X-Cart Security Patches – an Affordable Insurance Policy for your Online Business
X-Cart ensures their software is as secure a possible. Sometimes security flaws are discovered and as soon as this happens, a security bulletin is sent out to all X-Cart customers. We here at Just X-Cart Australia Pty Ltd also send out a copy of each bulletin as a courtesy to our clients.
A number of clients have over the years raised concern or have had issue with the fact that X-Cart release security patches that must be applied manually, either by:
- the client themselves (by downloading the patch from their ‘File Area’ and using the instructions provided with the patch to install it,
- or the client having another person experienced in patching X-Cart stores eg Just X-Cart Australia Pty Ltd for, for a small fee, or enlisting X-Cart themselves through their helpdesk to patch their site for technical points.
or
- clients can elect not to patch the security breach/issue discovered and run the risk of having a known vulnerability on their store.
Clients have asked why X-Cart don’t offer an auto-update/patch system like Microsoft do in that with Microsoft you simply click a button and the update is done for you.
Unlike eg Microsoft software, where you don’t actually make any modifications to the software itself eg you don’t do customisations to Microsoft Office you just use it, so if there is a security problemMicrosoft can issue an update because the software they are patching is the same across each user.
X-Cart software doesn’t work that way. We have X-Cart clients running many different versions of X-Cart, from v4.0 branch through to the latest version available. Add to this the fact that X-Cart stores can be customised, sometimes very heavily with coding changes, different designs, some have add-on modules, some don’t, some are default stores, some aren’t.
The patches offered by X-Cart are free. You can install the patches yourself to your own cart – for free. So effectively, even though not as automated as software like Microsoft, the result it the same – software that you can keep updated at no cost to ensure maximum stability, security and reliability.
As more and more advancements in technology become available to consumers such as cart owners and their eCommerce software, and as such the features and functionalities of their software increases and becomes better and more customer and admin-user friendly, also we must naturally expect the negative influence on technology such as hackers also becomes more prevalent, intelligence, resourceful and persistent.
Patching is like an insurance policy on your cart. All business taken out insurance for their real-world, on-the-ground businesses to protect against the unimaginable, the unforeseen, the unthinkable – so perhaps consider that patching your site, or even upgrading to a newer version (especially sites that are running obselete versions) is an insurance policy for your online business – and with only several patches at most required to be applied per year, thats a very affordable online insurance policy don’t you think?
X-Cart works very hard to ensure that it can offer such an insurance policy to cart owners so that all they need to do is apply, or have applied a simple little patch that could mean the different between making a site secure, or exposing it to unwanted risk.
So when you get a security bulletin next, feel confident that X-Cart, and Just X-Cart Australia Pty Ltd are constantly striving to make your software the very best, and most secure it can be.
