Network segmentation in retail: a practical session on staying secure

Over the past few months we have had a noticeable increase in requests from retailers to look at network segmentation. The question behind almost all of them is the same. If someone gets into the estate, how far can they travel, what would it affect, and can the business keep serving customers while it is dealt with?

It is a fair question and not a simple one. Store estates grow over years and through acquisitions. Tills, handhelds, back office systems, customer Wi-Fi, cameras and building services often share more of the network than anyone intended, and putting that right without interrupting trading takes some care.

We are running a short session to talk through what we are seeing. Our security and network architects will cover the routes into an estate that come up most often, where segmentation tends to break down in practice, and the steps that make a difference without waiting for a full network programme. We do not think there is a single right answer here, so we have kept half the time for discussion.

If you are working through this at the moment, or expect to be soon, you are welcome to join.

What we will cover

• The five routes into a retail estate we see most often: store devices, colleague and privileged accounts, third-party connections, cloud and datacentre environments, and controls that were in place but were not doing their job.
• Working out which services you need running in order to keep trading, which is usually a shorter list than people expect.
• Where segmentation looks right on a diagram and does not hold in practice.
• Steps that improve your position now, without a full rebuild.
• How to check it works rather than assume it does.
• Sequencing this around peak trading, when the window for change is much shorter than the year suggests.

Questions can be sent in advance or asked anonymously on the day.

Who it is for

• Chief Information Security Officers
• Chief Information Officers and IT Directors
• Heads of IT and Heads of Infrastructure
• Network and security architects
• Heads of Risk and Resilience
• Store systems and retail operations technology leads