2. Your vendor will not sign up to a security SLA. Security breaches are a common occurance these days. There are many well publicised breaches that have cost millions of dollars to cleanup and untold dollars in customer confidence. Yet, for you to compete effectively requires real-time access to store and customer data to make sure shelves are stocked and customers can fly through the checkout lanes. However, the constant movement of data increases your exposure to the risk of data loss. A security SLA will ensure your network provider keeps up with the latest PCI-DSS requirements and will help you sleep better at night. 

3. The quality of Vendor support declines as your contract ages. All vendors promise good customer service, but few can deliver. How long does it take to make a change to your network configuration? How responsive is your Support Representative? When was the last time you received a call from your vendor just to ‘check in”? Is 24×7x365 Level 1 support included in your contract? Retailers are constantly challenged to deliver outstanding customer service. You should receive nothing less from your network provider.

4. Your network prevents you from rolling out innovative revenue generating programs. With consumers spending less during these lean economic times, retailers must get creative in how they capture and maintain the customer relationship. Inevitably this means developing loyalty programs that require customer data during an in-store transaction. If your network is incapable of rapidly delivering data, you will likely be unable to introduce the types of programs that diferentiate you from the competition. A next generation fast, low cost data network will provide the foundation for deploying data intensive programs that increase sales and keep customers.

5. You are constantly hit with unexpected charges and expenses. Running on tight margins, retailers especially, need to have a handle on their network costs. Providers that get your business with a low monthly bid just to “nickel and dime” you throughout the term of the contract make the budgeting and reporting processes difficult at best and create an environment of distrust. Look for data network providers that charge a fixed monthly fee, regardless of the number of network changes or helpdesk calls. Also negotiate with the provider to deploy your network with no up front capital expenses.

Blue Ridge Can Significantly Lower Your Store Connection Costs and Increase Connection Speeds

At a Black Hat Europe Conference last April a team of researchers released tools that can automate attacks on MPLS and Ethernet backbone technologies.  According to one of the researchers,”These technologies do not provide any security themselves, but just rely on the assumption that the underlying network is secure.”

As MPLS VPNs evolved from proprietary networks to supporting internet-based services, so did their risk of attack increase. German researcher Ray says,”Enterprises that use these VPN services should be aware they are vulnerable. Perform risk analysis and encrypt your traffic.  ”Just because it’s called MPLS VPN [doesn't mean] you should [automatically] trust it.”

Many retailers followed their service providers advice and simply migrated from Frame Relay and ATM networks to MPLS.  However, over time the majority of problems meant to be solved by MPLS no longer exist, and holes in the technology are being exploited. 

Total information security for retail data networks is possible.  Solutions using PKI technology, unique digital certificates with mutual mandatory authentication between security appliances, end-to-end data encryption and data integrity checking can provide a standalone data network solution or act as the security layer for
an existing MPLS VPN network.

Retailers need to re-examine wide area networking technologies and topologies as they seek to optimize the security, reliability and cost of their current data network.

Blue Ridge Military Grade VPN, Fully Managed Solution