Offer solutions, services, and training which will help protect your clients’ businesses from cyberattack and fraud — and help you develop stronger business relationships with them.
Payment security has become a top priority in the retail industry. Merchants made up 24% of all cyberattack victims last year, putting retail in the top five most-targeted industries. Virtually all threat actors — 98% — hope to score some quick cash (or cryptocurrency) from their exploits. Retailers often feel pressured to pay ransom or take a reactionary posture to dodge bad publicity that makes headlines. Retailers work too hard building goodwill only to see their reputation and revenue crumble when their security proves to be inadequate to prevent a data breach.
Furthermore, when the average incident costs retailers $4.45 million, merchants can’t afford even the smallest vulnerability. Helping retail clients safeguard critical systems offers a great opportunity to grow those relationships and provide even deeper value.
Compliance and education are key to greater payment security.
PCI compliance remains the bedrock of payment security. The Payment Card Industry Security Standards Council issues and updates the criteria that govern the retail technologies handling payments at the point of sale and beyond. But merchants should also adopt payment security best practices to keep sensitive data out of the wrong hands.
For example, encourage your clients not to write account numbers on paper or file them after a transaction. Instead, provide them with a solution that leverages tokenization to “remember” customers’ payment information without making it readable to anyone who accesses their system.
Also, help your clients educate their employees about the importance of payment security. Offer training sessions to educate retail employees on the importance of securing customer card information. Stress creating strong passwords and always keeping login information private. In addition, urge your clients to control which employees have access to payment data based on their role in the organization and advise them to immediately revoke that access when the employee changes roles or leaves the organization.
The importance of using updated systems.
Merchants who want stronger payment security will prioritize updating systems and hardware. Remind your clients that installing the newest software patches will repair the kinds of weaknesses that hackers like to use to their advantage. A whopping 80% of cyberattacks happen because of known issues that businesses simply didn’t move fast enough to fix. Most of these vulnerabilities were uncovered three years before the attack, some as many as seven years earlier. There’s no excuse for knowing there’s a security risk and letting it simply hang around, waiting for a cybercriminal to strike. You may even be able to provide this service, which will help keep your clients safer from attack while building revenue for your business.
Also, educate your clients about technology advancements that can enhance security. Artificial intelligence (AI) can be especially promising. AI-powered tools can quickly scan billions of bits of data to find and fix risks, often before they become full-on failures. Cyberattackers use increasingly sophisticated techniques; AI can help retailers stay one step ahead.
Furthermore, with so much ecommerce sales growth happening, merchants want to protect online sales and limit fraud, a problem that cost the industry $41 billion last year and could reach $48 billion before 2023 ends.
Take the role of trusted advisor.
Secure businesses are strong businesses. Equipping merchants to tighten up their payment security posture is not just critical for their success — it’s key for your long-term livelihood, too. Document your security efforts with regular reporting so clients know your proactive work pays off. This will help you move beyond merely transactional deals and build value-added relationships, cementing your role as an advisor and authority on security and so much more.
To learn more about solutions that enhance payment security, contact us.
