Network Segmentation in Retail: Taking It Beyond the Basics

We’re running this one again!

We covered network segmentation in retail back in October. Judging by the questions we got on the day, an hour wasn’t enough.

Most of them weren’t asking whether segmentation matters. That part was settled. They were asking about the awkward bits. What happens when a store you acquired three years ago still has its own way of doing things. What happens when the application holding up your peak trading is the one nobody wants to put their hand up for. What happens when the diagram looks fine but you’re not confident it would hold.

So, we’re going deeper this time. Same subject, more of the difficult parts.

The question we keep coming back to: “If someone gains access to the estate, how far can they travel, what damage can they do, and can the business keep trading while it is dealt with?”

Easy to ask. Not easy to answer!

So, here’s what we’ll cover

• Where the standard advice doesn’t fit a retail estate, and what we do instead
• The weak points we see most often: store devices, colleague and privileged accounts, third-party connections, cloud and datacentre, and old controls still in place doing a job they weren’t built for
• Working out which applications you actually need to keep trading, where they sit, and what they depend on
• Segmentation that looks complete on a diagram but doesn’t hold in practice, and how you find that out before an incident does
• The things worth fixing now, without waiting for a full refresh
• Testing that it protects you rather than assuming it does
• Sequencing the work around peak trading
• We’ll keep time for discussion. There’s no single right answer to any of this, and the interesting part is usually the conversation.

Who it’s for

CIOs, CISOs and IT directors; heads of IT, infrastructure, networks and connectivity, cloud and datacentre, technology services, technology risk, and technology governance; infrastructure, network and security architects; and IT operations, infrastructure and network services managers. Senior technology people designing, running and assuring segmentation across a retail estate.

If you’re working through something like this at the moment, or think you will be soon, come along. Questions in advance are welcome. You can also ask anonymously on the day if you’d rather – please reach out to us at hello@kerv.com