In today’s digital age, cybercrime has become big business and no industry is immune. Retailers, in particular, are attractive targets due to large repositories of customer data and often inadequate security measures. Traditional retail metrics have often prioritized initiatives to maximize store performance over security, leaving significant gaps in defenses.

The retail industry’s approach to IT security has often been reactive, with cybersecurity investment sometimes lagging behind other industries due to smaller profit margins. However, these gaps in security are now becoming a critical issue, especially in light of evolving compliance standards like the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS), which releases version 4.0 in late March of this year with 63 new requirements.

Retail companies must prioritize compliance and risk management in their network security to avoid financial consequences and reputational damage, prevent customer identity theft, and protect their cybersecurity threat landscape.

The price of failure can be steep for compliance violations with fines ranging from $5,000 to $100,000 per month, which can increase over time if an organization remains out of compliance. Additional fines can be imposed due to data breaches, even if the organization is in compliance. Furthermore, banks and payment processors also reserve the right to terminate the relationship with the company.

As of 2023, the average cost of a data breach in the United States amounted to 9.48 million U.S., including fines, penalties, and potential lawsuits. These numbers highlight the importance of robust and proactive security strategies.

FireMon offers enhanced network security, compliance management, and real-time visibility and control, making it a valuable asset in a retail company’s cybersecurity strategy. FireMon’s tools assist in risk assessment and mitigation, helping security teams identify potential security gaps proactively. Furthermore, the scalability and adaptability of FireMon’s solutions make them suitable for dynamic and growing organizations, ensuring that their security infrastructure can evolve in line with the organization’s needs.

FireMon offers a range of features that make it a powerful tool for retail cybersecurity. These include:

Consolidated Compliance Reporting

FireMon provides support for custom assessments using internal business policies or external frameworks and built-in industry assessments including PCI DSS, SOX, and GDPR.

Real-time Violation Detection

FireMon’s real-time violation detection feature scans across the entire environment to find and address violations. Customizable alerts allow teams to configure platforms to their needs, and guardrails check rules before they are deployed to prevent new violations.

Rule Lifecycle Management

FireMon offers automatic reviews to recertify rules that are required and decertify those that are not. Review tickets are automatically sent to policy owners based on business criteria, and documentation captures business owners and applications for ownership and governance.

Risk and Threat Modeling

FireMon allows you to conduct attack and change simulations to assess risk, test for policy-related vulnerabilities, then prioritize patching and device rule changes.

FireMon offers various features to support compliance reporting. These include 12 built-in compliance reports supporting internal and external frameworks, support for top compliance standards including PCI DSS, SOX, and GDPR, and over 500 included controls that can be customized using SiQL native query language (FireMon’s custom query language) and RegEx(regular expressions).

FireMon is architected for real-time reporting, violation detection, and search in any environment. It offers time-proven scalability/performance verified to support 15K devices and 25M rules.

To reduce the risk of gaps in network visibility, FireMon offers real-time network and device discovery with automatic device profiling and custom details. It provides unmatched, real-time cyber situational awareness that enables network and security teams to discover the darkest corners of their often obscure infrastructure.

In the fast-paced retail environment, where threats are evolving and regulations are continually updated, it’s critical to have a security partner like FireMon that can provide comprehensive, scalable, and real-time solutions to protect your business and your customers. FireMon’s commitment to helping retail organizations achieve continuous compliance and robust risk management makes it a trusted partner in the retail industry’s cybersecurity landscape.