Businesses have put significant effort into shielding their e-commerce operations this holiday season. Fresh figures from Tripwire suggest they started preparing earlier, adding new tools and protections, and are more confident in their defenses as a result.
According to the Tripwire report, more than three quarters of retailers took extra IT security steps ahead of the holiday season. Almost all said they were motivated to introduce additional protections knowing that, with the Covid-19 pandemic still in full swing, people are spending more time and money online.
Most of the organizations polled for the survey (63 percent) started preparing for the holiday shopping season earlier than usual, but for the majority of them (57 percent), the current surge in online shopping has made security more challenging.
However, six in ten said they were more capable of detecting and responding to a data breach compared to last year, and a third said they were “excellent” at protecting customer data (up from 19 percent three years ago).
More organizations are discovering IT assets automatically, compared to 2017, with configuration changes being identified more quickly. Almost two thirds can detect these changes in minutes or hours. Most organizations nowadays are able to address vulnerabilities within 15 days of detection.
“It’s clear that Covid is driving changes in how retail organizations think about the holiday season”, said Tim Erlin, VP of Product Management & Strategy at Tripwire.
“They’re starting earlier and expecting increased volume, along with increased risk. With fewer people in the stores, there will be more online shopping. More online shopping means more of the risks that go along with it, including attacks on both consumers and retailers themselves.”
