NetFlow for Retail Operational Efficiency and Risk Management
Now more than ever, retail organizations must manage highly distributed networks, deliver peak levels of operational efficiency and risk management to hundreds of remote stores, and achieve compliance with PCI and other regulations – all while significantly contributing to business innovation and the bottom line.
Retail networks rival the world’s largest infrastructures in size and complexity, yet network and security monitoring must be achieved in an extremely cost conscious manner. Beyond securing traditional point-of-sale systems, retailers must also monitor and secure emerging technologies, since 48% of retailers have a mobile-optimized website, 35% have deployed an iPhone app and 15% offer an Android app and an iPad app.1
Conventional methods of deploying IDS/IPS or probe devices at remote locations quickly become unrealistic for rapidly growing retailers due to high expenses and the complexity of managing a multitude of devices. With NetFlow collection and analysis tools like Lancope’s StealthWatch® System, retailers do not need to deploy devices at each location. Instead, they can cost-effectively gain critical visibility throughout their entire organization with as little as a single flow collector.
StealthWatch Improves Retail Network Performance, Security and Compliance
With Lancope’s StealthWatch flow-based monitoring solution, retail organizations can obtain in-depth visibility into network traffic at each remote site for improved operational efficiency and risk management. The system can easily detect both externally-launched attacks such as worms and botnets as well as insider threats including network misuse, policy violations, misconfigured devices and data leakage. StealthWatch also vastly improves network performance by providing valuable insight into traffic patterns and bandwidth utilization across the entire enterprise. Additionally, the system delivers the levels of visibility, accountability and measurability required to confidently demonstrate compliance with PCI and other industry regulations.
StealthWatch fills in the gaps left by other solutions to eliminate network blind spots and reduce the time from problem onset to resolution. The system is scalable to meet the needs of even the largest networks, and can also monitor and protect virtual environments, enabling retail organizations to cost-effectively expand and embrace new technology trends without sacrificing performance, security or compliance.
| StealthWatch can save customers up to $450,000 per hour by dramatically reducing unexpected network downtime.“ |
| Retail Use Cases | |
|---|---|
| Faster Troubleshooting | A U.S.-based retailer that operates nearly two hundred supercenters and grocery stores sought a compliance solution for making sure that its PCI data was not compromised. In addition to supporting PCI compliance, StealthWatch’s efficient workflows also enable both the network and security teams to move quickly from problem identification to resolution across physical and virtual networks. |
| Anomaly Detection | A discount store with thousands of locations across the U.S. sought a more affordable and effective solution for detecting issues across its MPLS network. Within the first few weeks of using StealthWatch, the store was able to uncover that its MPLS provider had not properly provisioned its meshed network, which could have caused major issues had it not been discovered. |
| PCI Compliance | A clothing and accessories retailer with over 900 stores in the U.S. and Canada turned to StealthWatch to support its PCI compliance initiatives. According to the retailer, StealthWatch provides a tremendous repository for querying traffic flow. This enables greater real-time control over the network, and also provides historical information for making more intelligent decisions. |
| Forensic Investigation | A craft retailer with over 700 locations in the U.S. sought a way to forensically investigate security issues, as well as uncover threats that could be hiding from signature-based systems. The visibility provided by StealthWatch has enabled the retailer to conduct detailed network forensics, while the behavioral analysis capabilities uncover issues that go unnoticed by traditional security solutions. |
| Firewall Planning | A large general merchandise retailer with over 1,700 stores in the U.S. and sourcing offices worldwide turned to StealthWatch to perform better firewall planning to support compliance initiatives. Using detailed information from StealthWatch, the retailer is able to build a more accurate rule set for its firewalls, as well as conduct real-time troubleshooting and forensic investigations of network and security issues. |
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StealthWatch has demonstrated the ability to detect unauthorized remote access, worm activity and root cause of increases in WAN activity. All of these functions have aided our efforts to demonstrate compliance with the PCI Data Security Standard.” – AirTran Airways |
1 - Shop.org and Forrester Research, “The State of Retailing Online,” http://www.shop.org/soro
