In the early days of the pandemic, many retailers quickly launched e-commerce stores for the first time. Others expanded their offerings, such as adding online ordering with curbside pick-up. Within only a few months, the pandemic accelerated the shift to e-commerce stores by five years. This points to the need for increased retail cybersecurity.
The result is there is now more data — both public and private — stored in the cloud than ever before. However, now that the proverbial dust has settled, store owners should revisit their retail cybersecurity efforts to make sure the processes and technology they put in place really work.
How Retail Cybersecurity Protects Customer Data
Long-term retail success hinges on knowing your customers’ needs today and anticipating their needs tomorrow, both in terms of products and customer experience. However, doing this with an e-commerce store is more challenging than a brick and mortar shop. The key to gaining these critical insights lies in effectively using the data you have to make business decisions. Using customer data to create personalized experiences can multiply return on investment by 5 to 8 times and can increase sales by 10% or more.
Many retailers think of consumer customer data in a single bucket, but this is inaccurate. Because each type of customer data has a different business value and risk factor, businesses need to think of each type separately. In addition, different types of customer data are located in different platforms and server locations. You must know where each type lives to properly secure it. retail cybersecurity protect customer
