The Effectiveness of Data Backup in Digital Commerce

Most cyber risks and ransomware assaults are directed at e-commerce enterprises. This is due mostly to the sensitive nature of the data they retain, handle, and use, such as client information and financial transactions.

In the world of digital commerce, compromising data may result in irreversible reputational harm, severe financial loss, or even a complete operational closure. As a result, organizations must have a strong data security policy in place, as well as execute frequent backups, to maintain business continuity by restoring data as rapidly as feasible.

This blog discusses the significance of data backup for both small and large internet enterprises. Continue reading to learn about typical risks, backup options, and platform-specific concerns for keeping your data secure.

Types Of E-Commerce Data
E-commerce websites acquire, handle, store, and utilise a significant quantity of data. You should also understand how digital commerce benefits business. As a result, shop owners and security managers must identify which data types are most important for company operations in order to prioritize them in backup methods.

Product catalogs: This is all the information related to products, including descriptions, prices, images, quantities, inventory status, and more. Product data is necessary to maintain daily operations, ongoing sales, and customer satisfaction.

Customer information: Personal details about your clients, such as names, phone numbers, email addresses, and physical addresses, in addition to order history, payment information, and preferences. Losing this data can cause serious compliance issues as well as reputational damages.

Sales records: Sales transactions are mainly used to perform accurate financial reporting and inventory management. These records include payment information, customer data, and transaction history.

Website content: The collection of files and folders that make up an e-commerce website, such as images, web page content, and product descriptions. If this data is compromised, your entire website may stop working properly or shut down entirely, which in turn causes downtime and decreases customer satisfaction.

Important Elements In An E-Commerce Website

Your online store is made up of several elements that work together to provide your visitors with a seamless shopping experience:

Databases: Most of your information is collected in pre-structured databases provided by the e-commerce platform that you are using.

Custom code: You can add custom code to edit your theme or website.

Themes: All e-commerce website builders provide themes you can use and customize to build your online store.

Asset directory: This is the media library in which you keep your images, videos, and other media.

Products and content: Informative website pages such as guides, blogs, and product descriptions help improve your ranking in search engine results.

Accounting and finances: This is the collection of inventory, customer information, and orders used by the accounting department to keep track of your operations.

It is necessary to perform complete backups now and then to ensure business continuity by protecting all of these elements since they are the building blocks of your website. If one of these elements fails, it can jeopardize your entire store and halt your operations.

Common Threats To E-Commerce Data
Now that you understand the various data kinds and e-commerce aspects, you should learn about the vulnerabilities that might cause data loss. These threats might be classified as either internal or external threats.

Theme Code Editing

You can easily make a mistake while customizing your theme code. Even a small error could cause substantial damage by ruining your interface or interrupting your customer activities. Make sure you test your new code before publishing it in the production environment. You also need to be able to reverse your changes in case they do not work out properly, ideally by recovering backed-up data.

Integrating With Third-Party Applications

It is common to install or integrate with third-party applications when building or editing an online store. Remember that these apps are created by separate companies, not by the e-commerce platform itself. The safest thing to do is to download them from the platform’s app store. However, this does not guarantee that the application you installed will integrate correctly with your website, and it might cause some unwanted modifications.

Human Error

This is one of the most common reasons behind data loss. Employees can sometimes edit or delete important data such as theme elements, products, or blogs which can cause issues throughout the online store. Another common mistake in digital commerce is creating and using inaccurate CSV imports. Therefore, the importance of data backup must be balanced since it is the best option to undo any change or recover lost data.

Employee Turnover

If you have high employee turnover, it is only a matter of time before a disgruntled employee tries to hurt your business by performing a malicious act. This is usually done by sharing private information or deleting important data. Luckily, you can greatly reduce this risk by properly managing user permissions.

Cyber Breach And Ransomware Attacks

Cyber threats are continuously increasing, and e-commerce websites are prime targets because they tend to hold sensitive customer and payment data. The only way to ensure business continuity after a ransomware attack is to recover lost data as quickly as possible and keep your store operational.

Benefits Of Data Backup
A typical website, and especially an online store, might suffer from data loss. Backups, on the other hand, can assist to avoid the repercussions of downtime and data loss, such as:

Customer and revenue loss: Your e-commerce website is the primary channel you sell your products. In case of a disruption, you can no longer perform normal operations and thus lose all the revenue you could have generated. Moreover, customers tend only to revisit an online shop if they have a good experience, which means you also lose potential recurrent customers.

Compliance and legal issues: E-commerce websites store and manage sensitive customer and payment information. If such data is lost, your business can have immense legal issues, primarily for not abiding by the industry’s compliance standards.

Loss of previous work: Companies spend much time and investments building a successful online store. All of this work can be used if you have backups to recover from since you may not be able to replicate the previous state of your website.

Backup Methods

There are different methods that you can use to back up your online store, each with its pros and cons:

Physical backups: As the name suggests, this type of backup copies data to physical storage devices like external hard drives or tapes. While you can store the physical copy of your data offsite, physical backups usually take too much time to perform.

Cloud-based backups: This is the most popular option for e-commerce websites since it allows you to store backups offsite using a quick and automated process. You can set a schedule to perform cloud-based backups and send them to secure storage locations like Microsoft Azure, Amazon S3, or Backblaze B2.

Hybrid backups: You can combine both options to create physical and cloud-based backups for added security. Hybrid backups require some additional work but provide the highest level of safety.

Choosing the right backup technique depends on your overall data protection strategy. You should also consider the costs associated with each method. Finally, remember that it is crucial to regularly test your backups to ensure that you successfully restore them in case of a disruption.