When the COVID-19 pandemic triggered global lockdowns in 2020, eCommerce growth advanced as retailers relied solely on digital sales to stay afloat. In fact, the shift to eCommerce was accelerated by five years in 2020 alone.
The Rise of eCommerce
This rise of eCommerce has introduced a number of challenges for retailers and their cybersecurity posture. Stores and organizations handle a huge amount of customer data when trading online, including names, phone numbers, personal email addresses, physical addresses, and financial information. The push to further streamline online shopping experiences during the pandemic vastly increased the amount of data making its way through retailers’ networks, therefore creating new points of entry for threat actors to exploit. This makes retail organizations prime targets for hackers looking to access bank details or use data for phishing schemes, identity theft, or to sell on the Dark Web.
24% of all cyberattacks in 2020 targeted retailers, leading to major retail data breaches such as the attack on Barnes & Noble. As the world opens up and consumers begin to shop again, many are realising the benefits and ease of shopping online, and the growth of eCommerce shows no signs of slowing down.
Retailers were suffering at the hands of cyberattacks long before the pandemic. Nearly half of the top U.S retailers (43%) have vulnerabilities that pose an immediate cybersecurity risk, and only one third of retail organizations consider their IT security posture to be ‘highly effective’. These increasing risks threaten to damage one of the most valuable aspects of the retail industry – the relationship between consumer and brand. In the face of a cyber attack, 42% of retailers experienced brand degradation, causing irreversible business damage.
Strengthening Cybersecurity Posture
Retailers and eCommerce businesses are now looking to strengthen their cybersecurity posture, with 57% stating that bolstering retail cybersecurity was among their top three short-term business goals. One of the ways they can best invest in cybersecurity and boost organizational resilience is with trustworthy threat intelligence. Staying on top of the latest threats leads to improved visibility, a more effective defense, and company-wide security awareness.
At Centripetal, we know how overwhelming and time-consuming threat intelligence can be for retail organizations. Our solution, CleanINTERNET, aggregates over 3,500 cyber threat intelligence feeds, shielding ‘all risk’ threats automatically and provides constant threat hunting on your behalf. This greatly improves visibility over potential threats, allowing you to keep up with the threat landscape and ease the burden on your internal security team. Our proactive, dynamic cyber threat intelligence service keeps costs under control, helping to mitigate the risks of non-compliance and reputational damage. CleanINTERNET’s end-to-end network visibility offers retailers complete control over their organization’s digital environments.
