Don't look now, but the holiday shopping season is right around the corner. As we get into November, we are only four weeks away from Thanksgiving weekend, the unofficial start of the season, although if you were to visit a local mall today you would likely find several holiday-themed decorations hanging in various retail stores. As a consumer, you probably don't like being reminded of Christmas that early in the year, but it does show how seriously many retailers take the season. It's a genuine opportunity for organizations to increase revenue and meet their goals by the end of the year. Of course, that's contingent on merchants making the most of the season by ensuring they maximize revenue. This year, retailers hope to increase performance by tightening their security on customer information.
It was right around this time last year when criminals implemented a plan to breach Target's security system. Then, from Thanksgiving weekend through the middle of December, the retail giant suffered one of the largest breaches in memory and as many as 110 million customers were compromised. What followed was a year of several other high-profile incidents ranging from breaches at Home Depot to Dairy Queen. Many of the latest data breaches made headlines this year, and with the busy season fast approaching, plans are being put into place to alleviate the risk of fraud.
Deal News contributor Louis Ramirez recently revealed his predictions for this year's holiday shopping season. He believes that despite uncertain economic conditions, it will be a busy one as retailers will put forth a greater effort to entice shoppers to get up early and come to their stores on Black Friday. Everything from more guaranteed door buster deals to a heavier emphasis on big-ticket items like televisions will likely bring the public out in droves. But with all those people flowing in and out of their stores, retailers must make sure they are not compromising security.
"It was around Black Friday last year that Target experienced the first of these massive security hacks, but it wasn't the last — then came Neiman Marcus, eBay, Home Depot, and more," Ramirez writes. "There's no denying 2014 has been the year of the hack. As a result, both retailers and consumers will be extra cautious this year, guarding their credit card info from would-be thieves. We recommend brushing up on a few crime prevention basics and limiting the amount of times you use your debit card in public."
Given the tension surrounding customer security practices and the uncertain state of the economy, this could be a make-or-break holiday season for a number of major retailers. No one wants to go through the PR nightmare Target endured last year, and as we have seen with the release of services such as Apple Pay, consumers are more concerned about the security of their information than ever and expect retailers to be sensitive to this and meet their security needs.
A credit card security breach is always a difficult time, but it can be devastating during the holiday season. Working with a data breach protection provider can help alleviate the risk of an incident happening over the busy shopping period.
To learn more about emerging technologies and their potential affects on payment fraud, download a copy of our whitepaper below.
