Across the industry there is much talk of personalization, making a customer’s experience as tailored to the individual as possible, thereby enriching every second of customer contact. Whilst it is not necessarily a new trend in retail, research into existing techniques, such as targeted sales offer suggests that customers tend towards being irritated rather than enthralled.

However, as the digital landscape shifts so does the idea of personalizing customer experience, with retail businesses deploying a range of Internet-of-Things (IoT) devices to grab their customer’s focus. This evolving digital platform allows for more detailed customization towards each customer making sure that the content they consume is tailored ever-more specifically to their wants and needs.

However, as with every fad, there is a danger of jumping in headfirst and not necessarily asking how shallow the pool is. This is particularly important when businesses run the risk of expanding their enterprise edge without considering the security implications.

So, what are the risks?

Figures released by the Information Commissioner’s Office show the number of retail firms reporting data breaches has doubled in just one year, rising from 19 in 2015/16 to 38 in 2016/17.

Personalizing customer experience requires a massive amount of data (some might call it BIG), which means that all kinds of retailers are potentially targets for all kinds of cyber criminals. All that Personally Identifiable Information (PII) held within well-known enterprises, is a vein of gold sitting just below the surface for seasoned professional criminals.

Just 39% of directors and senior managers in the retail/wholesale sector, according to a July 2017 analysis of Gov.uk data from 1,500 firms by commercial property agency Savoy Stewart, consider Cyber Security a high priority. However, with ever increasing compliance and data protection, the PII these companies are holding and using becomes a potentially costly liability.

This is compounded when you consider that retail enterprises are rapidly expanding their enterprise edge through the deployment of IoT technologies to personalize the customer experience. The key to protecting yourself as you grow your enterprise is maintaining policies and procedures to maximize your visibility of the network infrastructure.

How can LogPoint help?

A few things should be done by IT departments within the retail sector as a matter of course. Staying on top of Point-of-Sale (PoS) patching, requiring two-factor authentication for all employees, and deploying intrusion detection/prevention technologies, are all comparatively simple first steps to securing the enterprise network.

However, maintaining visibility over a wide variety of technologies can be a costly, and sometimes impossible affair. LogPoint’s streamlined and simple SIEM solution unlocks the power of cross-device log correlation and grants a level of easy visibility across the organization that could otherwise be too costly or complex for many retail IT departments.

As a retail organization, with pressure to improve customer experience using customer data and IoT technologies, if you are concerned about your ability to detect and react when threat actors come calling, LogPoint can provide the visibility, control and assurance your enterprise may need.

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