It’s a well-known fact that the holiday season is the favorite time of year for criminals. Business owners and managers should make sure that they are staying alert and are encouraging their employees to protect their merchandise as well as protect their consumers’ credit card data. The following are a few simple measures that security experts suggest businesses take to minimize data security risks during the holiday season.
Screen, monitor and train all temporary workers
Most businesses bring on temporary workers to help during the busy holiday shopping season. If these temporary workers have access to customer data, BE CAREFUL and follow these tips for protecting your business:
- Make the extra investment to conduct thorough background checks of all temporary employees.
- Set up the proper access controls for your temporary workers so that they only have access to what is necessary for them to perform their jobs.
- Ensure that both your temporary and permanent employees are educated on all the signs of fraud. This helps add another layer of security during this heightened period of risk.
Monitor the use of satellite point of sale systems and scanning devices
Many businesses increase their use of handheld scanners and satellite point of sale systems for line-busting during the holidays. Make sure that you have built physical security around these devices to prevent tampering. Without monitoring, criminals can easily install a card-skimming device that is not a part of normal business operations on these additional devices.
Assign individuals to perform spot checks on transactions and review data logs daily
Reviewing your system and transaction logs can help you catch any abnormalities in the security of your data at any point in time. Check them daily for any issues to proactively address anything out of the ordinary and minimize your risk of data loss.
Continue to implement patches to operating systems and point of sale systems
Many companies “lock down” their systems during the busy holiday season and avoid making any changes to the network and their systems. Criminals know this and will not hesitate to try to exploit any known vulnerabilities in operating systems that have not been patched. Continue to perform a risk-based evaluation of new threats and be open to deploying security updates during the holiday season.
Bottom line
Don’t make the mistake of ignoring the security of operations and consumer data during the hectic holiday season. Criminals know that this is the perfect time of year to steal data due to the high volume of transactions. You can’t afford to overlook any security precautions…if you do…you’ll risk losing much more than just sales volume.
For more information, visit Radiant’s restaurant data security site or our retail data security site.
The post Don’t Give Criminals an Unintentional Gift This Holiday Season appeared first on NCR Hospitality Blog.
