Retailers are offering new services and deploying technologies to adapt to the new ways employees must work and consumers do their shopping, revealed a new study.
Fortinet surveyed retailers on latest business changes, challenges, and investment plans, including, telework, new technologies and integrations, compliance, the cybersecurity skills shortage, cloud security, and Software-Defined Wide Area Network (SD-WAN).
Based on the results, 88 percent of the participants said they have added or expanded telework and 43 percent have included or widened e-commerce. In addition, 42 percent have added the ability to perform contactless transactions, 35 percent have incorporated new services, and nine percent have increased managed services.
When retail firms suddenly shifted to telework due to the 2020 pandemic, a multitude of new attack vectors were opened up to security threats. Remote users created additional security requirements and showed different challenges than onsite workers.
For the retail sector that usually does not have as many remote employees as other industries, implementing secure information technology (IT) infrastructures for a remote workforce was a “unique, but necessary task.”
Integrating new technologies has been also crucial for retailers. For instance, the research indicated that contactless transactions (58 percent) had the biggest surge in deployments, followed by mobile applications (36 percent). Using tablets (22 percent), establishing kiosks (19 percent) and e-commerce portal (19 percent), point-of-sale networks (nine percent), and other services (eight percent) also serve as their way of serving customers during Covid-19.
Since most transactions are done online during this crisis, strict standards are set for protecting customer credit card information that must still be adhered to regardless of any new approaches.
Demonstrating compliance, likewise, becomes more time-consuming, especially as the shortage of skilled IT workers continues. The study noted that 44 percent of the respondents agreed that staffing was one of their biggest security challenges during Covid-19.
Per the survey, however, retail organizations are using professional services (34.3 percent) and automating security functions (31.4 percent) to lessen the impact of the global skills gap on them. Some are also employing managed security service provider (25.7 percent), retraining (25.7 percent), and hiring consultants (22.9 percent), among others.
According to the research, retailers are confronted by cloud-management problems—the biggest of which being the complexity of administration (43 percent), followed by cost (41 percent), with secure access and compliance tied for third (40 percent).
Another finding is that more than half of retailers do not know who is responsible for public cloud security. The study indicated that 55 percent of participants did not fully understand that cloud security is a shared responsibility between provider and user.
“A fast and scalable connectivity is what retailers need for seamless transactions to support sales, inventory, purchasing, and other activities. This is where SD-WAN comes in as it offers a more flexible approach to connectivity with faster performance and a lower total cost of ownership than traditional multi-protocol label switching connections,” Fortinet said.
Fortinet said 74 percent of respondents rated security as “vital or very important reason” for deciding to deploy this solution. But the challenge facing them is that not every SD-WAN offering includes security integrated into the solution.
“A secure SD-WAN that offers a full suite of integrated security services, as opposed to an overlay or purely external security offering, is necessary to efficiently and effectively reduce risk, provide business continuity, and allow for the greatest return on investment.”