it server-side based on the current price list. The tester intercepts the POST request when finalising an order, changes the price value from 149.00 to 1.00, and confirms the payment. This sounds absurd — yet this bug appears particularly often in older custom implementations and in stores that have undergone a rapid migration between platforms.
Vulnerabilities in the password reset process — improperly secured reset tokens, missing expiry for activation links, the ability to enumerate user accounts through differences in system responses (“account exists” vs “we could not find the provided address”). Each of these elements can lead to Account Takeover.
XSS in user-generated content — product reviews, address fields, company names in B2B orders. Particularly dangerous is stored XSS in the admin panel: an attacker places a malicious script in the ordering company’s name, and when an administrator views the order, they trigger the attack in their own browser, handing the attacker a session with full administrative privileges.
Payment callback validation errors — a missing cryptographic signature check on webhooks from the payment gateway. An attacker can send a forged callback reporting a successful payment without actually paying anything. This bug is rarer than the others, but the financial consequences are direct and immediate.
Statistics from nFlo projects: In over 70% of e-commerce platform pentests we found at least one vulnerability of critical or high risk level that could lead to customer data theft or financial fraud. In no project were there zero vulnerabilities.
Race conditions when using promotions are a category of business logic bugs. A single-use discount code that can be used multiple times if two requests reach the server simultaneously — before the system has time to mark the code as used. The tester sends two identical requests milliseconds apart. In a poorly implemented system, both go through.
How to secure Magento, WooCommerce, and Shopify — platform-specific considerations?
Each of the dominant e-commerce platforms has its own security characteristics, different risk vectors, and different hardening checklist priorities. Knowledge of platform-specific characteristics is essential for effective security management.
Magento (Adobe Commerce) is the platform with the largest attack surface and historically the highest number of critical vulnerabilities. Attacks on Magento (the notorious Magecart campaigns) were for years the most high-profile incidents in e-commerce. Key areas for securing Magento: regular security updates (Magento publishes patches as part of Security Patch Day — deployment should occur within 72 hours of publication), protection of the /admin path (a non-default admin panel URL, IP blocking, or VPN requirement), disabling developer mode in production, correct file system permissions (particularly the var/, pub/media/, and app/etc/ directories), and file integrity monitoring — detecting unauthorised modifications to core files.
WooCommerce as a WordPress plugin inherits all the vulnerabilities of the base platform — and WordPress is the most frequently attacked CMS platform in the world. WooCommerce security is above all about plugin management discipline: every installed plugin extends the attack surface, many e-commerce plugins do not have a dedicated security team and can become abandonware. The rules: minimise the number of plugins, automate security updates (WordPress offers automatic security updates for plugins), do not use themes from external, unverified sources, monitor the plugin repository for vulnerability notifications (Wordfence Intelligence, Patchstack). Require strong passwords and MFA for wp-admin accounts, limit login attempts, and change the default panel URL.
Shopify as a SaaS platform takes over from merchants responsibility for infrastructure and most server-side threats — but not all of them. Shopify stores are exposed to: attacks on theme apps (applications installed in the store with access to the front-end JavaScript), phishing and account takeover of Shopify administrator accounts, vulnerabilities in custom Liquid code and theme sections, and errors in app permission configuration (overprivileged apps with access to customer data). The key recommendations: require MFA for all accounts in the Shopify organisation, regularly audit installed applications for the permissions they require (every application with access to customer data is a potential leak point), and monitor the Content Security Policy on store pages.
A principle common to all platforms: Securing the platform itself is not enough — you must secure the entire ecosystem: external analytics scripts, chatbots, advertising pixel trackers. Every third-party JavaScript loaded onto your checkout pages has access to the data your customers type in. Use Subresource Integrity (SRI) and a Content Security Policy (CSP).
Regardless of platform, three elements are critical for all of them: a Web Application Firewall (WAF) protecting against the OWASP Top 10, file integrity monitoring detecting unauthorised modifications, and regular penetration testing — not only after deployment, but also after every major change to the application.
How to detect fraud and bots on an e-commerce platform?
E-commerce fraud and automated bot attacks are two interrelated problems with direct financial consequences for store operators. Chargebacks from fraudulent transactions cost the e-commerce industry billions annually, and bots disrupt availability, inflate infrastructure costs, and capture stock.
