The number of cybercrimes is expected to keep rising worldwide, and the retail sector too must be ready to fend off these attacks. While new technologies, artificial intelligence among them, are solving pressing problems in retail such as labour shortages and rising costs, cybercriminals are also putting them to ever more adept use. As the world changes, retailers must recognise that data is the "new oil" — they need to know both how to use it and how to protect it, cybersecurity expert Peter Falström of the company "Truesec" said at the "Baltic Retail Forum" conference. According to him, if the current cybercrime market were compared with national economies, it would rank third in the world behind the economies of China and the United States.
As the regional manager for Latvia and Estonia at smart technology company "StrongPoint" stressed, in Latvia too the number of cyberattacks has risen by 40% over the past two years, according to data from the cyber incident response institution CERT.LV. Most cyberattacks target state institutions and critical infrastructure, but companies can become targets for cyber attackers not only when the attackers are interested in a company's resources or finances — attackers often choose companies as a "gateway" to reach state authorities or providers of essential services that are these companies' clients, U. Začs explains. This means that heightened attention to cybersecurity is required not only from the public sector but also from private sector companies, in order to maintain a high overall level of national cybersecurity and continue providing uninterrupted services to the public.
"Today, committing a cybercrime requires no knowledge whatsoever and no effort at all. A cybercrime can simply be bought — ordered. Criminals offer access to various organisations and develop dedicated software that exploits the vulnerabilities in those organisations' systems," P. Falström explained. He stressed that 95% of cybercrimes are opportunistic — they look for vulnerabilities in the systems of companies and organisations and, if they find one, exploit it to carry out an attack. Most often in order to extort money.
As an example, the expert cited the attack on the "Coop" store chain in Sweden. That attack halted the operation of around 700 of the chain's stores — no transactions could be carried out in them. He explained that in this situation "Coop" chose openness, did not give in to the demands of the criminals, whose aim was to extort money, and stated clearly that a cyberattack had taken place. The public was supportive, and even competing store chains got involved in supporting "Coop" by stocking their goods in their own stores. As a result, "Coop" came out of the situation as the winner — their popularity grew.
To reduce the risks of cyberattacks, P. Falström urged retail companies to recognise that their data is highly valuable and to build defence systems geared towards potential cyberattacks.
The retail sector, both in the Baltics and elsewhere in the world, is also facing significant challenges related to rising labour costs and the availability of labour. Passing all these costs on to consumers is not possible, nor is it sensible to allow service quality to decline. For this reason retailers are investing purposefully in new technologies, including artificial intelligence (AI) solutions, so that they can offer fast, high-quality service and reasonable prices, the representative of smart solutions company "StrongPoint" said at the "Baltic Retail Forum" conference.
"The three main areas where AI solutions are developing rapidly are customer age verification, product recognition and preventing stock shortages," U. Začs explained.
Solutions are likewise being sought for directing customers with large baskets to self-checkouts, for instance by using AI to recognise several items and allow them to be scanned at once. Active work is under way to enable people with special needs to shop independently in stores as well, which is linked to European Union (EU) requirements on accessibility.
The representative of "StrongPoint" said that before long, when an item such as fruit is placed on the scales at a self-checkout, AI will automatically recognise the particular type of fruit — customers will no longer have to look it up and select it in the product catalogue themselves. This will speed up the shopping process considerably and will also reduce the scope for shoppers to make mistakes or to deliberately select the wrong variety of fruit or vegetable in the product catalogue.
Store staff, meanwhile, will no longer have to go to their manager to find out their next task — it will be sent to their phone once the employee has "ticked off" that the previous task is complete. "It has been established that 16-year-olds would rather receive instructions on their phone than in person from a manager. It reduces the unpleasant feeling of being ordered about," the "StrongPoint" expert explained.
New solutions will also be offered for finding products of interest in the store more quickly — used by customers and staff alike. Data collection will be important: with the help of AI, a clothing store will for example be able to compile information on how often a particular garment is tried on relative to how often a try-on is followed by a purchase, U. Začs said.