Have a Merry Networked Holiday
Along with increased sales and profits, the holidays also bring retailers increased strain on their networks. Fortunately, there are a number of steps retailers can take to keep their networks secure, scaled and operational throughout the busy holiday season. Jay Yanko, retail global practice leader for Verizon Enterprise Solutions Group, has advice to keep the holidays networked and bright.
When it comes to security, Yanko said the same rules that apply the rest of the year apply during the holidays.
“The majority of holiday security issues are basic,” said Yanko. “You need to reset passwords, put access control in place, and make sure there are no holes where outside sources could find a secure area by accident.” It’s also important to ensure that POS systems are compliant with the latest PCI and EMV standards for secure payment card transactions. Online retailers should be aware of coming shifts in payment fraud trends.
“EMV will push nefarious actors to the online space,” cautioned Yanko. “The physical space is easier today for criminals to focus on than the online space, but that’s changing.”
Of course, in modern retail the lines between brick-and-mortar and digital channels are blurring. A prime example: the increasingly popular buy-online-pick-up-in-store option, which requires a special focus to maintain security.
“Look at how business processes are executed in buy-online-pick-up-in-store,” Yanko said. “Twelve to 15 systems or more participate in a services-oriented architecture. Not all of them reside within the four walls of the retailer. So if you call out to a tax lookup system, make sure you have a secure connection that doesn’t allow traffic to be exposed or open a hole into your systems through an external interface.”
To meet increased holiday-related demand and traffic on their networks, Yanko said an elastic cloud-based architecture that can scale up or down is the best resource.
“To deliver optimal customer experience during the holidays, you want an ecosystem in place ready to integrate with other computer platforms,” he explained. “You can connect to clouds and back-end systems and infrastructure in between in the same ecosystem; you scale up and down.” In addition, retailers can contract with cloud providers to ensure their networks stay operational during especially intense periods of holiday demand.
“Retailers need the ability to burst beyond expectations so their computer networks can handle spikes in traffic they aren’t expecting,” Yanko said. “What if demand for products shuts down commerce across your property? It’s especially not good on Black Friday. Analyze what you have capacity for and contract with a cloud provider to scale beyond your normal infrastructure if needed.”
He also urged retailers to perform load testing of network applications, server and database infrastructure, and data input/ output capacity.
“The network serves as a machine bus, executing the client/server relationship across the network,” said Yanko. “It’s how we do e-commerce. If network applications are not optimized for communication across the network, it’s where you run into the most problems. Load test to identify bottlenecks. You may need to adjust infrastructure or refactor code.”
Retailers should remember that the end-of-year holidays are not the only seasonal event that places extra demand on their networks. Other events that test many retailers’ network capacities include back-to-school, new product releases and changes in seasons. Retailers can practice for the holidays during these smaller events during the year.
“You can get policies and procedures in place for the real event,” advised Yanko. “It doesn’t pay to be reactive this time of year.