Ever since Adobe ended support for the Magento 1 stores, global payment processors like Visa, Paypal, Master Card, and Adobe itself are now actively urging Magento merchants to migrate their Magento 1 stores to Magento 2 platform.
The main purpose of this is to help Magento 1 store merchants avoid exposing their data to cyberattacks and to remain PCI compliant.
According to a report by Hostingtribunal, there are more than 250,000 live eCommerce websites powered by the Magento platform.
Out of these 250,000+ Magento 2 websites, there are 78,227 websites using Magento 2 platform.
Though this number might seem small right now. But you should know that it has been rapidly increasing since Adobe ended support for Magento 1 stores.
Adobe also confirmed that before announcing Magento 1’s June 2020 EoL in September 2018, approximately 8,000 Magento 1 website were migrating to Magento 2 platform every quarter.
And after Adobe announced the end of support for Magento 1 stores, the number of Magento 1 stores migrating to the Magento 2 platform increased heavily.
This is mainly because the Magento 2 platform provides improved security, performance, scalability while making Magento 2 sites easier to maintain as well as upgrade.
In addition to this, Magento 2 also comes with in-built Braintree, Paypal, and Authorize.net payment gateway integration as well as support for CyberSource and WorldPay for the Enterprise Edition.
Magento 1.x Websites Are Now Vulnerable to Magecart Attacks
Now that Adobe will no longer be providing the latest security patches and updates for Magento 1 websites, any Magento 1 store that has failed to migrate to Magento 2 platform will now be highly vulnerable to security breaches.
This, as a result, will pose an increased risk to the security of customers’ as well as payment card data if you still don’t migrate your online store to Magento 2 platform.
In other words, failing to migrate from Magento 1 to Magento 2 platform will expose your eCommerce store to a lot of different risks including but not limited to malicious code used to steal customers’ credit card data, account data compromise events, web skimming attacks, and even the entire website getting hacked.
“Merchants considering the transition to Magento 2.3 should view this as more than just a simple “version upgrade” or “migration.” Effectively, Magento 2.3is an entirely new platform with substantial framework differences from Magento 1. To ensure success, the transition effort should be considered as a new build or full rebuild project. Merchants will need to find the Magento 2.3-compatible version of their extensions and custom code will need to be reviewed, rewritten, and made compatible with Magento 2.3. These efforts are often large and involved, thus, merchants should begin the process and start upgrading immediately, referencing Magento’s Software Lifecycle Policy.” - Visa
Even the U.S. FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation) had also issued a warning in October 2019 in order to spread awareness about web skimming threats that are targeting all Small-and-Medium businesses processing online payments.
The FBI highly recommended online businesses to ensure their software is updated as it’s the main mitigating factor against falling victim to cyberattacks.
Besides this, Visa, Paypal, and Master Card also highlighted the following most important reasons to speed up Magento 2 migration as soon as possible:
- Without any upgrade or security patches, merchants’ e-commerce sites may degrade and become unstable;
- Extensions or plug-ins functionality may break or become unavailable;
- Over time, Magento developers will only be familiar with Magento 2;
- Merchants will fall out of compliance with PCI DSS; and
- Ecommerce sites will be more exposed to security risks and an increased likelihood of an account data compromise due to the lack of security upgrades.
Migrate to Magento 2 to Remain PCI Compliant
According to Visa, "PCI DSS Requirements 6.1 and 6.2 address the need to keep systems up to date with vendor-supplied security patches to protect systems from known vulnerabilities".
Therefore, if you don’t migrate your Magento 1 store to Magento 2 platform, it will cause your eCommerce store to fall out of PCI DSS compliance as your store will not be receiving the latest security patches for the new vulnerabilities after June 2020.
And not only this but failing to migrate to Magento 2 platform means you’ll not get the ASV (Approved Scanning Vendor) scans as they cannot address security issues detected in Magento 1 sites.
Final Words…
Today, it is imperative for Magento merchants to plan Magento 2 Migration for their Magento 1 stores to not only ensure complete security from cyberattacks but to also remain PCI compliant.
That being said, if you have any questions or doubts regarding this, feel free to contact us for expert advice.
