Magento 1 End of Life Issues
If you still are on Magento 1, either using Magento Open Source or Commerce, you likely haven’t noticed a huge difference. Your site didn’t spontaneously go offline or self-destruct, but over time the lack of support from Adobe and not having regular updates will become a huge problem.
Because everyone has been moving on from Magento 1, you’re going to encounter a lot of issues until you do eventually upgrade. And you will have to upgrade at some point because if you don’t, without any of the security or extension updates, your site will become vulnerable to hackers and will not function properly.
Here’s a quick overview of some of the issues you are facing by staying on Magento 1:
End of Security Updates
Magento 1 security risks are definitely the most important reason to switch over as soon as possible, you don’t want your site open to hackers. Patches and updates are constantly coming out that prevent malicious actors from exploiting vulnerabilities, but not for Magento 1.
Common tactics used by hackers are known as web skimming or Magecart, where they are able to steal payment data as customers check out. This is a very real threat, as hackers have been exploiting Magento bugs and security flaws for years.
As time goes on, you’re going to fall further and further behind with the updates. Hackers will see your site as an easy target. Once you have a data breach, your customers are likely not going to be confident in your security, even after you update. You’ll have to do a lot of heavy lifting just to recover from a PR nightmare like a hack. Not only that, but you’ll also have some steep fines to contend with. On average, it costs about $3.9M per data breach.
Magento 1 Hack
It didn’t take too long after M1 End of Life for hackers to swoop in and take advantage of several thousand vulnerable sites.
Read the full story here: Magento 1 Stores Hacked
Losing PCI Compliance
If you’re using a third-party payment gateway on your website, which is something you should be doing, you’re at a lower risk of losing your PCI Compliance than those who don’t. However, a big part of staying PCI compliant is maintaining and securing your website. Once Adobe stopped making updates in June, your Magento 1 site was no longer protected from the most recently discovered vulnerabilities.
MasterCard and Visa both issued warnings recently about security breaches happening primarily on sites that have older versions of Magento and that haven’t been keeping up-to-date with the security updates and patches. Visa explicitly told vendors that if they didn’t upgrade to the newest version of Magento, Magento 2.4 at the time of writing, they will eventually fall out of compliance with PCI standard.
Losing this accreditation is harmful to your company. It lowers customer trust and also means your company could become directly liable for any damages to customers.
Website UX is Going to Get Worse
In addition to security problems you are also facing user experience issues. Security updates aren’t the only thing that ended with Magento 1 EOL, your extensions won’t be supported either. While your site may be fine now, over time without patches, your site is going to get buggy and slow.
Performance upgrades, patches, and other maintenance are needed to keep everything on a complex eCommerce site working smoothly. And if you think you can just hire a developer to keep it all up-to-date for you, well, they’re going to be getting pricier as time goes on.
Most of the good developers have been working on Magento 2 for years and not focusing on Magento 1. You’ll have a much smaller, and shrinking, pool of experts to choose from and they know it. They will be setting their prices accordingly.
Site Security on M2
All the above problems are taken care of when you migrate. Magento 2 prioritizes security with the following capabilities:
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- Magento offers Security-Only Patches. This allows merchants to install time-sensitive security fixes without applying the hundreds of functional fixes and enhancements that a full quarterly release provides.
- One of the most important security features included in Magento 2 is the implementation of default 2-factor authentication (2FA). 2FA is one of the most powerful ways to prevent unauthorized access to Magento administrator accounts.
- Unique admin URL- using an admin URL in place of the standard default URL can minimize exposure to scripts attempting unauthorized access to your site.
- Magento 2 supports CAPTCHA checks related to order placement and payment, allowing for better security and protection against brute-force carding attacks – with CAPTCHA protection, bots will have a more difficult time attempting to use stolen payment information.
- SameSite cookies help limit the sharing of cookie information with third-party websites, and protect user data and security.
- And more than 30 security enhancements have been added to M2 to fight back against Remote Code Execution (RCE)
And with each Magento 2 version that is rolled out, more security enhancements are added.
