Business goals
Founded in 1948, family-owned and operated retailer Overland Footwear prides itself on delivering top quality, craftmanship, and design. In recent years, this has led them to focus on sustainability and safety efforts that benefit both the planet and their customers.
As part of building a more sustainable business model, Overland swapped their traditional printed signage for digital signage, allowing them to save trees while centralizing pricing management. In the process, they also installed cameras in stores to further improve customer safety and employee training.
However, Overland’s IT team knew these new devices introduced new security risks. They wanted to be confident their systems were secure against potential breaches. That’s when Das Goonatilaka, IT Manager at Overland, reached out to Steve Smith, Regional Executive at managed service provider Advantage, to get help with finding a solution that could reduce Overland’s attack surface and ensure continued operations even during a breach.
Technology challenges
Overland’s security is up against the unique challenges of a retail environment. Anyone can walk up to a point-of-sale system and try to gain access when no one’s looking, a problem that’s amplified when staff share passwords to serve customers quickly. Overland also must consider the frequent changes to store staff where security training needs to be balanced with serving customers.
Goonatilaka recognized that connecting hundreds of third-party devices to the company’s traditional flat network increased risk even more. But with a small team and limited budget, re-engineering the network to separate environments wasn’t an option.
“Our IT team is quite lean, so we don’t really have the resources internally to manage too many different systems and software,” Goonatilaka explained.
Despite these challenges, Goonatilaka knew it was essential to find a fast, simple solution to help them secure operations and build cyber resilience at their 52 sites across New Zealand and Australia. They already had a trusted relationship with Advantage and sought help from Smith for guidance.
