9 Security Best Practices For Safe Shopping

It's that time of year again. Holiday shoppers are out in droves and, it stands to reason, cyber attackers are at the ready. Target's data breach announced last holiday season kicked off a rash of similar announcements throughout 2014 from the likes of Home Depot, Neiman Marcus, and Michaels. The latest target (pun intended) has been Sony, along with its PlayStation Network. There is little doubt that attackers are poised to take advantage of companies doing business online that have failed to learn from previous victims.

While cardholder data breaches are a timely topic this time of year, they are by no means limited to the heavy shopping season. According to a 2014 Ponemon Institute study, an organization has a 22% chance of experiencing a data breach affecting at least 10,000 customer records in the next two years. Retailers are at grave risk, but all companies with network access to corporate files must make data security a priority throughout the year. They can start with these basic security measures, several of which are lessons learned from past breaches.  

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