Fall 2019 - Inside Outdoor Magazine

Tech Savvy Inside Outdoor | FALL 2019 49 With payment card details and personal data remaining a lucra- tive cash cow for cybercriminals on the dark web, retailers are firmly on criminals’ radar these days, said Erik Nordquist, senior product manager for TPx Communications’ managed security services. A recent Alert Logic cybersecurity report, for example, found that retail- ers topped the list of cyberattack targets out of eight different types of organizations (4,000 organizations in total). Alert Logic’s analysis of the at- tacks in this vertical revealed aggres- sive scanning, including indicators of extensive directory-guessing tech- niques and a large array of automated code injection and vulnerability scan- ning. Application attacks, where hack- ers infiltrate a company’s mission- critical services in order to capture the information flowing to and from them, are by far the dominant attack type in this industry group, accounting for 85 percent of all attacks. The retail industry, meanwhile, ranks dead last in foiling social-engi- neering efforts, where cybercriminals pose as a legitimate correspondent in an email to get an employee to click on a malicious link or open a weapon- ized attachment. And the same Secu- rityScorecard found that more than 90 percent of retailers are out of compli- ance with the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS). Surveys also suggest that retail data breaches are accelerating. The 2018 Thales Data Threat Report revealed that half of U.S. retailers experienced a data breach in the past year, up from 19 percent the year be- fore. Further, a full 75 percent of re- tailers have experienced at least one data breach in the past. In turn, eight in 10 retailers think that their biggest IT challenge for 2019 is combatting data theft, according to the Securi- tyScorecard report. Perhaps the most foreboding data point of all, according to a study by KPMG, a fifth (19 percent) of consumers would take their retail business else- where after a breach, and 33 percent would take a break from shopping at a store for an extended period. Cybersecurity Stats Retailers Can’t Ignore Product visualization company ThreeKit has launched a Virtual Photographer software program that creates product images for e-com- merce that look real but are com- pletely computer-rendered. ThreeKit says the software creates product images for e-commerce from de- signs files for a fraction of the time and money required for traditional photography. For one project, the software ThreeKit completed 50,000 photos for a client in one week, a project that typically takes more than a month with a team of five photog- raphers. Retailers and brands use the Virtual Photographer as part of their digital image creation internally, with no need to involve an outside agency. The platform also can inte- grate with existing in-house photog- raphy teams by automating repetitive tasks. Rather than spending hours resetting products and shooting stan- dardized packshots, photographers can focus on more creative aspects of their work, such as shooting life- style imagery or directing angles and lighting. And since the software can create imagery from CAD files, Vir- tual Photographer can automatically create images of new products with- out investing in prototypes, thereby streamlining product launches. The software is based on the same technology that ThreeKit founder Ben Houston developed for Hollywood visual effects used in more than 100 films and TV series including Harry Potter, Silicon Valley and Game of Thrones. m Virtual Photographer Streamlines Product Image Process