Retail companies rank high on hacker lists, with recent reports putting this industry ahead of the pack for sheer volume of cyber attacks. It makes sense, with retailers often handling millions of transactions each year, attackers capable of compromising networks gain access to massive data volumes they can leverage for fraud or sell online. With an increase on skimming, ransomware and cyber threats, organizations must continually enhance their security controls.

As a result, companies need retail cyber security solutions capable of defending current infrastructure, detecting potential attacks and delivering advanced protection to mitigate emerging threats. Here’s how HALOCK can help.

Retail Risks

Cyber attacks are on track to cost companies more than $6 billion per year as malicious actors target everything from intellectual property to product data and email accounts. Retailers face greater-than-average risk in this new cybersecurity environment, thanks to the amount of consumer data handled and stored by their networks. Credit card information could be used to make fraudulent purchases, while personal and account data could be leveraged to create fake credit accounts or steal user identities. According to the Verizon DBIR, the retail industry’s top threats are system intrusion, social engineering and basic web application attacks, which represent 92% of breaches. Remote work environments increased our reliance on e-commerce and online transactions, exposing vulnerabilities to cyber threats and attacks. Generic solutions offer some protection for critical data, but purpose-built retail information security solutions are now required to effectively mitigate retail risks, especially now with enhanced digital services such as BOPIS (buy online and pick-up in-store) and curbside pickup.

Food and Beverage

This specific sector has experienced a digital transformation. The evolution has vastly increased the attack surface of food and beverage companies in the form of POS (point of sale) systems, loyalty apps, online delivery platforms and cloud-based operations

It isn’t just the vastness of these enterprises, but the complexity of elongated supply chains and franchise models that create multiple exploitable entry points for attackers. Any delay in logistics can have massive consequences, often pressuring companies to pay ransoms quickly to restore operations. Despite this digital shift, many food and beverage companies still rely on legacy operational technology, which further increases the risk of attack.

And then there is the vast array of data that food and beverage companies handle every day, including proprietary recipes, production processes, supply chain information, and consumer personal data. Given these valuable assets, it’s clear why cybersecurity is a critical priority for the industry.

Sales and Service

At HALOCK, we’ve developed a range of industry-specific security offerings to help organizations meet InfoSec obligations and improve retail network security. Specially-designed for retail challenges, we can help balance security, compliance without disrupting the user experience (UX). Some of our most popular retail cybersecurity services to protect your sales include:

• PCI DSS Compliance: PCI DSS compliance is critical for any company that handles consumer credit card information; the regulation specifies best practices for storage, use and security that must be regularly evaluated. Our experts can help your organization obtain — and maintain — PCI compliance. Minimize your PCI Scope. Ensure you have implemented the proper standards for your specific cardholder data environment (CDE). Understand changes in password requirements, encryption, Targeted Risk Analysis (TRA), scanning, outsourcing eCommerce, automation, software catalog mandate, and more. We can help you achieve and maintain PCI Compliance. Review your current compliance. Our QSAs can help guide you through the process easily.

• Risk Based Threat Assessment: Improve protection against the five MITRE ATT&CK Types. Prioritize security controls to enhance or implement using the best threat data the cybersecurity community offers, leveraging the HALOCK Industry Threat (HIT) Index, a model for estimating the most likely (and least likely) ways your organization will be hit by a cybersecurity or information security attack.

• HALOCK’s Cloud Security Assessment: Gain insight on your risks. The assessment provides a review of Azure, AWS, and Google (GCP) cloud environments to identify risk and recommends how to remediate them.

• Network Penetration Testing: From e-commerce sites to mobile payment applications, retail companies now use a host of open-source and third-party APIs and software to provide top-tier customer service. Before launching a new e-commerce app, validate it is secure to handle customers’ private data. Retail is prime for attacks with the amount of digital transactions they conduct. Penetration testing for retail point-of-sale environment or POS environment definitely requires verification if safeguards are effective. Test to see if your controls and team can respond appropriately in the event of a breach with an Assumed Breach or Adversary Simulation penetration test. Conduct a remediation verification pen test to confirm vulnerabilities are fixed. Get a comprehensive penetration test report that details your vulnerabilities by criticality with a remediation plan on how to manage your risk. Consider a Recurring Penetration Testing program to assess your safeguards throughout the year for a proactive security approach. Our penetration testing services help you discover and remediate critical application and service vulnerabilities. Read a case study about a retailer’s success with HALOCK’s penetration testing services. Learn about new vulnerabilities with the HALOCK Exploit Insider – updates on what our pen testers have discovered.

• External Attack Surface Management (EASM) service provides continuous discovery, exploit validation, and risk-based prioritization to keep you ahead of threats. With an evolving  attack surface, get the visibility and insight to prioritize your security controls.

