The top cybersecurity risks mapped for the US retail industry: Know how they matter to you?

24% of cyberattacks targeted retailers, more than any other industry

The moot point being the frequency with which cybersecurity landscape changes and that retail businesses with traditional approaches are failing to map these risks in advance. Moreover, the financial impact of the cyber risks has never been addressed by the existing platforms.

How can cybersecurity be linked to retail businesses and their operations?

The biggest upside of the COVID 19 pandemic is that it has forced the biggest of the high street chains to shut their doors physically and set giant platforms online that can operate at the click of a button at your service. With this, data has become a crucial element of growth for anyone fighting the competitive war online and especially alongside the big fishes. As a result, cyber-attacks have swarmed up too with incidents reported in millions, if not more.  

Owing to data of customers shopping online, retail platforms have proven to be a data heaven for hackers to gain financial information. With the market size crossing $800 billion in transactions online, many retailers have launched or revamped their e-commerce stores, to help meet the growing demand. While these trends create great opportunities, they also generate new retail specific cybersecurity risks in the US market.

Do you wish to map risks that might be affecting your retail business?  

What are the top cybersecurity risks linked to the retail industry?  

Ransomware‍

Actively exploiting vulnerabilities in retailer networks to install ransomware.  
This allows attackers to encrypt systems and bring transactions to a standstill, until the retailer pays a ransom. This can lead to huge financial losses and damage the retailer’s reputation.

Credential phishing

Sending fake emails that mimic emails from legitimate sources.  
If someone clicks on the links or attachments, the attacker steals valuable information, or installs malware on their system to cause further damage.
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Supply chain attacks

A type of cyberattack that seeks to damage an organization by targeting a third-party vendor or supplier vital in providing services to the supply chain. It is usually achieved by inserting malicious code in software.

‍Data breach

Customer information like payment card data and other personal information, are big-ticket items that attackers sell ahead with huge payouts. To steal this info, they often use stolen credentials to disguise themselves as legitimate users.

Cloud-based botnets

Attackers deploy intricate systems of bots to harvest data like credit card information or credentials on platforms that store or use this data.

As a result of growing e-commerce sales, year on year, the retail sector is continuing to experience higher levels of security incidents across the US.

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How to simulate these attacks before they happen and calculate the financial cost?

Alfahive’s RiskNest^TM security quantification and assessment platform is designed to calculate cyber risk using your unique operational and business model context. With extensive machine learning driven research, we have a unique model of cyber threats, business models and KPIs for your industry. RiskNest provides immediate ROI because it includes pre-curated research and cyber-risk scenarios mapped to business functions that can help you predict the likelihood and financial impact of a variety of common risk scenarios such as Ransomware, Data breach, Bot fraud abuse risk, PII theft and more.
CISOs and Risk Managers can quickly onboard to the RiskNest platform by answering a handful of business-specific questions such as total revenue and routes to market – then use our pre-researched use cases to quickly and accurately calculate which parts of the business have the highest risk, the potential cost of an event, and the likelihood of that event happening.