Transaction fraud detection requires a multi-layered approach. The basic layer consists of deterministic rules: blocking transactions from IP addresses known for fraud (using up-to-date IP reputation lists), flagging orders with a delivery address different from the card’s billing address (especially when the country differs), and daily transaction limits for new accounts. The higher layer is behavioural analysis: detecting anomalies in time spent on the checkout page (proceeding through forms too quickly suggests automation), analysing browser fingerprints, and detecting sessions from proxies or Tor.
Machine learning is increasingly widely used in anti-fraud systems for e-commerce: models classifying transactions based on dozens of features — a customer’s purchase history, typical order values, geolocation/delivery address pairs, device, and browser. Systems such as Kount, Signifyd, Riskified, or tools built into payment gateways (Stripe Radar, PayU Anti-Fraud) automatically assess the risk of each transaction in real time.
Bot attacks on e-commerce follow several characteristic patterns. Credential stuffing — the automated testing of login credentials from data leaks — is the most common. Scalper bots buy up limited product runs (trainers, tickets, limited edition items) and immediately resell them at inflated prices. Carding bots test stolen card data by placing small “test” orders. Price scraping bots monitor prices and stock levels, siphoning off competitive advantage.
Warning indicator: If you see in your store’s logs that more than 20% of requests to the login endpoint end with a 401 or 403 response — you are probably being actively scanned by credential stuffing bots. A rate of 5–10% is already a reason to investigate.
Protection against bots requires specialised solutions: CAPTCHA (ideally invisible to legitimate users, such as reCAPTCHA v3 or Cloudflare Turnstile), rate limiting on sensitive endpoints (login, checkout, product API), Device Fingerprinting and behavioural analytics detecting automated scripts based on cursor movement patterns and form-filling speed, and a WAF with a bot protection module (Cloudflare Bot Management, F5 Distributed Cloud Bot Defense, Imperva Advanced Bot Protection).
An important tool is also the monitoring of chargeback patterns — a sudden increase in the number of chargebacks from a specific period may indicate a completed skimming attack that took place during that time.
How to prepare an incident response plan for e-commerce?
My experience from several dozen projects shows a clear pattern: companies that have a documented incident response plan lose several times less during an attack than those that act ad hoc. It is not that the plan eliminates incidents — it is that it drastically reduces response time and minimises the consequences.
An effective incident response plan for e-commerce must address several challenges specific to this industry. First, the decision to temporarily take the store offline — this is a decision to incur a direct revenue loss, but in many cases it is necessary to prevent further leakage of customer data. The procedure should clearly define who has the authority to make this decision and on what basis.
Phases of an incident response plan for e-commerce:
Phase 1 — Detection and verification (0–30 minutes): Identifying and confirming the incident. Typical warning signals in e-commerce: a sudden increase in chargebacks, notifications from customers about unauthorised transactions, WAF alerts about a spike in attacks, anomalies in access logs, notification from the payment gateway or acquiring bank. At this stage, distinguishing a false positive from a real incident is critical — a hasty store shutdown is also a loss.
Phase 2 — Isolation and containment (30–120 minutes): Limiting the scope of the incident. This may mean disabling a specific function (e.g., checkout), blocking suspicious IP addresses, temporarily switching to a static information page, or isolating a server in the event of a compromise. The key: act quickly, document every action.
Phase 3 — Analysis and eradication: Identifying the cause and source of the attack, removing malicious code or vulnerabilities, verifying the integrity of all files and the database. Preserve a copy of the infected system for forensic analysis — destroying evidence will make it harder to understand the scope of the attack.
Phase 4 — Notifications (legal obligations): GDPR requires reporting a personal data breach to the data protection authority within 72 hours of its detection, if the breach is likely to result in a risk to the rights and freedoms of individuals. In the event of a payment card data breach, notification to the payment organisations (Visa, Mastercard) through the acquirer is also required.
The GDPR 72-hour rule is inflexible. It does not matter that you are still investigating the scope of the incident. If you have established that a breach has occurred and you assess that it may concern personal data of customers — the 72-hour clock is running. Many companies only learn this during an inspection by the data protection authority.
Phase 5 — Recovery and monitoring: Resuming operations after security verification, implementing additional monitoring mechanisms, and conducting regular reviews in the weeks following the incident (attackers frequently leave backdoors).
