The Nightmare Before Christmas: Data Breaches Expected for Holiday Season

Consumers and U.S. retailers should beware of the grinch this holiday season.  Experts say that more data breaches are in store for companies and consumers this holiday season. This year alone cyber attacks on U.S. retailers increased 25.3 percent from the same period last year. Banks, retailers, and consumers have raised their awareness towards cyber crime.

Most attacks happen when hackers enter Internet communication in-between the sender and the receiver. Traffic flows through a sequence of routers and when the hackers are able to access a midpoint, they can view and copy any information that passes through it. Often times this information is credit cards information and passwords that can lead to more trouble for consumers and retailers.

Robert Twitchell, president and CEO of cybersecurity firm Dispersive Technologies had this recommendation for retailers and consumers:

“Retailers layer security precautions, pay attention to new hacking and prevention technologies, and buy insurance. As for consumers, he advices that shoppers should be careful about the websites they visit, keep banking and online purchases to a few machines, and buy software protection.”

Despite this, the inevitability of a hack happening is high. The Payment Card Industry compliance (PCI) that most retailers follow is outdated, leaving IT companies playing catchup. 

AccelOps helps retailers prevent data breaches every day. Watch our “Five Keys to PCI Compliance” webinar to to learn how to:

• Be “always ready” for a PCI audit

• Utilize pre-built, audit-ready rules and reports

• Automatically discover new – potentially rogue – devices on your network

• Stop “alert overload” (understand what’s important and what’s not)

• Get to root causes quickly and easily

Stay safe and don’t let this holiday season be your version of The Grinch That Stole Christmas.