During the holiday season, it becomes high time for consumers and retailers to make arrangements for staying one step ahead of the prevalent holiday scams. As there would be multiple spikes in the spending habits of consumers, it is important to avoid financial frauds and identify thefts. Apart from that, the holiday season also brings possible opportunities for impersonation and data breaches which can easily take down on systems and IT networks.
In early times, IT administrators concentrated more on the consumers, but in due course of time, even the retailers have started getting the attention. While retailers will lose a specific part of their payment and confidential data sets, retailers can face harmful catastrophic consequences if a holiday cybersecurity attack hits their systems. Once the retailers have started safeguarding their systems and network, they can add specific security measures to protect the interests of the prospective consumers.
How can Retailers Stay Protected?
It is common for hackers to increase their activity during holiday seasons. Spear phishing and data breaches are at an all-time high which in turn calls for increased vigilance and improved cybersecurity practices. Retailers offer a wider landscape to the hackers as a lot of financial and personal records are usually at stake.
- Amplifying Threat Detection Capabilities : While most retailers have preventive security measures in their repertoire, but during the holiday season, they need to beef up their detection and threat monitoring capabilities. A host of additional authentication steps are usually preferred during the peak shopping season which blocks suspicious transactions. This approach towards cybersecurity keeps malicious activities at bay and identifies threats quicker.
- Prioritizing Employee Awareness : Adding new employees to the existing staff during a holiday season is not the smartest move. Most of the temporary workforce looks to make quick money, and in order, some can even make data breaches deliberately or accidently. Therefore, employee awareness in the form of training is extremely important, preferably as a part of the staff on-boarding process.
- Implementing Incident Response Plans : Retailers must have a functional incident response plan for every threat scenario. These shall typically include rebuilding systems, isolating the systems and having technical controls in hand.
- Hiring Cyber Security Services: Retailers can also hire cybersecurity services which can protect their computer systems major cybersecurity threats. These security providers will guarantee that your employees aren't in danger from potential dangers like Ransomware and Adware.
How can customers stay protected?
- Assessing convenience against the risk: Consumers need to assess security risks before establishing connections with servers. Consumers need to take responsibility when it comes to striking the perfect balance between privacy and personalization.
- Look out for Phishing Emails: Consumers must lookout for suspicious email attachments before proceeding with any download or click. Unexpected links, for example, a mail reading track page when you haven’t order anything, must be refrained from.
- Using Multi-factor Authentication : Customers often ignore password security and hygiene, which in turn compromises their confidentiality and privacy. The preferred avenues for staying safe would include multi-factor authentication like OTPs, having a digital vault and even using paraphrases.
- Empower ICT is one of the best IT support and telecommunication service providers that offer cyber security Melbourne services and managed IT services to its clients. Taking up these services, companies can save their business data from cyber-attacks and phishing scams. The cyber security provider is qualified to assess, design and implement newer and more cost-effective layered cybersecurity strategies, and most importantly, it has the ability to proactively monitor and maintain it around the clock.
