Why Retailers Should Focus On Big Data Security

The digital age has proffered unlimited benefits to the customer and retailer through advanced technologies that make marketing products and services available over a plethora of devices and channels. While all this is happening, a vast amount of information is being created from various important actions including social media mentions, site traffic, server log files, point of sales transactions mobile connections and many others.

It didnt take the big retailers long to realize the worth of this information. The more data that can be collected and reviewed the better adjustments can be made to address customers needs and improve services. An example of how these vast amounts of data can be harnessed? Everything from online conversations to product purchase histories can be carefully analysed and a clearer projection of customer needs can be created. This can be used to coordinate campaign actions, suppliers and partners to shrewdly address upcoming buying trends.

Protecting Big Data

As with anything of great value, there will be an ever increasing price on maintaining and protecting this data, a price even greater than acquiring the data in the first place. Retailers are now placing a greater emphasis on bolstering the security of their data caches.

Retailers are not only concerned with protecting their own information, but the information they hold on their clients and customers as well. Added to this responsibility is the fascinating array of threats that present new vulnerabilities, the threat of credit card and identity fraud, for example. This has resulted in many customers looking at data security as the clincher, and will choose a market based on the security measures in place within the market,.

Because the value of this data is so high, retailers can no longer use a point product to address security measures. The modern hacker is a resourceful knave, and retailers that attempt to protect valuable information and customer identity with a patchwork quilt of firewalls, encryption schemes and intrusion detection software are essentially leaving their assets wide open for pillaging hackers to exploit as they see fit. This white paper from Capita IT Professional Services goes into this in depth.

Developing a Big Approach to Protect Big Data

When applying security measures to this situation, it is the holistic solution that covers all the bases, like risk and loss prevention and security of physical and digital assets, as well as provides collaborative solutions to that protect online and physical transactions and key data.

What does the Holistic Solution look like?

A proper holistic approach to providing big data security would include:

• A system capable of processing and protecting high levels of transactions securely, while simultaneously managing risks with methods that evaluate the balance of confidentiality with availability.
• Proper implementation of security measures that protect data wherever it may be across a network of servers , systems and sites; keeps data encrypted when in storage and when being accessed as well as keeps all networks secure LAN and wireless.
• Employment of strong authentication that ensures only those with the proper credentials can access sensitive data at the same time monitoring the activities of privileged users within the network.
• Comprehensive encryption strategies that meet compliance mandates and ensure the security of private information.

In addition to the basic security measures needed to keep online data and transactions safe from intrusion, retailers can outfit their digital security with additional layers that:

• Incorporate cutting edge analytics tools that can detect any unusual behaviour or access to data
• Discovers important data where it is stored and analyzes who can access it as well as how well it is protected from intrusion.

In the campaign for more customers, data is an essential asset that will propel a retail organization toward its goals. The data collected can be used to gain greater insights on a demographic and fine tune the retailer’s approach to the market for greater profitability.