How to protect your Magento store from Ransomware?

Every e-Commerce store owner wants the safety of his website on the internet world. Recently there have been many hacking attempts on many websites where the hackers have tampered the application data of so many websites. The moment the hackers gain access to the web files, they are encrypted and hidden on secret servers. Just like in films, the hackers asked from the website owners for ransom, in the form of Bitcoins which is the latest and very popular digital currency in exchange and then only retrieve the data of the website. These events just looked like story line of a movie.

In simple words, the data in a site is kidnapped and the website owner is pressurized to pay a ransom amount in form of Bitcoins to save his digital data. Loss of data would put the e-commerce store owner into lots of loss and put them in dilemma whether to pay the ransom or not? Big and profitable e-Commerce stores are found to be most vulnerable ones for such kind of attacks. While converting PSD to responsive Magento site, experienced Magento developers take care to implement security features into the Magento store which can prevent the e-store from such kind of hacking attacks.

We can in many ways prevent these Ransomware attacks. First lets understand what is ransomware?

Ransomware is a type of attack on Magento e-Commerce stores which exploits their vulnerabilities or the vulnerability of the server software and installs malware that can encrypt the data on the server. The hacker then demands to the e-Commerce store owner to pay the ransom. If the owner pays, the hacker then hands over the key to decrypt the data. If the ransom is not paid, there is chance that the ransom amount will be increased.

The hackers use the cryptographic technology which is similar in strength to the technology that the e-Commerce store owners use to protect their data. Decrypting the data without the key is mostly not possible and getting the key is possible only by paying the ransom. The best way is to prevent this kind of malware getting on the server. If you are at the start of developing your e-Commerce store then when you are converting PSD to Magento and wants to avoid hacking attempts, you should start taking security measures.

You can also read this : What are the pros and cons of eCommerce responsive website design with Magento?

Magento also does everything possible to prevent such hacking attacks. Recently Magento has removed one of its extensions or plugins as a preventive measure to prevent the CMS malware attacks. This action is done in hope that there will be lesser incidents of bitcoin ransoms. Recently it was reported that four e-Commerce websites have been affected by ransomware. Therefore Magento has deleted a specific code extension which was the reason for the malware attack.

Magento has become a popular framework for e-Commerce for so many online businesses. Most of these e-Commerce stores are earning millions and billions of dollars everyday and have become the soft target for hackers.

Here we are giving necessary steps that can be taken to prevent Ransomware attack on Magento stores:-

Updating Magento to all the upgrades


It will definitely help to keep the updated version of the Magento framework. This will ensure that the hackers will not be able to break into your e-Commerce store. Magento security center provides regular updates to patch up vulnerable issues related to security and upgrading to latest version of Magento will prevent much of hacking attempts.

Take a backup of your site

Taking a backup of your e-Commerce site is very important. You should take frequent backup of your site. You can also do settings for the automatic backup. Ransomware generally tries to encrypt the data on to the server so that the owner doesn’t have any access to it. Therefore it is important to implement robust backup strategy that can avoid any kind of disaster.

Set Strong passwords

You should make sure that you are using strong and complex passwords that will be difficult for the hackers to crack through.

Also the Magento e-Store owner have to constantly inspect for all the developments which looks suspicious to avoid such attacks. Owner should closely monitor the security situation of the server to avoid such kind of attacks. The owner should be fully aware of all the Magento security tips and updates so that he can give uninterrupted e-Commerce facility on his Magento Store. If needed he can take services of Magento Support and information security experts to prevent the hackers from attacking the site and to avoid business loss.