Retailers agree to share security and threat intelligence data

Threat intelligence is like a jigsaw puzzle where every company under attack only has a few pieces, and nobody has any idea what the final picture is supposed to be once all of the pieces are assembled. If all you have are a few pieces, they are often meaningless without the broader context–and that is what a partnership like the Retail Industry Leaders Association (RILA) brings to the table.

Here is a snippet of what I wrote for CSOOnline:

Target, Nordstrom’s, and Michael’s all know from firsthand experience that retailers are in the crosshairs for cyber criminals. Stores that process of billions of dollars of transactions from millions of individual consumers offer a goldmine of data just waiting to be hacked. That’s why major retailers are finally taking a more logical, proactive approach by forging an alliance to share security intelligence.

“The best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago. The second best time is now,” opined Tom Cross, director of security research forLancope regarding news of retailers teaming up to form the Retail Industry Leaders Association (RILA).

A recent survey of IT professionalscommissioned by Lancope from the Ponemon Institute found that only 12 percent of respondents report that their organization shares threat indicator information with industry peers. That is a sad figure…

You can read the full article on my Minimal Risk blog at CSOOnline: Retailers team up to form new security alliance.