HOW TO ENSURE YOUR POS SYSTEM IS SECURE

DMM DEPARTMENT MB Enterprises

To make sure that your POS system is secure during the holiday season comes out as a huge responsibility for a retailer. If you are a retailer or a small business owner your concerns during the holiday season might be revolving around optimized floor plans, incorrect change or a possibility of an internal theft. With the involvement of the modern technology there are a host of new challenges that are now introduced in the industry. One of the main possibilities is that valuable credit card information of a customer can fall into wrong hands and can be misused in future. The modern & new solutions are vulnerable to the loss of internet connectivity, cyber threats & various other concerns. What are the risks that retailers and small business owners face this holiday season?

WHY RETAILERS ARE VULNERABLE?

Retailers are vulnerable & can get exposed to activities such as fraud, cyber threats & other similar activities. As a matter of fact today’s POS systems i.e. Point of Sale systems are simply modern computers. All they need is an internet connection for functioning as well as transferring transactions and payments information over the same network. However, while they seem to be standard procedures therefore for business owners it’s like routine & they tend to pay the least possible attention. This can easily give rise to major threats. An example of a threat can be cyber-attack. What if a cybercriminal is monitoring that network?

go undetected for months and end and gather sensitive information passing through. A POS network failure that is a huge possibility can arise and result in no card transaction. This could also possibly mean no sales. The reason for this is as customers these days usually don’t carry cash with them.

HOW CAN CYBERATTACKS BE PREVENTED?

While making evaluations how to prevent the cyber risks which includes malicious malware during the season of holidays. Hence, making sure POS systems are protected should be the top most priorities of retailers & business owners. What as a retailer can be done is follow best practices that can be implemented on board to mitigate threats.

It is just like most of the modern day computers POS machines also have ports that are USB ports. Phones can act as a carrier of threats just like a Trojan horse, and even the person connecting the phone with the port for transaction to get through doesn’t have any idea of the amount of threat it can be. Devices that are plugged directly into the machines can bypass firewalls or other network protections. It’s also known as following your journey towards cyber hygiene i.e. safe practices linked to POS. You can spend time as well as resources protecting the front-end of your network.

As part of the common practices cyber criminals keep changing their approach every minute so that they can breakdown standard router firewall efforts. With the more advanced solutions offering intelligent network analytics that can easily and in a much better way protect your whole network. Techniques and programs also known as ‘Zero-Day’ hacks are used often to protect and making things incredibly difficult to recognize. Hence, more often a true Front-End protection can make an analysis of patterns to stop a zero-day attack on a business. Instead of getting worried for your POS system’s security, its best to take the necessary steps for the mitigation of risks involved. This practice if commonly made will also help your network run more efficiently.