Retail data breaches involving customer data happen often today. However, they tend to be smaller insize than health care, finance or government breaches. So, the general public notices them less. Yet, they happen more often than realized. Why? And how can you defend against them?
Human Error in Customer Data Theft
All types of retail outlets could fall prey to data leaks, and not all breaches come from bad intent. For example, CVS Health data could be a gold mine because of the mix of health, financial and insurance records. However, the drugstore chain’s recent breach of more than 1 billion records appears to be caused by human error. The records, according to ThreatPost, “were left in the database of a third-party, unnamed vendor – exposed, unprotected, online,” likely because of a cloud misconfiguration that left the data vulnerable.
Wegmans Food Market is a grocery store chain, but its customer data is just as attractive to attackers as a drug store’s data. Another cloud misconfiguration affecting databases left personally identifiable information (PII) of its Shoppers Club members and anyone with a Wegmans.com account open for potential compromise. Kroger was the victim of a similar style of data leak, but this misconfiguration impacted human resources data.
Outside Attackers
The retail industry is not immune to ransomware. In fact, this type of retail cyberattacks soared during the pandemic ..
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