Day: August 7, 2023

In this digital age, when footfall is declining and ecommerce is growing, the challenges for shopping malls seem bigger than ever. In this blog, we look at the importance of the customer experience and explore the best ways for malls to attract more shoppers As consumer behaviors change and shopping trends move ever more online, many shopping malls are seeing a decline in footfall and sales. Moreover, malls are finding it very difficult to compete with the endless product selection, price comparisons, and always-on nature of online shopping. However, although consumers are getting much of their shopping needs covered online and visiting their local malls much less frequently, one advantage that shopping centers have over their ecommerce competitors remains: the interactive, in-person experience. Today’s purchasers are empowered like never before, so their expectations for all of their shopping experiences have risen to a new, vastly higher level. This means only the most customer-centric businesses can reach the now-expected standard. Therefore, delivering a great customer experience can help malls regain customer loyalty and boost revenues over the long run. With that in mind, the next issue is this: what should shopping malls do to improve the customer experience and satisfaction? Here are four ways in which Hikvision’s smart retail solutions can enhance customer experience and give shopping malls a competitive edge. Understand and meet customers’ needs in real time with customer intelligence How are people shopping these days? As consumer behavior changes and competition grows, shopping malls need to track a number of metrics to attract shoppers and improve business performance. Ask yourself the following questions: What is the average daily foot traffic for my mall? Does my mall have a reasonable shopper-to-staff ratio? Do I understand my customer’s journey? In asking these questions, we begin to see the importance of data-based decisions regarding the customer experience. With key metric data, malls can launch more effective marketing activities and in turn generate more footfall and sales. But how can one get these metrics? The answer – with cameras that do more than just record security video. Hikvison’s smart cameras with people counting and heat mapping capabilities provide real-time awareness of customers’ journeys through the mall. For example, smart cameras can be used to count customers entering and leaving the shopping areas, ensuring that enough staff are available to serve them. During busy times, staff can be directed to the registers when queues get too long and then return to routine tasks at non-peak times when fewer customers are in the mall. Additionally, Hikvision’s intelligent video analytics provides new insights on which areas, shops and brands are the most popular. This helps malls to optimize available floor space throughout the retail mix and floor plan, making it more in tune with consumer needs and trends. This ensures that the shopping experience is as convenient, efficient, and satisfying as possible. Capture attention and convey information quickly and efficiently with commercial displays Shopping malls today have gone from being simply a hallway of retail stores to multipurpose complexes that feature restaurants, entertainment venues, special events, holiday activities, and more, in addition to the conventional retail shops. To attract new visitors and maintain maximum footfall, malls need to create fun and unique shopping experiences for customers. This is where Hikvision’s commercial display solutions come in. Hikvision offers a diverse range of outdoor and indoor displays with eye-catching visuals, attractive advertising, and digital navigation solutions. For example, exciting display solutions for building façades can be an effective way to draw more in-store visitors. Digital signage in central walkways can create an amazing and memorable experience for visitors. Kiosk displays in high-traffic areas can provide information about shops, brands, sales, and special events, as well as show customers the route to the nearest bathroom or exit. These solutions grab shoppers’ attention and provide useful information, boosting the whole experience in an efficient and enjoyable manner. Provide easy, convenient parking with smart parking management Today, convenience is a must, from entry to exit. From finding a parking space on the way in to smart vehicle location on the way out, malls must ensure customers not only find parking spots quickly, but also locate their parked cars easily in those shopping malls’ expansive parking structures. Here, Hikvision’s smart parking solution makes it fast and easy to find available spaces, and helps customers locate their cars in large parking lots. This solution saves them time and improves their satisfaction when visiting the mall, improving the chances for repeat business. Ensure a safe shopping environment Security is the final piece to the puzzle. With Hikvision’s smart video solution, security teams at shopping malls can get alerts in real time to ensure the store is always safe. Additionally, Hikvision offers multiple, high-value security applications for unattended environments, from traditional video security to AI algorithms that detect incidents. These capabilities ensure that customers always feel safe and comfortable inside the mall.  

