While retail cybersecurity concerns only gain attention as the holiday shopping season approaches, the reality is retail is a 24/7/365 operation and so are its associated security issues. Recently, we sat down with Craig Searle, Director, Consulting & Professional Services in Pacific at Trustwave, to discuss the security moves retailers need to have in place. Question: Let's start off in your neighborhood and explore the Australian retail space for a moment. Is there anything unique to this region?

Cybersecurity is not merely about firewalls and antivirus anymore—now, your biggest vulnerability might be a third-party vendor. As companies more and more depend on outside partners, third-party hacks have become one of the biggest threats to business security.

APIs are now the most attacked layer in the application stack— APIs are being hit 68% more often per host than traditional web apps with APIs facing 1600% more DDoS traffic than web apps. This was found in the state of application security 2024 report where we analyzed 2 billion API attacks blocked on AppTrana WAAP. This isn’t surprising. APIs are inherently automation-friendly, often underprotected, and expose direct access to data and logic.