Evan Schuman's StorefrontBacktalk

There are two opposite views on the best way to protect sensitive retail data, including payment cards, CRM, inventory, pricing and payroll. The first is the vault approach: You try and throw up as many high-quality firewall locks as you can, and then place all of your goodies in that protected space. The second approach is minimization: You store the data in as many different secure places as you can, so if anyone breaks in they can only access a tiny portion of your data from that single attack.

Retailers very much want to believe in the first approach—and to find legitimacy in the vendor hype pushing it—because it’s so much easier and cheaper. But, as we detail in our August column for Retail Week, the U.K.’s largest retail publication, the only sound security approach has always been: Assume the bad guys will break in, and then make all of your decisions based on that assumption. Please check out the column in Retail Week or, for those of you who are not Retail Week subscribers, you can read it right here at StorefrontBacktalk.