The National Retail Federation reports online retail will grow 8% to 12% in 2017 – up to three times higher than the growth rate of the broader retail industry as a whole. As more people shop online and we head into the busiest shopping season of the year, retailers must ensure that their ecommerce sites are performing at the highest levels and that the security of their customer data is rock solid. Any downtime or security breaches can literally make or break their bottom line.
As store owners and marketers begin to develop new ecommerce sites or update their existing sites, they tend to focus on the visual elements as well as applications and widgets that will make online transactions seamless for their customers. Ecommerce platforms like Magento, Shopify, and others provide the backend, technical integration that powers these sites, but the information on the site is stored in a separate database that is not a part of the platform.
Information stored in the database includes customer contact details, credit card numbers, inventory levels, product information, etc. Protecting this data is essential as attacks on web applications accounted for over 40% of incidents resulting in a data breach, and were the single-biggest source of data loss.
Another security concern is making sure that end users are accessing legitimate ecommerce sites rather than malicious ones used by hackers to gather personal data. According to ESG Research, 87% of IT and security decision makers believe that a comprehensive endpoint security software suite is the most effective way for organizations to deal with the shifting endpoint security landscape.
The ability to quickly access the information from the database is another factor to consider. While standing in long lines at a brick-and-mortar store is commonplace during the holidays, consumers are much less patient when it comes to buying online. In fact, 47% of consumers expect a web page to load in 2 seconds or less, and 40% of people abandon a website that takes more than 3 seconds to load.
It is important for retailers to keep these things in mind when creating, maintaining or updating their ecommerce sites. However, they often don’t understand the technology, platforms, or software integration that are needed to make this happen.
Many are turning to managed service providers to manage the complexity of their back-end ecommerce sites and to secure and protect the data housed within their databases. Database-as-a-service (DBaaS) has become an integral part of the overall infrastructure that supports application scale and end-user experience. When adding new web applications that use data, the focus needs to be on optimizing the software stack as it relates to the overall ecosystem.
With DBaaS, the data in your database is encrypted to keep it secure and is monitored 24/7 to ensure that the data is always available and protected.
Utilizing an always-on database service that automatically manages application data removes the complexity and allows retailers to focus on their business rather than worrying about the security and performance of their eCommerce sites.
This approach provides many benefits including scalability, ubiquity of access and infrastructure cost savings along with the peace of mind of working with a trusted provider to help with data encryption and protection. While security and reliability are still a concern for online retailers, having a managed service provider optimizing their website behind the scenes, they can rest assured that their sites will always be ready for prime time.
Allen Holmes is the Vice President of Marketing and Platform Alliances with ClearDB