Magento is a popular eCommerce development platform. Many top eCommerce brands are running on Magento. As working with a reliable platform has its own perks, it also comes with its own set of difficulties.
Being a popular open-source platform, Magento is often targeted by attackers. One can’t identify the intentions of the hackers but after they hack a platform or website, there are three most probable outcomes:
- Sensitive business or customer data gets stolen which might contain trade secrets, credit/debit card details, account login details, and more.
- The website or server is damaged.
- Your website is redirected to other spammy sites.
A hacked Magento site won’t only destroy your credibility among your customers or visitors but might also make Google penalize you. To prevent suffering from such unfortunate experiences, website owners must hire expert Magento developers to implement security best practices. And one of the most common ways to do that is by installing Magento 2 security extensions on your website.
Here, in this blog, we are going to discuss the most popular and widely used Magento security extensions that can help you strengthen the security of your site. But before that, it is also necessary to get informed about various types of cyberattacks that might threaten the safety of your Magento website.
Magento 2 Security Threats
Although Magento 2 consists of robust security features, cyberattacks nowadays are becoming more and more sophisticated and are hard to detect. All of these attacks can be prevented if only you take some small and simple steps.
The most common way is to install Magento 2 Security extensions to secure your magento site with the help of an expert. In this section, we are going to discuss some serious security threats to your Magento 2 website and how to prevent them.
Cross-Site Scripting Cyberattacks
One of the kinds of cyberattacks that prevails the most is an XSS attack. In this form of attack, a hacker leverages the vulnerabilities of your Magento site to inject a malicious script into it.
These scripts are sent to different end users through an online application. When the users’ browser runs this malicious script, the attacker will then get access to their cookies or data.
Code Executions
In an XSS attack, only the site is attacked, but this is the more dangerous threat that directly attacks your Magento server as well as your website. In a remote code execution, the attacker will run a malicious code on a vulnerable Magento server. They create and execute CSV files to damage both servers and websites.
Ransomware
Ransomware is a kind of attack where the users are kept from accessing their own data or platform. The attackers demand a ransom fee from the users to return their access. Typically, a website link is used to install such malware.
Sometimes, the attackers make the users believe that they can’t access their data or site because there is some problem with it and then a message is displayed on the screen that says they can fix that problem for a little fee.
Botnet attack
This attack is used to send spam messages. Unlike other cyber threats, a botnet attack is not after a user’s data. Instead, it leverages the vulnerabilities of your server to send spam messages worldwide. As a repercussion, your server can be blacklisted forever by spam filters.
Silent Card Capture
Hackers use this attack to record the payment details of a user’s customers. Say you are running an online store then attacks will install malicious software on your store exactly at the place where your customers have to enter their payment details.
This malicious software will provide the real payment details of the customers to the attacker and the fake ones to you. The customers’ money will be deducted by attackers whereas you don’t get that money so won’t provide any products or services to your customers.
This attack of capturing users’ customer payment details can go unnoticed for a long time. That’s why it is called silent card capture and it can be most dangerous. Because the more time this attack lasts, the more damage your brand takes.
Brute Force Cyber Attacks
One of the most common types of cyberattacks is where the attackers guess all the possible combinations of a user’s password until they get access to the account. Such a technique when used to attack people’s accounts is coined as Brute Force Cyberattacks,
The weaker your password, the easier it will be for attackers to apply that brute force and steal your account. Sometimes, hackers use specific tools or automated programs to generate possible combinations for your password to accelerate the process.
Top 5 Magento Security extensions to use
Here are some extensions that can help protect your Magento website from various types of cyberattacks, some of which we discussed above.
1. Magento 2 Disable Right Click by Magecomp
On the internet, you have to be wary of plagiarism. After a website or an eCommerce store starts growing, its competitors start creating plagiarized content and throwaway websites.
Of course, the plagiarized content and a throwaway site are not useful for them but it’s also bad for your business. Penalties from Google and other search engines can seriously damage your website.
One quick way to prevent competitors and other people from plagiarizing content from your Magento site is to disable the right click. Magecomp offers an extension called Magento 2 Disable Right Click which aims to protect your content from getting copied on the internet.
Visitors use right-click to open the feature box which provides them with an option to copy the selected content. Apart from the mouse clicks, the keyboard shortcuts are also disabled which removes all chances of copying your site content.
A variety of customizable options are available in the Magento 2 Disable Right Click extension by Magecomp which allows you to choose what options the visitors would have once they open your web pages.
