Rapid7’s Trey Ford gives his top five tips on how retailers can improve their security as Black Friday and Christmas head their way.
This is all the more important given the surge of high-profile retail breaches this year, with retailers urged to improve their security levels for in-store shoppers.
1. Check your network
Double check network restrictions and segmentation, third-party access, customer access, contractors, service providers and your supply chain of partners and vendors.
2. An assessment must be performed
Perform a thorough security and vulnerability assessment of your entire infrastructure including your corporate network, endpoints, servers and other critical assets. Identify points of weakness, patch or harden where possible, and prioritise investigation when anomalies occur.
3. Educate your staff
Review security standards and expectations for employees, educate them on typical social engineering schemes, scenarios and techniques- empower them as custodians and care takers.
4. Make two-factor authentication mandatory
Make two-factor authentication mandatory for remote access to the corporate network and enforce strong password management policies.
5. Encryption is key for devices
Ensure wireless networks and any handheld devices are using the highest level of encryption available, rotate keys where possible.
Trey Ford is a global security strategist at Rapid7
