The Importance of Cyber Readiness for Franchise Businesses

Franchise Network Security

Is your Franchise about to make headline news?

Author: Josh Reid

Many years ago, when I was just transitioning out of the military I started working for a large franchise organization within the fast food industry. The objective from a project management standpoint was to renovate the complete technology infrastructure of a restaurant in under 12 hours. When I say complete, I really do mean everything from cables, network jacks, point of sale systems, servers, switches and firewalls. When my team started work on our first restaurant we realized very fast that there is nothing cookie cutter about your typical franchise business.

Every restaurant has its own unique fingerprint. Which brings about a series of challenges when trying to complete a job of this magnitude. Fortunately for myself, I was trained to work well in high stress situations and at the end of the day we succeeded with strict adherence to the deadlines.

We would complete a job and moved on to the next one. The project management teams, network engineers and other IT teams worked together night and day to accomplish this. It was not an easy task, although it was successfully accomplished over and over for all the 1000s of locations this company had.

Fast forward to our present day. I now work in security. I find myself at times looking back those days. Witnessing franchises spending millions of dollars to renovate their information technology infrastructure, organizing top notch teams to implement and manage the renovation. They place so much focus and attention towards the systems that bring in the revenue. Of which they should. Although do they do enough to protect these systems?

At least 15 separate security breaches have occurred among retail companies since January 2017

http://www.businessinsider.com/data-breaches-2018-4

Managing Franchise Network Security

If we look to the past we can see many different franchises from various markets having data breaches. From Wendy’s, Chipotle to UPS, many franchises are at risk and this happens due to the complexity of their business model involving third party vendors and independently operated business owners. Even though a standard is always in place it is not exactly followed or adhered to.

What makes franchises a big target?

There are multiple ways franchises can be targeted. Although, the number one reason why they are targeted is for their credit card data.

How are franchises targeted?

Typically, any business will be targeted at their weakest links. This usually is their employees or their vendors. Vendors are usually small businesses that support a larger business. They are entrusted with certain levels of access to a network to complete their job. Although, a small business might not have the same data protections in place that the large franchise does. You must ask yourself…

  1. Where do my vendors store their access credentials?
  2. Are my vendors using any type of storage devices like USBs or external hard drives on my network?
  3. What do they access when they enter my network?
  4. What is the background of this employee from my vendor?
  5. Does my vendor adhere to the same data regulations and policies that my company does?
  6. Can they access my network remotely?

These are just a few questions to ask yourself when dealing with third party vendors that have access to your network. They could be the weak link within your network.

Franchise Data Security Solutions

What is a solution that a franchise could implement to reduce risk and increase their security posture?

The ideal solution would be integrating all the franchise locations into a Security Operations Center. Although costly, this would provide 24/7/365 real-time protection for every location that is integrated. Most companies do not have the resources to build or even operate something of this magnitude. Many of the companies that we work with primarily focused on Managed End-Point protection. This would include products like anti-virus and malware protection software’s.

In the long run, this just simply is not enough. Organizations that have an expanded presence, that are experiencing growth and are at a heightened risk for cyber incident will need to take more actions to secure their networks.

This begins with the training of the organizations staff. As the organizations employees become more familiar with techniques, exploits, vulnerabilities and how cyber criminals operate, they become a first line of defense for your organization.

At Redbot Security we offer a remote Security Operations Center. This is a solution that was built exactly for this type of organization. With the iSOC MDR an organization will have a dedicated security engineer monitoring their network 24/7/365 and actively extinguishing any attempts that are captured to prevent data breaches.

Our iSOC MDR service is composed of advanced machine learning and comprehensive up to the minute threat intelligence. We can manage on premise devices or anything within the cloud. It is 100% expandable and has the ability to grow with your organization.

According to a study by KPMG, 19% consumers would completely stop shopping at a retailer after a breach, and 33% would take a break from shopping there for a extended period.

In Summary

A franchise organization has an increased risk from the scope of cybersecurity. This can come about through many variables but ultimately is the result of its vendors, large number of employees and the diversified network. Having an all-in-one solution like the iSOC MDR that is effective and affordable can be the difference between making headline news for a data breach or making headline news for thwarting a data breach.

SOC-as-a-Service

SOC-as-a-Service model has proven to be an extremely cost-efficient and effective tool for enhancing overall security posture. With SOC-as-a-Service, you maintain all the benefits of your current IT team whether in-house or outsourced. However, the additional layer of security is managed in a true Security Operation Center, giving an organization’s IT staff the ability to do the following:

  1. Trace the entire lifecycle of a threat.
  2. Have transparency into their own networks.
  3. Manage compliance effectively.
  4. Accurately gauge ROI of the service.

Benefits of Redbot iSOC MDR

  • Affordable Simple Pricing
  • Dedicated Senior Level Engineer

With a dedicated account engineer your company will have a 24/7/365 security expert at your fingertips monitoring and responding to anything that sets off alarms and red flags on your network.

  • Redbot Security’s Engineers become your single point of contact for your account
  • Can be implemented as an extension to your IT Team
  • Provides actionable remediation recommendations
  • Routine and Non-Routine task to improve security posture
  • Each engineer is backed by a team of security experts internal to Redbot Security
  • Managed Detection and Response (MDR)

Managed detection and response is a service that allows organizations better understand their security threat landscape in order to enhance threat detection and response capabilities. This is real time 24/7 monitoring, Including Cloud Sensor Monitoring for AZURE, AWS, Office 365, GSuite, Box and more!

  • Comprehensive Log Collection and Compliance

Log management is a crucial component for compliance regulations such as PCI, HIPAA, GLBA and Sarbanes-Oxley. This typically is a full-time job since the work is tedious and time consuming. We do all the heavy lifting for you!

  • Monitoring user behavior
  • Collecting, aggregating and classifying compliance related data
  • Regularly assessing vulnerabilities
  • Analyzing data and providing necessary reports
  • Reducing time and costs of audit preparation

WITH REDBOT iSOC MDR SERVICE YOU GET ALL OF THE FOLLOWING:

  • A fully managed security operations center

  • People, process and technology to manage cyber risk

  • Real-time Threat Detection and Response.  Analytics, machine learning, threat intelligence and vulnerability scans

  • A dedicated security engineer (DSE) and security team

  • Simple and predictable pricing

  • Superior incident response capabilities

In effect, you significantly scale back your cybersecurity budget while improving the value of your threat detection and response strategy.  Learn More About Redbot iSOC MDR or Contact us for a free consultation / quote.

About Redbot Security

Redbot Security provides a PCI DSS package with external scans/attestation, internal scans, penetration tests (network and web app), segmentation testing & social engineering

Contact Details

Contact Us
Web: redbotsecurity.com

1312 17th St, Suite 521
Denver, Co 80202

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The Importance of Cyber Readiness for Franchise Businesses Is your

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The Importance of Cyber Readiness for Franchise Businesses
Article Name
The Importance of Cyber Readiness for Franchise Businesses
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PCI DSS package with external scans/attestation, internal scans, pentests (network and web app), segmentation testing, social engineering.
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Redbot Security
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