Market Segment
The retail industry has grown and it’s important to regularly monitor retail cybersecurity statistics, especially as their attack surface grows as retail businesses expand. Every new point of sale, store or website is a potential target for retail cybersecurity threats, whether retailers are growing through in-house stores or online. Retailers and those who manage their network infrastructures face threats from a variety of angles. For example, Verizon, the mainstay of communications, has faced a series of attacks, led by phishing, malware, and ransomware.
Given the wealth of payment information available to retailers, it’s not surprising that around a quarter of all cyberattacks, or 24%, are against retailers. Retailers often have varying levels of security, which exposes them to cybercriminals. Also, even a relatively small retailer may have lots of credit card or bank details in their digital files. Cybercriminals have begun to take advantage of these opportunities.
Retail has become the number one target for cybercriminals and has suffered more breaches than any other business sector. This increase in retail cybersecurity attacks could be due to a number of factors.
Because retailers often have access to customers’ personally identifiable information, breaching a company’s defenses can be a big hit for a hacker. Also some retailers may have similar cybersecurity infrastructures, so an attack method that works for one may work well for another.
Social engineering, which involves using mind games to make people compromise on safety standards, often goes unnoticed on most retailers’ radars. This leaves retail organizations, employees, and others with sensitive access credentials vulnerable to hackers who want to use them against them.
Successful attacks can result in significant financial loss and reputational damage, so a retailer’s security operations center (SOC) team would be wise to implement risk mitigation strategies.
Trust breeds trust, and due to the lack of adequate cybersecurity, 62% of consumers say they are unsure of the security of their data. Also, 25% say they know their data is not safe for retailers. Addressing this trust gap should be a top priority for retail organizations.
One of the best ways retailers can ensure the security of their payment data is to comply with the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) standards.
Retail has become the number one target for cybercriminals and has suffered more breaches than any other business sector.
Credit card data is the new currency for hackers and criminals, and retailers have a lot of it. This makes the retail industry an almost irresistible target for cyber attacks.
The industry’s attack surface is expanding as retailers of all shapes and sizes seek to drive sales and improve efficiency by leveraging the latest data-driven technologies. The use of big data and complex data warehouse models is growing rapidly. In addition, many retailers are getting into the healthcare and pharmacy businesses and therefore hold more sensitive data than ever before. Meanwhile, in developing countries there is a constant transition from cash payments to electronic card payments.
Insider threats are also on the rise in retail. Employee turnover is high and the typical retailer has many insider vulnerabilities, including seasonal and traditional employees as well as multiple stores and distribution centers. Many retailers also outsource some of their business processes to third parties.
Rather than stealing money or physical goods from a store or warehouse, these cybercriminals focus on stealing information – particularly valuable cardholder data flowing between consumers and retailers. System access by employees and third-party contractors must be linked to business functions and carefully planned and monitored.
Point of sale (POS) systems are an increasingly popular point of attack (case #1) for obtaining transactional data that gives cybercriminals instant access to valuable information such as card numbers and personal identification numbers (PINs).
Traditional data sources within the organization are also vulnerable. These include intellectual property that is valuable to competitors, such as planned future store locations and demographic data (for example, average income or age in a store’s region), as well as databases containing customer information.
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