Retailers are racing to meet evolving customer expectations, streamline operations, and stay ahead of the competition. From personalized shopping experiences and seamless omnichannel interactions to AI-driven inventory management and predictive analytics, the retail industry is leveraging technology like never before to drive innovation and enhance customer engagement.
The Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG) by TechTarget, commissioned by Orca Security, has released a compelling new whitepaper exploring the critical importance of securing cloud-native retail applications. This insightful report, titled “Secure Cloud-native Retail Applications Optimizing Customer and Business Growth,” delves into the transformative power of cloud services in the retail sector and the accompanying security challenges.
New ESG Whitepaper: Securing the future of retail in the cloud
The retail industry is undergoing a significant transformation, leveraging cloud services to revolutionize their operations and customer experiences. This shift to the cloud is enabling retailers to create feature-rich applications, optimize processes across the value chain, and deliver personalized customer experiences through sophisticated data analytics and AI.
However, this cloud revolution comes with its own set of security challenges. As retailers move more of their operations to the cloud, they become increasingly attractive targets for cybercriminals seeking to exploit vulnerabilities in these new environments.
Key takeaways from the whitepaper
- Rapid Cloud Adoption: The retail industry is swiftly moving production workloads to the cloud. ESG’s research shows that within 24 months, 60% of retail organizations expect to have over 40% of their production applications cloud-hosted.
- Prevalent Security Incidents: Despite having multiple security tools in place, 91% of retail organizations suffered a cybersecurity incident on their cloud-native applications. These incidents led to serious consequences, including application downtime, unauthorized access to sensitive information, and customer data loss.
- Visibility Challenges: 70% of retail organizations reported challenges in monitoring and maintaining visibility of their cloud-native applications, resulting in dangerous blind spots.
- Tool Consolidation Trend: An overwhelming 96% of retail organizations agree that consolidating security tools to gain better context for efficient remediation and faster response is a priority.
- Need for Cloud-Native Security: Retail organizations require security solutions that are built for cloud environments, providing comprehensive visibility, contextual intelligence, and support for compliance requirements.
- Business Alignment: Effective cloud security solutions need to align with key business drivers, including supporting the scale of cloud assets, meeting customer demands, and enabling innovative technologies.
The path forward
The whitepaper emphasizes that as retail organizations leverage cloud services to drive innovation and growth, they must evolve their security strategies accordingly. The need for comprehensive, cloud-native security solutions that can provide full visibility, streamline operations, and support compliance has never been more critical.
Retail organizations should look for security solutions that offer:
- Full visibility across multi-cloud environments
- Context-aware alert prioritization
- Efficient remediation capabilities
- Strong compliance support
- Scalability to match business growth
Get the full insights
This blog post only scratches the surface of the valuable insights contained in the full ESG whitepaper. To gain a deeper understanding of the cloud security landscape in the retail sector and learn how you can effectively secure your cloud-native retail applications, download the complete report.
