Security Is Paramount As Retailers Face Growing Complexity In App

By Christine Kern, contributing writer

Retail Apps are seriously underperforming when it comes to security.

Consumers want mobile apps to help make their shopping experience to be faster, more efficient, and more flexible. But as retailer scramble to provide apps that will meet their customers’ needs, they are facing growing complexity in app rollouts that leave security wanting.

As a recent Cybera blog post asserts, “While every sector is under attack, retail serves as a compelling example because it is characterized by a high number of distributed sites processing a high volume of transactions. Thus, retail finds itself in the crosshairs of the cybercriminal, incurring 2.7 times more attacks than the next leading industry, finance.”

More retailers have branched out into the mobile arena, allowing employees to use their own tablets and smartphones for work-related purposes, replacing or augmenting traditional point-of-sale systems with a mobile POS, or have developed their own applications to make it easier for customers to purchase items.

Meanwhile, a new study from Cybera found that many retailers lack the necessary IT staff at the store level to guarantee proper security, and that two-thirds reported being challenged by growing complexity in past application deployments.

“Distributed retail enterprises depend on technology to help them provide consistent customer experiences and support critical back office processes across tens to thousands of locations,” said Cliff Duffey, President and Founder, Cybera. “Often working with little to no IT staff at retail locations, getting applications up and running and maintaining security is a widespread challenge that can add additional cost, time and complexity to projects.”

The study also found

• Nearly one-quarter (23.5 percent) of respondents said they have no IT or security staffers on site in the average retail store.
• Point of sale (POS), payment authorization and payroll systems were the most commonly deployed applications;
• Just 10 percent of respondents with more than 1,000 locations cited inability to scale as a challenge in their past application deployments.

“As retailers depend on a growing number of applications to support everything from payments to loyalty and surveillance in their stores, finding a reliable and scalable deployment solution will become all the more critical,” added Greg Garten, Chief Technology Officer and Executive Vice President of Engineering, Cybera.