• Incident Response and Digital Forensics: Cyber security threats in retail are not unusual — and when they occur, companies need the ability to respond quickly and identify root causes. HALOCK’s incident response and forensic services help you mitigate incident impact and uncover attack origins. Our incident response management, training (tabletop exercises), process, and planning provide comprehensive coverage in the event of a security breach. Update your incident response plan (IRP) to adjust to your changing business operations. Mitigate your cyber risk by being response-ready. Explore an ongoing program that gets in front of any potential threats or attacks with an Incident Response Readiness as a Service (IRRaaS) program.

• Mergers & Acquisition (M&A): As part of the due diligence process of an M&A, organizations must understand the risk and security profile of their partner or target company. You must determine what liabilities or risks can arise under the other company’s cybersecurity program. With HALOCK’s M&A program, we can help you through the entire process from pre-acquisition to post-acquisition to identify risks, remediation steps, and establish reasonable security.

• Third Party Risk Management (TPRM) /Vendor Risk Management: Ensure third-party partners are aligned with your organization’s risk controls. A recent Panorays study revealed 41% of organizations are not sure if their suppliers were out of compliance in the past year. It also indicated that half of the respondents cited third party risk as one of the top 5 items in their risk register and expect this risk to increase. Vendors and contractors serve as an extension of your group. They represent you and should operate under your business requirements. A required best practice is to always conduct a supplier risk assessment to keep your vendors on point with your security posture. HALOCK can help build and manage a specific program for your retail or e-commerce environment.

• Risk Assessments and Risk Management Program: Regulations require your safeguards be reasonable to your organization, customers, and partners. With many frameworks available, how do you establish your acceptable risk? The Duty of Care Risk Assessment (DoCRA) helps you define a reasonable security strategy factoring in compliance and safeguards based on your specific business, objectives, and obligations. With the release of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Cybersecurity rules on disclosure, it’s essential that you regularly review your risk profile.

• Privacy: CCPA is the most sweeping legislation to date in the U.S. that concerns the protection of personal information. It broadens the definition of what constitutes personal information and gives California citizens greater control over what companies can do with their personal data. This includes the right to exempt their own personal information from being shared or purchased on the open market. Understand the impact this change and other states’ requirements have on your organization. Know what private information you manage and where it is located to properly secure.

• Cyber Security Awareness Training: With many employees now working remotely, they are targets for hackers. Ensure they understand the potential threats they may experience and best practices to prevent cyber attacks on your network or customer data. Security Awareness training will provide guidance on how to detect suspicious activity and what to do in the event of a security incident.

• Security Engineering & Tools: Ensure you have the proper infrastructure to defend sensitive data of your employees, customers, and more. Conduct security architecture reviews, sensitive data scanning, and implement threat monitoring programs to proactively secure against cyber threats. Ensure you have the security safeguards required by compliance requirements like multi-factor authentication (MFA) or a web application firewall (WAF). A consistent and steady review of your threat landscape is a best practice for your industry through a managed detection and response program (MDR) or Threat Hunting Program.

“Topics were explained in an easy to understand way.”

– Restaurant chain

One-Stop Shop

It’s our mission to help organizations improve their cyber security in the retail industry by defining their acceptable level of risk; identifying their “duty of care” for cyber security; and implementing purpose-driven solutions that empower compliance, mitigate attacks and establish a foundation for ongoing security success. HALOCK combines expertise in analysis and execution, allowing our teams to evaluate retail security deployments end-to-end and provide actionable recommendations. We recognize the key challenge for retail organizations — protecting consumer data while maintaining sales volumes and speed. HALOCK’s security is designed to find the balance by deploying the right amount of security to defend critical assets without negatively impacting the IT or your customer experience – specific retail security solutions. A digital-first world demands new retail cyber security solutions to protect data and drive sales. Retailers require reasonable safeguards that balance an organization’s mission, objectives, and social responsibility. HALOCK can help. Let’s talk.

Cybersecurity Updates & News  

Exploit Insider

Weaponizing Legacy Software Legacy software that uses web traffic can be used to blend in with other incoming and outgoing traffic.

Abusing Default Credentials  Attackers can exploit default credentials to escalate privileges within systems, endangering sensitive assets.

Exploiting API Endpoints  Relying on frontend controls for access management can lead to attackers gaining excessive privileges.

The Dangers of Legacy Protocols  How poisoning legacy broadcast name resolution protocols led to domain compromise

Penetration Test Report Essentials 

Cybersecurity & Risk News, Updates, Resources

HALOCK Breach Bulletin

Exploit Insider

Cybersecurity Awareness Posters

Review Your Security and Risk Profile