By Sandra Guile
Better Business Bureau
At least 59% of consumers are planning to make their holiday purchases from an electronic device. As consumers are shopping for the best deals, retailers should be aware there is an increased risk of a data breach that would compromise the information they collect about their customers.
Cyber risks facing businesses regardless of size include the physical theft or loss of personal data, payment card skimmers, and web app attacks. Any one of these threats can happen throughout the year, however, according to industry experts, the retail industry suffered 523 cyber incidents in relation to the increased activity of shoppers during the holiday season.
If you’re a business owner, it’s important to identify the information that needs to be protected, limit the impact of a potential attack, be ready to detect a problem and then be able to respond if there is an incident followed by a quick recovery from the incident
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Start with the computer network and identify what types of information is crucial to keep the business operational from customer data to accounting information. Then see if the network is setup to ward off viruses, potential phishing attacks and the possibility point of sale theft or a breach.
At this point, it would be prudent to check your company’s policy on bring your own device (BYOD) for employees and have a method in place for tracking the number of devices that are accessing your company’s intranet, database, and other sensitive data. The same devices employees are bringing in during business hours are also in use after business hours so reporting policies should be enforced if those same devices become missing. A method of monitoring when the employees are accessing company servers for data is recommended as well.
Review the company’s electronic infrastructure to see if it is able to detect any potential problems such as viruses or a hacking attempt. Check to see when the last or latest version of software and malware update was installed.
Consult with the IT department to ensure a backup and recovery plan is in place in case the system crashes or a ransomware attack happens. An important part of this planning process is to have select trusted, staff involved to act quickly should an event occur and have complete buy-in from everyone on the team. Then, if one isn’t already in place, have a recovery plan ready to go. This would include reaching out to customers or clients if their information is affected. Another scenario would be working offline should the system completely crash.
Before the Cyber Monday sales begin, visit bbb.org for more information on how to stay safe while shopping online. More tips are available on BBB’s 5 Steps to Better Cybersecurity.
Sandra Guile is the Community Outreach Specialist for BBB. She promotes BBB’s message of marketplace ethics through public speaking engagements, presentations, media relations, press releases, web content, and other written materials. Contact Sandra at (513) 639-9126 or sguile@cincinnati.bbb.org. Your BBB is located at 1 East 4th Street Suite 600 Cincinnati, Ohio 45202 – to reach the office, call (513) 421-3015.