Data Security

With 2019 in full swing, retail marketers are recovering from the biggest drop in holiday-season sales since 2009. Not only was it a tough holiday season, but U.S. consumer confidence may be declining as well. Marketers are under the gun to perform against these odds, and building and maintaining customer trust is the key to…

Fast Retailing, the Japanese company behind the Uniqlo retail chain, announced this week that the data of more than 460,000 customers on its online shopping sites were accessed by hackers from April 23 to May 10. The breach gave hackers access to customers’ data including their names, addresses and contact details. The company acknowledged that partial…

The biggest e-commerce challenge of 2019 may be balancing marketing and sales channel innovation with the need for increasingly sophisticated fraud prevention. This will be especially challenging because fraud protection, like many aspects of business today, requires experience and fluency in working with data, and there's a growing shortage of data scientists across the U.S.…

The numbers of those impacted by any of the high-profile consumer data breaches over the past few years sound almost comical: 50 million, 150 million and then 500 million. Is a billion next? It may not matter, considering that the sum total may already be a significant portion of the global population with a digital…

Since the mid 1990s when Jeff Bezos founded Amazon.com to sell books online, and Pierre Omidyar created eBay — enabling everyone to sell everything — new business models have threatened to destroy the traditional retail economy. To remain successful, brick-and-mortar retailers must offer personalized and deeper online and in-store customer buying experiences. How? By harnessing…

You’ve seen it before, the long form you must sign before participating in a potentially dangerous activity, the checkbox at the bottom of an end user agreement before you can use a new piece of software, the numerous documents that are part of every major financial purchase. These arduous processes are developed by companies in…

Now more than ever, cybersecurity is a crucial form of protection for businesses across industries working to combat a variety of threats. It's easy for organizations and individuals to grow complacent about security, but implementing measures to protect the data of customers, partners and your own business is a key step in mitigating cyber risks,…

For many retailers, working with third-party vendors is part and parcel of doing business, offering financial benefits and operational flexibility. However, as companies take increasing care to protect themselves against cyberattacks, their vendors often don’t face nearly as much scrutiny. Third parties, which vary in their ability to safeguard against bad actors, may simply not…

A lawsuit against Amazon.com-owned Zappos will continue after the U.S. Supreme Court rejected an appeal from the online shoe retailer in a seven-year-old data breach case. In the wake of a 2012 data breach that exposed the names, addresses, phone numbers and more of 24 million customers, Zappos faced several lawsuits from customers. Zappos argued unsuccessfully…

More and more companies, particularly retailers, are using chatbots to connect quickly with customers, enabling them to handle basic service needs faster and more efficiently. While many businesses and consumers have embraced chatbots and automated features in order to make service inquiries and share personal information, the relationship between customers, chatbots and brands still needs…