Tech Guest Viewpoint: Remote Access Helps Solve Retail Tech Challenges
By Nick Hidalgo, Redner’s Markets Inc.
The evolution of POS systems and other in-store innovations, such as self-service checkout and mobile payments, are changing how grocers serve their customers. While these solutions introduce convenience, they often result in a greater number of in-store devices and systems, as well as an increasingly complex computing network.
These trends have placed new pressures on retail IT teams. Support teams must ensure that they can support this wide array of technologies and devices, and efficiently resolve issues as they arise to minimize any downtime. This complexity is further compounded by the geographic challenges associated with retail’s distributed nature. Even if a supermarket brand has full-time IT staff dedicated as support technicians, the scope of work and the logistics of handling each IT issue in person is simply not realistic—or cost efficient.
Additionally, security is a foremost concern for every retailer, particularly now when cybercriminals seem to be targeting retailers more than ever. Protecting the data within a company’s network, especially customer payment information, and guarding against outside cyber threats is an ongoing battle, and a struggle that isn’t likely to lessen in the years ahead.
These and other retail IT support challenges are things we’re familiar with at Redner’s Markets, Inc. A privately held, employee-owned company, Redner’s operates 65 stores throughout Eastern Pennsylvania, Maryland and Delaware. Our IT department is fairly common for a regional supermarket chain: a small group of core IT staff is responsible for everything from system upgrades and end-user support, to compliance with industry standards governing data such as PCI compliance. In addition, the IT department must maintain and service hardware on the back-end, including 500 PCs, phone systems, registers and a corporate data center.
Utilizing Remote Access
Our chain’s stores include 700 traditional POS machines and 110 self-service kiosks that allow customers to check out items without employee assistance. With POS system maintenance upgrades and other responsibilities, IT staff could spend all of their time on supporting and troubleshooting these systems if they didn’t have solutions that help maximize efficiency.
Secure remote access is a tool in Redner’s arsenal that has become valuable in addressing the need to support a variety of IT issues. The ability to remotely connect to any device or system, anytime, from anywhere, allows us to quickly troubleshoot and fix issues that in the past took a lot of time and effort to resolve. Some of the most common challenges include:
Network outages: If an outage impacts the POS system, it can harm the relationship with customers and affect third parties like vendors and distributors. Remote access can be used to connect to and troubleshoot systems remotely and reset the primary network connection in the event of a failure. This allows companies to avoid unnecessary downtime caused by waiting on telco providers to provide support. In many cases, stores can be brought back online for all functions relatively quickly.
Compliance with PCI standards: In a significant development last month, the PCI Security Standards Council codified an upgrade to the standards that regulate the payment cards industry, placing more demand on retailers to ensure they are compliant with sometimes confusing guidelines. Auditing functions play a role in PCI compliance, which continues to evolve and become more stringent as retailers face increased pressure to defend against data breach threats.
Enforcing security policies and access controls for employees and other stakeholders can be challenging. When individuals have privileged access to systems on the network, companies need to ensure those accounts are managed in a secure, auditable way.
Sophisticated remote access solutions enable organizations to capture audit logs and video recordings of all remote access activity, and also implement policies and guidelines around when and from where privileged users can access certain systems.
Securing vendor access: Finally, like other regional chains, Redner’s works with several vendors across different aspects of the company. Vendor access is a particularly hot topic in retail because it is seen as a vulnerable access point for data breaches.
In the past, many IT departments had no choice but to share VPN credentials with vendors in order to provide access to systems. Today, using secure remote access tools, IT can establish strict permission settings to manage, control, and monitor vendor access. These tools allow IT departments to give preferred third-parties access to just the systems they need to work on, or even send one-time invitations to vendors for a specific remote support session.
Secure remote access is one way to allow IT to incorporate mobile POS and other consumer-driven trends while also enhancing productivity and security.
Nick Hidalgo is director of IT for Redner’s Markets, Inc.