The plan should be tested at least once a year through a tabletop exercise — a simulation of an incident scenario involving key decision-makers. The exercise will reveal gaps in procedures before it is too late.
What does a security checklist for an online store look like?
The following table presents key e-commerce security areas together with prioritisation and example tools. The checklist is based on the requirements of PCI DSS, GDPR, and the findings from penetration tests carried out by the nFlo team.
| Area | Key actions | Priority | Example tools / standards |
|---|---|---|---|
| Payment security | Use a hosted payment gateway or iframe; card tokenisation; implement 3D Secure 2.x; callback signature verification; prohibition on storing CVV | Critical | PCI DSS v4.0, Stripe/PayU/Adyen, 3DS2 |
| Vulnerability management | Regular platform and plugin updates (max 72h from security patch); DAST scans; pentests at least once a year | Critical | OWASP ZAP, Burp Suite, Nessus |
| Bot and fraud protection | Rate limiting on login and checkout endpoints; CAPTCHA; chargeback monitoring; anti-fraud systems | High | Cloudflare Bot Management, Stripe Radar, reCAPTCHA v3 |
| Web Application Firewall | WAF blocking OWASP Top 10; e-commerce-specific rules (Magecart, ATO); API protection; WAF alert monitoring | Critical | Cloudflare WAF, F5 Advanced WAF, ModSecurity |
| Customer account protection | Enforce strong passwords; MFA option for customers; login rate limiting; credential stuffing detection; notifications of login from a new device | High | HIBP API, Auth0, Google Authenticator |
| JavaScript security / CSP | Content Security Policy blocking unauthorised scripts; Subresource Integrity (SRI) for external libraries; third-party script inventory; CSP violation monitoring | Critical | PCI DSS req. 6.4.3, Helmet.js, CSP Evaluator |
| Access management | MFA for all administrative accounts; least privilege principle; non-default admin panel URL; access logs; regular permission reviews | Critical | Duo Security, YubiKey, WordPress Limit Login Attempts |
| Encryption and TLS | TLS 1.2+ exclusively; HSTS; at-rest encryption for databases containing personal and card data; backup encryption | High | Let’s Encrypt, TLS 1.3, AWS KMS, AES-256 |
| Monitoring and detection | Centralised logging; anomaly alerts (high number of 401s, traffic spikes on /checkout); File Integrity Monitoring (FIM); notifications of changes to JavaScript files | High | Elastic SIEM, Splunk, Wazuh, Tripwire |
| GDPR compliance | Record of processing activities; personal data inventory in systems; retention policy with automatic deletion; consent management system; procedure for handling data subject requests | High | OneTrust, Usercentrics, custom solutions |
| Backup and recovery | 3-2-1 strategy; regular recovery tests; backup outside production infrastructure; database backups every 6–24h | High | AWS S3, Azure Backup, Veeam |
| Incident response plan | Documented IRP specific to e-commerce; tabletop exercise once a year; contact list: data protection authority, acquirer, lawyers, PR; known 72-hour GDPR notification procedure | High | NIST SP 800-61, internal procedures |
How does nFlo support e-commerce companies in protecting against attacks?
At nFlo we have been working with e-commerce platforms for years — with startups taking their first steps in online retail as well as with mature B2B platforms handling hundreds of transactions per day. We understand that in e-commerce, security and business must go hand in hand: overly aggressive blocking can cause as much harm as a lack of security controls, if it frustrates customers and raises the cart abandonment rate.
Our primary tool when working with e-commerce is specialist penetration testing of electronic commerce platforms. We do not limit ourselves to standard technical scanning — we test business logic, payment processes, account management flows, integrations with external systems, and the JavaScript ecosystem. The report we deliver includes concrete exploitation evidence (proof-of-concept), prioritisation according to business risk, and practical implementation recommendations written with development teams in mind, not just CISOs.
PCI DSS readiness audits are an area where we regularly support companies both before their first assessment by a QSA and in maintaining ongoing compliance. We map the Cardholder Data Environment, identify gaps in the requirements, and develop a remediation plan with an implementation schedule. We have experience with all merchant levels — from SAQ A to full DSS Level 1.