Features:
- Disabling right click as well as keyboard shortcuts
- Works explicitly to protect the data of your Magento store
- It enables you to protect your source code as well as images that you upload on your eCommerce site.
Price: $49
2. MageFirewall Security
Add an extra protective layer of security to your Magento eCommerce website with the help of a Magento 2 security extension called MageFirewall Security. It is largely used to block and blacklist attackers.
Features:
- Scanning your Magento store for unpatched security issues and offering relevant recommendations to set up and manage your store.
- The extension uses the Ninja firewall rules that allow it to block the attacks and prevent the attackers from getting access to your Magento website.
- It scans your web servers
- MageFirewall Security comes with a file modification detector.
- Protects your eCommerce site from brute force cyberattacks and blacklists them
- If someone breaks into your store and makes any modifications, this extension comes with a recently modified file scanner that alerts you about all kinds of modifications.
Price: Free
3. Two-Factor Authentication by Amasty
Amasty offers a Two-Factor Authentication extension that can further enhance the security of your Magento site. This extension can be easily combined with Google’s Authenticator app and your smartphone to verify the admin sessions. This helps prevent unauthorized logins.
This security extension from Amasty provides a new security code every time you log in which ensures safety against the incidents of data sniff. So, even if your password and security code are compromised once, the fraudsters won’t be able to log in using them.
Moreover, the security codes provided to verify logins are time-based and change every 30 seconds. After the given time, the codes become invalid.
If you don’t want to go through the whole verification process, Amasty’s security extension allows you to white-list the IP addresses if you choose. You wouldn’t need a verification code if you log in from these IP addresses.
This Magento security extension is compatible with devices like:
- Android (1.5+)
- iPad
- iPhone (iOS 3.1+)
- iPod touch
- Blackberry (OS 4.5-6.0)
Price: $69
4. Watchlog
Watchlog is created specifically to protect Magento websites from brute-force cyber attacks. It works to identify and prevent attacks that are intended to gain access to the Magento back office.
Features:
- Watchlog keeps track of all the connection attempts
- The extension provides a detailed and summarized table of all the login attempts
- You can also see the daily and monthly login attempts in graphs
- Watchlog renders all the statistics in periodic reports through email.
How to Use:
1. Configure Watchlog Extension
Go to System > Config > Wyomind > WatchLog
- To set up the connection attempts history, you have to configure a few parameters first.
- To receive all the periodic reports, you have to change its setting to a ‘YES’.
- You also have to mention how many days of stats you want to see in your periodical report.
- Give your report a title.
- Enter the email addresses where you want to send or receive the reports.
- Lastly, schedule the reports to automatically generate and send to the respective email addresses.
2. Check Login Attempts
After that, you can click on the Watchlog in the Systems menu, to get a complete overview of all the login attempts that are made to access your Magento back office.
Price: Starts from €70
5. MageFence
Keeping your website secure is a priority and MageFence is a well-rounded solution. It acts as an additional layer of security that protects your Magento site from common security threats like brute force and other cyber attacks.
- MageFence conducts an internal scan of your Magento website regularly and notifies you if any potential unwanted changes or signs of malware infection are detected.
- It conducts a security audit of your site to find malware infections, vulnerabilities, and other security loopholes.
- This security extension also provides various features that help you implement security best practices to protect your website.
- If any file changes are found, the checklist feature of MageFence enables you to use your admin privileges to find unauthorized users. The extension would also scan the database to find the users who are utilizing admin privileges without any authorization.
- It helps in finding the security patches that aren’t installed yet.
How to use:
- Setting the time for the scan
- Setting the frequency for the scan
- Set the login failures. MageFence will identify the source of those malicious IP addresses that exceed the specific number of failed login attempts. It also allows you to add some IP addresses to the white list which helps you prevent them from getting blacklisted. By opting for that, you inform MageFence that it’s you.
Price: $3159
Conclusion
Plenty of Magento 2 security extensions are available in the market but finding the right ones for your website is a bit of a challenging task. You must have a working knowledge of the platforms, and cybersecurity best practices and have a clear understanding of your website’s security-related requirements.
It is recommended to apply all the necessary security best practices on your Magento website. And then conduct a security audit which will tell you what issues your website is experiencing. You can then buy or try free Magento extensions depending on your budget and web requirements to solve the security issues of your eCommerce website.
I hope this helps!
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