On the heels of Eddie Bauer’s notification of a cyber intrusion affecting all of its retail stores in the U.S. and Canada, KPMG has released a study showing that almost one-fifth of respondents to a survey said they would avoid a retailer that was a target of a successful cyber intrusion, even if the company remediated the damages caused by the hacker.
In response to the survey, 33 percent said they would stop shopping at the store for at least three months following the compromise for fear that their personal and financial information may be exposed. They also said that they would avoid the retailer until its leadership publicized a plan to prevent future attacks.
This translates into approximately 19 percent of the retailers’ customer base.
Sounds like worrisome statistics for retailers, doesn’t it? Surprisingly, the same survey found that 55 percent of senior cybersecurity executives in the retail sector admitted that they had not invested in cybersecurity over the last twelve months.
The numbers outlined in the KPMG survey may cause those cybersecurity executives to lose sleep but good evidence for retailers to reconsider and bolster cybersecurity efforts. It is clearly affecting the bottom line.