For platforms seeking continuous protection we offer managed WAF and bot protection services — deployment, configuration of e-commerce-specific rules, alert monitoring, and incident response. This is particularly important during high-traffic periods: Black Friday, the holiday season, promotional campaigns — when attackers know that the store’s operational resources are at maximum capacity.
Our Incident Response team is available to e-commerce clients on a 24/7 basis. A response time of under 15 minutes from notification — this is not a marketing slogan, it is a contractual commitment. Every hour of an active attack on an online store means measurable losses: customer data leaks, transaction fraud, potential regulatory fines, and above all the erosion of trust, the rebuilding of which takes years.
Our data: In e-commerce projects where we implemented comprehensive protection, clients recorded a 90% reduction in successful attacks and zero customer card data breaches over a 24-month observation period. 200+ clients, 500+ projects, 98% retention — because effective protection is a long-term relationship.
If you are only beginning to assess the security posture of your store, a good starting point is a free consultation — it allows us to preliminarily assess the security architecture, identify the greatest risks, and propose an appropriate scope of action. In e-commerce it often turns out that a few weeks of work eliminates risks that could have been materialising for years without the owner’s knowledge.
FAQ — frequently asked questions about e-commerce security
Does a small online store also need penetration tests and security audits?
Yes — and the argument is not solely the PCI DSS regulation. A small store is equally attractive to automated attacks (credential stuffing, vulnerability scanners), which do not distinguish by scale. The costs of a security breach for a small store are often proportionally higher than for a large platform, because there are no financial reserves to handle the incident, fines, and reputational losses. A professional e-commerce pentest does not have to be expensive — the scope can be tailored to the budget and risk priorities.
Does using an external payment gateway (Stripe, PayU) exempt me from PCI DSS obligations?
It does not exempt you, but it significantly limits the scope of obligations. If no card data touches your server and the payment form is hosted or loaded via an iframe directly from the provider (the so-called SAQ A scope), you are subject to the lightest PCI DSS questionnaire — SAQ A. However, you must still ensure the security of the pages on which the iframe is embedded: malicious JavaScript on the checkout page can intercept data typed by the customer even if the form itself is externally hosted.
How often should penetration tests of an online store be conducted?
PCI DSS requires penetration tests at least once a year and after every significant change to the infrastructure. In practice we recommend pentests every 6 months for platforms with intensive development (frequent deployments of new features, seasonal campaigns) and every 12 months for stable platforms. We also recommend tests before every major sales season (Black Friday, Christmas), when both traffic and attacker activity are at their peak.
What are the signs that my store may have already been attacked?
Warning signals include: customer complaints about unauthorised card transactions after purchases in your store, a sudden increase in the number of chargebacks, anomalies in server logs (heavy traffic to unknown domains, spikes in calls to external APIs), notifications from the payment gateway or bank about suspicious activity, unknown or modified JavaScript files in the store’s directory, and alerts from a file integrity monitoring system (if you have one).
Is Shopify more secure than Magento or WooCommerce?
Shopify as a SaaS platform eliminates many risks associated with infrastructure management and updates — those are Shopify’s problems, not merchants’. However, it does not eliminate risks associated with external applications installed in the store, custom theme code, phishing targeting administrative accounts, and permission configuration errors. No platform is “inherently secure” — security is a process, not a product feature.
Sources
- PCI Security Standards Council: PCI DSS v4.0 Requirements and Security Assessment Procedures. PCI SSC, 2022. Available at: https://www.pcisecuritystandards.org/document_library/
- OWASP Foundation: OWASP Top Ten 2021. OWASP, 2021. Available at: https://owasp.org/www-project-top-ten/
- OWASP Foundation: OWASP Automated Threats to Web Applications. OWASP, 2020. Available at: https://owasp.org/www-project-automated-threats-to-web-applications/
- Personal Data Protection Office: Guidelines on reporting personal data breaches. UODO. Available at: https://uodo.gov.pl/pl/138/342
- European Data Protection Board (EDPB): Guidelines 01/2021 on Examples regarding Data Breach Notification. EDPB, 2021. Available at: https://edpb.europa.eu/our-work-tools/documents/public-consultations/2021/guidelines-012021-examples-regarding-data-breach_en
- Verizon: 2024 Data Breach Investigations Report. Verizon Business, 2024. Available at: https://www.verizon.com/business/resources/reports/dbir/
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