How Retailers Can Protect Themselves From Cyber Attacks

A Victim of its Own Success
Retail companies are now a major target for cyber criminals due to three key reasons: the proliferation of technology that now supports the growth of the online retail market; the increase in volume of transactions being processed; and the rise of data stored increasing on a daily basis. With this in mind, there's never been a more fitting time to assess your network's capabilities and bolster your defenses against an increasingly complex threat landscape. Consider the following tips:

• Businesses need specialized, layered defenses to deal with DDoS attacks. General security solutions may not help, and in some cases might be targeted by attackers.
• Cloud-based DDoS protection is needed to deal with high-volume attacks that can saturate internet connectivity.
• Network perimeter protection is needed to deal quickly with any event, and before there's a customer impact.
• Organizations should monitor "across" their networks, as well as "at" the perimeter to detect suspicious and malicious activities wherever they occur.
• Organizations must leverage the broader visibility and specialist skills available to them within their vendors and service providers.

Deploying security products to deal with threats is only a part of what needs to happen. Employees must be trained regularly and processes put in place to deal with any detected incident.

Rakesh Shah is the senior director of product marketing and strategy at Arbor Networks, a provider of DDoS and advanced threat protection solutions.