Today’s retail sector, characterised by an extremely dynamic environment and a wide range of digital transactions, faces numerous cyber threats. Ensuring sales continuity, effectively protecting personal data and building and maintaining consumer trust are key challenges in this industry.
Protecting customer data – the foundation of trust in retailing
Retail outlets handle personal information (PII) and payment (credit card) information on a large scale. This type of information is valuable prey for cybercriminals. Security breaches can result in serious financial consequences, sanctions under legislation such as RODO and a significant drop in trust from customers.
Challenges in this area include ensuring regulatory compliance, protecting brand reputation and maintaining customer loyalty. Technology solutions such as Data Loss Prevention (DLP), are key for the retail industry to prevent unauthorised copying, transmission or leakage of sensitive customer data from systems, point of sale and workstations. This minimises the risk of RODO penalties and reputational damage. Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR/XDR) provides advanced protection for workstations, including POS terminals, servers and other endpoint devices, against malware and data theft attacks. Security Information and Event Management (SIEM/SOAR) systems enable the aggregation and analysis of logs from sales systems, e-commerce and customer databases. This enables early detection of anomalies indicative of attempted data breaches, ensuring auditability and rapid response.
Secure and accessible e-commerce
E-commerce platforms constantly face threats such as DDoS attacks (blocking access to services), SQL injection, cross-site scripting (XSS), skimmers or attempts to access databases. Any service interruption can result in direct financial losses and reduced customer satisfaction. The business objective is to ensure continuity of online sales, revenue protection and stability of the e-commerce platform.
Key technology solutions include the Web Application Firewall (WAF), a specialised protection for web applications (e-commerce) against typical attacks (SQL Injection, XSS, DDoS at the application layer). It ensures the continuity of the online shop and the security of transactions, protecting revenues. Next Generation Firewall (NGFW) provides multi-faceted network edge protection, blocking unwanted traffic and advanced threats that could reach e-commerce servers. Regular security testing of e-commerce applications (e.g. penetration testing, vulnerability scanning) helps to proactively identify and eliminate vulnerabilities before they are exploited by cybercriminals.
From warehouse to shop – security throughout the network
Sales systems, POS terminals and warehouse and logistics solutions often have varying levels of security, making them difficult to manage centrally. They are exposed to both physical manipulation and threats from within the organisation. The business objective is to ensure a consistent level of security across the network, protecting transactions and minimising the risk of theft.
Network Access Control (NAC) controls access to the network at each point of sale and warehouse. It ensures that only authorised devices and users can connect to the network, isolating potential threats. Secure IT management is the central security management of all devices and systems in a distributed infrastructure, ensuring consistent policies and updates. The design and implementation of a secure and efficient network infrastructure (Routing and Switching / WLAN/LAN) in shops, warehouses and offices supports the stable operation of POS systems and other devices.
The human element of security in the retail industry
Staff working in shops, warehouses and offices are often the target of phishing attacks aimed at phishing for access data to sales systems, customer databases or financial information. The business objective is to minimise the risk of accounts being hijacked, protect internal systems and increase security awareness among staff.
Regular training and simulation of phishing attacks for all employees, from management to in-store staff, increases resistance to social engineering, protecting against login data theft and infections. Mail Security is email protection against phishing, spam and malware, being the first line of defence against multiple attacks on employees. Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA)/Authenticator (SSO) strengthens login security for all internal systems (CRM, warehouse systems, e-commerce backend) by requiring an additional authentication factor, making it significantly more difficult for accounts to be taken over even if passwords are stolen.
Business continuity and operational resilience for retail
Downtime in checkout systems, warehousing or e-commerce platforms can seriously disrupt sales and operational processes. Rapid recovery from a technological or cyber incident is crucial. The business objective is to ensure minimal downtime, protect against loss of revenue and maintain customer confidence in retail.
Technology solutions include regular and reliable backups of all key systems (POS, warehousing, customer databases, e-commerce) and data, ensuring rapid recovery from failure or attack, minimising losses. Reliable and efficient infrastructure solutions, such as arrays and servers, ensure stable operation of systems critical to retail operations. Entrusting experts to comprehensively manage and monitor the IT infrastructure (managed services) ensures proactive problem detection, minimised risk of failure and faster response. 24/7 monitoring, detection and response to security incidents (SOC service) is a key element of cyber security.
As a security partner for the retail industry, Softinet understands the specifics of retail companies and offers comprehensive, integrated solutions that go beyond technology alone. They protect data, sales, reputation and customers. Their approach is not only to protect against threats, but also to support the company’s ongoing development and innovation.
Download our e-book and deepen your knowledge!
Want to explore the topic of comprehensively securing your retail business? We have prepared a free e-book for you: “Retail in safe hands. How to protect customers and profits in the age of cyber threats”.
This guide provides a detailed analysis of key threats and practical guidance on building robust digital protection for your business.
Don’t let an incident compromise the stability of your business. Secure its future today!