The Restaurant Loss Prevention & Security Association (RLPSA) is converting its annual in-person conference to a “To Go” (virtual) format March 2 – 4, 2021. The “To Go” format will provide the foodservice community a virtual way to obtain relevant loss prevention, safety and risk content. 

The 16th annual (Organized Retail Crime) ORC study released by the National Retail Federation found 75% of loss prevention executives at a cross-section of large and mid-sized retail companies said ORC activity had increased in the past year, up from 68% last year. 

For retailers, a rapid shift to e-commerce means significant opportunity to increase sales margins, in an effort to end the year strong as COVID-19 continues to rattle the industry. However, this opportunity also comes with significant risk, as malicious actors are highly-motivated to exploit holes in retailers’ digital platforms for financial gain this holiday shopping season. To achieve strengthened eCommerce software security, here are four best practices retailers should implement, not just throughout the holiday shopping season, but year-round.

Before the pandemic, buy online, pickup in store (BOPIS) became hugely popular to consumers who didn’t want to have to wait for items to be delivered, pay for shipping or for those that wanted to avoid shopping in store altogether. However, as retailers adopted BOPIS, its rise flipped a switch and increased opportunities for fraudsters, enabling them to use stolen credit card information to make purchases online and then simply arrive at the store to pick up the item. So what can retailers do to ensure their customers are staying safe? Here are a few things to consider:

Department store chain Kmart has suffered a cyberattack by the Egregor ransomware operation, resulting in the encryption of devices and servers connected to the company’s networks. According to Bleeping Computer, online stores continue to operate, but the 'Transformco Human Resources Site,' 88sears.com, is currently offline, leading employees to believe the outage is caused by the recent ransomware attack.

This holiday season, more consumers than ever will be shopping digitally - and cybercriminals are already capitalizing on the opportunity. Greg Foss, Senior Cybersecurity Strategist at VMware Carbon Black, looked through the dark web to find that: There’s a continued rise in e-skimming attacks in the retail sector, where attackers inject JavaScript into website payment processing pages in order to siphon credit cards and account credentials from customers.