Why Small Retailers have Become an Easy Target for the Cyberattacks
retailciooutlook

Why Small Retailers have Become an Easy Target for the Cyberattacks

By: Retail CIO Outlook | Monday, August 10, 2020

The small and medium sized retailers are more vulnerable to cyber attacks as they do not have proper strategy or equipment to deal with it.

FREMONT, CA: In such malicious times, cybercrimes can happen to anyone, whether it is an enterprise or a person. The distressing part is in most of the cybercrime cases the big organizations get the headlines, but the retailers have to suffer the most from the attacks. It can be challenging for small enterprises dealing with such incidents of data breaches, particularly if they suffer financial and reputational damage. According to the industry surveys for most of the retailers, cyberattacks can be more concerning than a natural calamity.

For the cybercriminals, retailers are an easy target as they do not have the ability and resource that can prevent an attack and deal with the consequences. Moreover, there are many retailers who have to shut their doors as they cannot recover from the damages caused by cyber-attacks. There are various reasons due to which retailers fail to foresee, improve, and fight back against those malicious attacks. One of the major reason is they do not have a flexible defense strategy against such attacks, and most of them are not even well equipped to apply such cyber strategy. Furthermore, the shortage of skilled employees is also another distressing part that small enterprises have to deal by on a daily basis. Beyond financial loss, the retailers also have to deal with other outcomes because they have to conduct business with other prominent organizations due to which their clients may get affected indirectly.  Top 10 Retail Analytics Companies in UK - 2020

Primary cyber risks 

Here are some of the cyber crimes that can be more dangerous for retailers than any other big companies. 

1. Human capital risks- 

A company can face this type of security risks if they have a shortage of trained IT security employees or lack of cybersecurity education among the employees. 

2. Operational risks

An operational risk mostly involves loss of intellectual property, issues created in operational systems, and financial damages. 

3. Cyber risks

The companies going through cyber risks have to deal with external threats. It even includes malware attacks like cryptocurrency miners, botnet, and ransomware.

4. Infrastructural risks

The cybercriminals get the scope of conducting infrastructural risks when there is no proper security to safeguard technologies like server environment, cloud services, and IoT. 

5. Data risks

Data risks include the loss of sensitive and essential confidential that like trade secrets and customer information. The retailers dealing with work-related to outsourced data of the large companies become a victim of such breaches.

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