Retail

The retail industry has experienced a massive amount of change thanks to the Internet. Retailers today are significantly more efficient and, in many cases, have better knowledge about and relationships with their customers than ever before. But a consequence of this growing dependence on the efficient electronic sharing of information is that retail companies and their customers' private data are more vulnerable than ever.

Retail is also an industry that's awash in hard-to-patch servers. Historically, retailers have some of the most restrictive and lengthy periods between maintenance windows due to the seasonality of their businesses. Many retailers lock down critical systems (e.g. inventory management, order processing, etc.) every year from September through January and simply refuse to allow any patching for fear of disrupting business continuity.

Another challenge unique to the retail industry is the recent introduction of an initiative called Payment Card Industry (PCI) Data Security Standard, driven by Visa and MasterCard, which mandates rapid patch installation. This standard has been imposed to protect sensitive consumer information. Many organizations are struggling to achieve compliance. In a Network World article dated July 10, 2006, only 22% of merchants had thus far achieved compliance, despite the fact that significant fines may be imposed on those who had not.

Blue Lane Technologies can help financial services firms to instantly secure critical applications and databases from malicious attacks with zero operational risk. Blue Lane's solution shields unpatched servers with zero footprint, zero downtime, and zero tuning, until the vendor patch can be applied.