More than 2,500 retail security executives gathered at the Anaheim Convention Center last month for the National Retail Federation’s annual NRF Protect conference, which included a keynote from Judy Smith, president of Smith & Co., whose crisis management work inspired the ABC series “Scandal.”
The three-day event is billed as the largest retail and restaurant loss prevention conference in North America. A handful of Orange County companies were in attendance such as Irvine-based retailer Tilly’s Inc. (NYSE: TLYS), whose senior vice president of internet technology, Brent Wiedbusch, was on hand speaking about how small and medium-sized businesses can mitigate cyber threats.
Arshad Somani, cybersecurity analyst at Global Resilience Federation, pointed out during the panel that phishing is still “a big deal” for the industry, noting how cybercriminals are managing to create emails that can slip through corporate spam filters.
Somani said a recent report showed the first quarter of the year saw a 180% increase year-over-year in malicious URLs, or links, as opposed to malicious attachments in phishing emails.
Wiedbusch said email phishing is “very big.”
“We’re thinking about it constantly,” he said. “We’ve deployed an email filter and then on the employee awareness, which is critical, we’ll send out department email phishing to see who clicks on them and who doesn’t and follow up with education.”
Wiedbusch said Tilly’s implements a “multi-layer defense” but the key is educating employees on not opening suspicious links or attachments.
