Cloud Solutions Boost Cybersecurity Measures for Retailers
As cyber threats continue to rise, more retailers are taking action to strengthen their cybersecurity. Investing in new cybersecurity mechanisms isn’t the only way to strengthen your security posture. Cloud-based solutions can help you improve both physical and cybersecurity.
How Do Cloud Solutions Strengthen Cybersecurity?
Today, physical security and cybersecurity are interlinked. The right physical security solution can help you secure both people and stores, with access to built-in tools that keep cyber resilience strong and consistent.
However, securing on-premises systems while maintaining cybersecurity best practices can require extra work. Staying on top of software and firmware updates, vulnerability patches, server lifecycles, and maintenance agreements strains resources.
Cloud services offer an easier path to cyber resilience.
3 Ways Cloud Solutions Enhance Your Cyber Posture
- Maintaining cyber hardening with your technology vendor: When you partner with a trusted cloud technology vendor, you share the responsibility of ensuring that your solution is cybersecure. Your partner has dedicated teams who work around the clock to proactively mitigate potential vulnerabilities. You don’t need specialized teams or resources to handle these tasks. Your team can focus on day-to-day operations while knowing cybersecurity experts are handling hardening and risk mitigation.
- Establishing data sovereignty and redundancy: The right infrastructure partner will have many different data center locations from which to choose. You retain control over where your data is stored and processed. No matter where your systems are located, you can adapt each system’s settings to meet local compliance regulations all from one cloud-based platform. This ensures that you establish data sovereignty depending on local data protection laws.
- Evolving cybersecurity measures with your partners: Integrators, consultants and technology partners have tools to remotely monitor your system’s health. They can help identify opportunities to enhance your cybersecurity even further. This might include adding new integrations or tools, providing specialized training, or customizing other measures. This extra support goes a long way in keeping threats at bay.
How Safe Are Cloud-Based Physical Security Solutions?
While it’s normal to speculate whether your data and systems are protected, the cloud can be a lot safer than many on-premises systems. Tier-one cloud service providers such as Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services, and Google Cloud Platform invest significant amounts of time and resources in ensuring the highest levels of cybersecurity.
These major platform owners have teams dedicated to monitoring the latest cyber threats and initiating regular third-party penetration testing and auditing. They also actively uphold various cybersecurity compliance standards, such as ISO27001, and certifications.
Consider the Flexibility of a Hybrid-Cloud Deployment
Thinking about moving to the cloud but not ready to transition to a full-cloud deployment? Choosing a hybrid-cloud model is the best option.
With a hybrid-cloud model, you have the freedom to move some components to the cloud while keeping others on-premises. With the right technology, everything connects back into one centralized and intuitive cloud-based platform. Your operators can easily manage security across all your stores and maintain cybersecurity best practices.
You can also swap out older proprietary network video recorders (NVRs) for cloud-managed appliances to easily connect existing devices to your cloud-based platform. This helps to quickly modernize deployments while keeping some existing investments. Firmware and cybersecurity updates are automatically pushed to these devices, strengthening cybersecurity and eliminating the need to send technicians on-site for maintenance.
Choosing the Right Cloud Solution Matters
Having the right cloud solution and technology provider means you can get access to built-in cybersecurity features and tools to automate processes, stay on top of threats, and manage privacy. You’ll also get a team of experts working proactively to ensure that your systems are always hardened and secure. This lets you focus on what matters most — keeping everyday retail operations running smoothly.
Nada Ebeid is the regional director of Signature Brands, Canada at Genetec, a leader in unified physical security software.
Nada Ebeid, Regional Director of Signature Brands, Canada, Genetec
As the director of Signature Brands in Canada for Genetec, Nada Ebeid oversees the market growth for financial and banking, retail, cannabis, hospitality, and other signature markets. She’s responsible for helping customers meet their security solution goals and empowering them to leverage their security systems to improve other areas of their businesses.
