How is Security Testing a Top Priority in the Age of Connected Customer?

Thanks to the ever-increasing usage of internet and mobile devices, it has transformed the way organizations do their business, especially retailing.  Hyper-connected customers across multiple channels today research and buy anything, anytime, anywhere at their convenience. Convergence of social, mobile, analytics and cloud technologies has transformed the retail sector significantly.

Disruptive Digital Technologies Shaping the Retail Industry

The latest technologies like IoT, wearables, beacons, etc. are revolutionizing the retailing in terms of improving the user experience by offering personalized and context-sensitive services. Some retail segments like Fashion are bringing wearables widely into day-to-day lives of customers. Increasing adoption of wearables is opening up new and innovative ways for retailers to improve the user experience.

Likewise, beacons, the latest technology, send messages such as promotional messages, bargains available on products to the customers’ smartphones utilizing Bluetooth technology while they walk through a zone.

Apparently, as the market for the latest digital technologies is growing, so are the security and privacy concerns for the retail businesses. With the growing usage of such technologies and devices, retailers are encountering a number of new challenges, such as cybercrimes and data breaches.

[Tweet ““Organizations detected 154% more security incidents in 2015 than the year before.” – The Global State of Information Security® Survey by PwC.”]

How Security Testing becomes important in Retail?

In the current digital era where disruptive technologies are playing a critical role, retailers are facing numerous challenges due to the changing customer needs and market trends. Omni-channel retail systems and applications have become business critical and need to have the competitive edge.

Ensuring seamless and consistent user experience across the channels helps gain and retain the brand image of a retail business. The POS systems, customer support systems, and the back-end support systems have to be closely integrated with each other to offer enriched customer experience. The data that is collected at each of these touch points should be disseminated to another to maintain consistency across the omnichannel retailing system while paying attention to security aspects.

[Tweet ““Make Continuous and Automated Security Testing a Key Strategy, recommends World Quality Report 2015-16.””]

Retailers need to ensure the flawless functioning of the web and mobile payment systems. This is one of the very important areas where retailers can gain or lose customers’ confidence in the brand. Customers demand safe and secure payment gateways.

In such scenarios, Security testing is a must to identify and address security vulnerabilities of various retail channels to avoid the following:

• Loss of customer trust and thereby customers and business
• Discontinuity of various means of business / revenue generation
• Huge costs for securing retail systems against future attacks
• Connected legal implications and costs for having careless security measures

Security testing aims at revealing flaws in security mechanisms and finding the vulnerabilities or weaknesses of software applications. The primary objective of security testing is to identify and assess how vulnerable a system may be and to determine if the data and resources are protected from potential hackers. As omnichannel / multi-channel retailing has gained momentum, online transactions have increased rapidly and security testing has become very critical to achieve customer confidence and trust.

Security breaches damage reputation of any retail business. They pose a serious threat to business continuity. Therefore, retailers need to address consumers’ concerns and meet their expectations for improved online security. Of late, retail and consumer companies are taking measures to improve their cybersecurity capabilities and gain competitive advantage.

As per The Global State of Information Security® Survey by PwC, the number of detected security incidents skyrocketed 154% and the estimated financial losses as a result of all security incidents soared 159% in 2015 over the year before. In 2016, average information security spending soared 67%, the report states.

Cigniti’s security testing services help you safeguard your retail systems / applications and achieve improved customer trust by ensuring privacy and security of their data. Write to us to know more about our software testing services and how Cigniti can help you take advantage of Security testing.