Securing an Online Store: Payments, Accounts and Fraud

Use a licensed payment provider with hosted fields so card numbers never touch your servers. That single decision removes the heaviest compliance burden and the most damaging breach scenario.

Credential stuffing against customer logins is constant and automated. Rate limit by IP and by account, add a challenge after repeated failures, notify customers of new-device logins, and require re-authentication before changing an email or payout detail.

Totals, coupon eligibility, stock and shipping must be recalculated server-side at checkout. Manipulating a client-side price is the oldest store attack there is and still works on custom builds that trust the cart payload.

Keep tested backups that are restorable within hours, log every administrative action with the actor and timestamp, and write down who decides to pause checkout if fraud spikes. Store downtime is measured in lost orders, so the decision path must be short.