Gaurav Ranade, CTO, RAH Infotech The rising cybersecurity risks are a cause for worry for IT teams across verticals. This is where organizations need a proactive and advanced mechanism to counter the new-age threats and threat actors. Exposure and vulnerability management are considered as one of the most ideal solutions for mitigating cyber threats But what is exposure and vulnerability management? Exposure and vulnerability management are both important aspects of cybersecurity, but they focus on different aspects of protecting an organization’s systems and data. Exposure management is the process of identifying and mitigating potential risks or vulnerabilities in an organization’s systems and infrastructure. It involves assessing the overall risk landscape and implementing measures to minimize the impact of potential threats. Vulnerability management is a subset of exposure management and specifically focuses on identifying, evaluating, and mitigating vulnerabilities in an organization’s systems and applications. It involves a systematic approach to proactively identify and address weaknesses that could be exploited by attackers. The key components for strong exposure management are – vulnerability assessment, risk assessment, risk mitigation, patch management, secure configuration management, security awareness and training, incident response planning, and continuous monitoring. Why is exposure management needed? Exposure management in cybersecurity is crucial for several reasons: Risk Reduction: Exposure management helps in reducing the overall risk to an organization’s digital assets. By identifying and mitigating vulnerabilities and weaknesses in the system, exposure management minimizes the chances of cyberattacks and data breaches. Vulnerability Identification: This process helps in understanding potential entry points that attackers could exploit, allowing proactive measures to be taken to strengthen security. Prioritization of Security Measures: Exposure management helps organizations prioritize their security measures based on the level of risk associated with each vulnerability. Compliance Requirements: Many industries and regulatory frameworks require organizations to implement exposure management practices as part of their security and compliance efforts. By adhering to these standards, organizations can demonstrate their commitment to protecting sensitive data and maintaining a secure environment. Incident Response Preparedness: By continuously monitoring and managing exposures, organizations can detect and respond to potential security incidents more effectively. This proactive approach allows for faster containment and remediation of security breaches, reducing the overall impact on the organization. Reputation and Customer Trust: Exposure management helps in preventing and minimizing the impact of security breaches, enhancing the organization’s reputation and maintaining customer confidence in their ability to protect sensitive information. Skybox’s award-winning exposure management solution is a go-to option for businesses Skybox’s Vulnerability and Threat Management solution leverages the company’s proprietary network modelling, exposure management, and path analysis to provide precise exposure analysis and vulnerability prioritization and management. Skybox’s approach to vulnerability and threat management delivers four essential benefits for customers: Skybox aggregates vulnerability data from all assets (including IT, OT, and multi-cloud) and every corner of the network. Unique scan-less detection capabilities and active scanning deliver a 360-degree view of the attack surface. Daily, human-curated threat intelligence is fed into the Skybox network model. Exposure, CVSS severity, exploitability, asset importance, and automated cyber risk quantification capabilities including financial impact provide an exact risk score used to prioritize action where it matters most proactively reducing your risk of attack. Skybox identifies and automatically recommends effective, practical options to reduce risk. Available patches are aggregated by Skybox threat analysts daily, however, remediation options go beyond patching and include configuration changes, network segmentation, and more. Attacks, including zero days, can be prevented, even when patches are impractical or unavailable. Integrations with ITSM tools assist in implementing and maintaining remediation through ongoing oversight. The solution automatically generates tickets, tracks performance versus SLAs, keeps stakeholders apprised, and ensures issues are promptly addressed. Skybox continues to evolve this solution and recently added the ability to quantify cyber risk exposure in financial terms to help organizations pinpoint cyber risks with the highest potential financial impact. By implementing exposure management practices, organizations can reduce their attack surface, minimize the risk of data breaches, and improve their overall cybersecurity posture. It is important to tailor exposure management strategies to the specific needs and risks of each organization and regularly review and update them to address emerging threats and technologies. *Views expressed in the article are solely of the Author RAH Infotech is India’s leading value-added technology distributor and solutions provider. Headquartered in New Delhi, RAH Infotech has been providing world-class IT solutions since the year 2005 to a large number of channel partners and enterprises in the India & SAARC regions. The rich portfolio includes a wide range of best-of-breed solutions to address requirements across Security, Data, Network, Application, Storage, and beyond.As a top-tier technology enabler, we manage the entire value chain of data management requirements of enterprises and protect their digital assets. We partner with the finest global technology firms to develop customized IT solutions in the area of cybersecurity, networking, cloud computing, data management and application management for various industry verticals.