PAYMENTS
19
LONDON WORST FOR
E-TAILERS
RETAIL WIRELESS SECURITY
FIGHT BACK
R
ecent research has found retailers only of APs scanned using some form of encryption.
London retailers don’t seem to be Retailers in Los Angeles and New York came AGAINST
learning the lessons of last year’s TJX out top, deploying some form of encryption
hack and improving their wireless network on 77% of their wireless APs and Paris ranked RECESSION
security. second with 76%.
The second annual survey by wireless Overall, 25% were still using Wired
FRAUD
local area network (WLAN) network security Equivalent Privacy (WEP), the weakest
provider, AirDefense of 4,000 stores in some protocol for wireless data encryption. But
of the world’s busiest shopping cities has put new WEP deployments are to be prohibited
London at the bottom of the pile in terms of by version 1.2 of the Payment Card Industry
levels of wireless security protection used by (PCI) Data Security Standard (DSS) in any part
retailers. of the cardholder data environment (CDE)
The research also found that overall, 44% beyond 31 March 2009 and must eliminated
of the wireless devices used by retailers – such from the CDE by 30 June 2010.
as laptops, mobile computers and barcode The research pointed out that, by using the
scanners – could be compromised. same technology, con½ guration, security and
But this was still signi½ cantly lower than naming conventions at every retail location,
the 85% of wireless devices that had security merchants can essentially repeat vulnerabilities
vulnerabilities in the same survey last year; across the store chain, rendering them non-PCI
around the same time as details of the Wi-Fi compliant and susceptible to attack.
hack at US retailer TJX, causing one of the Richard Rushing, Motorola Mobile Devices
biggest known theft of credit card details to senior director of information security said that,
date. despite an improvement on the numbers of
Motorola scanned the airwaves at major vulnerable wireless devices found, “a signi½ cant
shopping centres across the US and in London, majority of retailers are still susceptible to a
Recent SPSS research has revealed
Paris, Seoul and Sydney for the presence network intrusion”. “A sign that wireless security
that retailers are going on the
of wireless networks using systems from remains an afterthought for many,” he added.
AirDefense, which acquired in September last A further 12 per cent of all APs monitored
offensive to tackle online scams.
year. were using Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA)
Research conducted by
The Motorola AirDefense survey security protocol protection, while 27 per cent
independent market researcher,
monitored 7,940 access points (APs) and were using WPA-PSK (pre-shared key), which
Vanson Bourne on behalf of
found 32 per cent were unencrypted, can only be as strong as the shared password predictive analytics provider, SPSS
compared to 26% in last year’s survey. used to protect them. Overall, only 7 percent found 37% of online businesses
London was ranked the lowest in terms of of retailers were using WPA2, the strongest
had implemented new measures to
retail wireless security, where only 51 per cent Wi-Fi security protocol available today.
reduce payment fraud via their online
channels.
FRENCH CONNECTION IMPLEMENT
One in four are using customer
behaviour analysis to identify unusual
LOSS PREVENTION TECH
or suspicious activity, which could be
linked to fraud. For example, picking
French Connection stores in the US and UK have gone live with a new loss alert service
out patterns of behaviour, which have
powered by SeeWhy Software’s real-time behavioural analytics and integrated with
been found to indicate fraudulent
Sanderson RBS’s Retail-J point-of-sale (PoS) system. The managed service, which supports
activity in the past. And the same
more than 100 retail locations, went live in the UK in July and in the US in September of
2008.
number is restricting purchases from
The UK provider of retail software solutions, Sanderson RBS hosts all of the hardware
certain locations or countries, which
and software for the loss alert system and generates all of the template-driven alerts. For
they believe to be high risk.
a monthly fee, French Connection is able to avoid costly upfront software fees with no
The research also found that
impact on their IT department. The system also enables the retailer to create operational almost one ½ fth (18%) are reducing
procedures that can be enforced through the use of technology. the number of payment methods in
“We have had a long-standing and successful relationship with Sanderson RBS and count
the belief it will help cut the risk of
on the company for its retail domain expertise and deep understanding and advice for ways
fraud. This is in contrast to traditional
to improve our business,” said Doug Gardner, IT manager for French Connection. “Adding
businesses – one in four (27 per
the SeeWhy-powered loss alert service to Retail-J puts a powerful fraud prevention tool in
cent) didn’t believe they were
our hands. In a short time, we’ve seen a great reduction in ‘no-sale’ and ‘void’ transactions
equipped to deal with increases in
– key indicators of potential fraud – and have been able to implement and enforce other
store policies by having better visibility into our transactions and the habits of our cashiers.”
fraud.
MARCH 2009 RETAIL TECHNOLOGY
Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40