Retail surgery: What are the most important parts of an online security strategy?

With thousands of transactions taking place every minute and lots of sensitive customer payment information being entered in the run-up to Christmas, retailers need to have a cyber-security strategy in place.

Darren Anstee, solutions architect team manager at Arbor Networks, says there are three things retailers need to make sure they have on their security Christmas list.

First, retailers need to ensure the availability of any web-based services that their business activities rely upon. Distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks are the number-one threat to internet service availability.

Anstee says: “Attacks can be high volume and cause network congestion, or stealthy and target the application itself. Layered DDoS defences are needed to counter this.”

Secondly, organisations need to understand how and where any sensitive business and customer information is managed and stored.

Anstee says: “Recognised best practice should be followed and access to data should be controlled and monitored. Solutions should be in place that flag any unusual activity wherever it occurs within an organisation’s infrastructure so that security breaches can be identified wherever they come from.”

And thirdly, processes need to be in place to streamline the handling of any security incident. Anstee says: “Incident handling processes can reduce the operational overhead of dealing with a threat, reducing its impact. These processes need to be exercised regularly so that personnel can follow them effectively.”