Q&A with Moiz Vas: "Retail industry is a favorite for hackers"

PetrolPlaza speaks to Moiz Vas, a UK forecourt retailer and founder of Retail’s Best Forecourt & Convenience Partners, about next week's event, the threat of cyber crime to forecourts, and the effect of Brexit in the industry. /Retail's Best has been postponed to November 18 due to the Coronavirus /

There are 8,382 fuel forecourt sites in the United Kingdom and more than a third of these will be represented at the next Retail’s Best Forecourt Event on 19 March when around 200 independent retailers and forecourt operators, representing over 3,500 sites between them, gather at Chateau Impney, Worcestershire. 

Retail’s Best will take place next week. What will be the main focus points of this year’s edition? What can people expect to see? 

A main focus at this year’s event will be crime prevention and potential security solutions to ensure retailers’ businesses are safe for the future.  Crime will come under the spotlight in the Retail’s Best panel discussion, chaired by industry stalwart Michael O’Loughlin.  A panel of leading independent forecourt and convenience operators, including Nerissa Haskic, MPK Group; Raj Hindocha, Hindocha Group and Tom Orford, Falcon Retail will be joined by industry experts, including James Lowman, chief executive at the Association of Convenience Stores and Gordon Balmer, commercial manager at the Petrol Retailers Association.

Retail’s Best 2020 will also explore different food-to-go concepts and the art of putting food theatre back into retail.  This theme will continue through into the ‘smart exhibition’ later in the evening with demonstrations from: Delice de France, F’real, Chicago Town, Costa Express and Stacked.

These unmanned concepts from F’real and Costa Express for milkshakes and coffee are labour saving, offering a sustainable solution to forecourt operators to ensure their sites remain vibrant, relevant and efficient for the future.  Other unmanned concepts on show will include the Post Office and their solution for the future with parcel collections and returns from online orders along with Tomra and their reverse vending solutions.

With the increased presence of cloud solutions, big data and other technologies petrol stations have improved their efficiency and profit margins. However, the issue of data protection and security is now essential. In 2019, we saw how a number of retailers in the U.S. were hacked and customer information was accessed. How should retailers and suppliers tackle this issue? 

One thing is for sure, it’s not just the US.  A petrol station closer to home in the UK was recently hacked and the site held to ransom.  The site ended up having to close for four days and replace all their tills.

It seems that the retail industry has emerged to be a favourite for hackers.  We carry a considerable amount of financial and sensitive information from customers and suppliers and we aren’t as vigilant as we could be for protecting our environment.

I believe there are four key areas of vulnerability for retailers: Wifi, EPoS, password management, and supply chain.

Whilst providing Wifi in store provides a value-added experience for customers, it can also attract trouble from a potential cyber-attack in the form of MITM (man in the middle), meaning that someone can intercept customer or retailer calls or email exchanges.  Using the store’s Wifi puts the retailer at risk of exposing data and uncrypted networks are even worse, potentially giving someone access to your tills and sensitive data.  It’s important to mention at this point too that retailers need to be GDPR compliant as a matter of course.  The data is the key to cyber-attacks.  PCI DSS for credit card payment is also essential.

And if retailers and forecourt operators didn’t have enough to deal with already in the day-to-day running of their store and forecourt site, there is now an extra layer of details with EPoS that we are all expected to be experts in.  Not all operators have the luxury of having their own IT specialists.

And something that many of us don’t do is change our passwords regularly.  One of biggest problems is that store managers or owners often don’t even change the passwords that the EPoS provider gave them.

There are often instances with the supply chain too when we think an email has come from a supplier we work with, but in reality it hasn’t.  It’s a fraudulent email.  We need to understand where firewalls start and end and how cyber tools can protect us.  From a legality point of view, if one partner is found to have caused a breach to other partners in the chain, they can come after them for financial and reputation damage.

These are all things that we need to get a better understanding of, to be aware of our vulnerability and then prepare ourselves to protect ourselves for the future.  It’s yet another challenge that we have to add to our already busy schedules, but one that is necessary to overcome.  We need to take this seriously and get specialist help to educate us, inform us and equip us for the future challenges that lie ahead.

You started this event in 2014. Seven years later, what has the development of the Forecourt Retailing event been like? 

The Retail’s Best network is growing with more input from a spectrum of retail operators across all sizes and all fascias.  The event has become something that they look to in order to ‘test the water’ or get an opinion.  Retail’s Best prides itself on being an event that is ‘run by retailers, for retailers’ and collectively we have a voice.  It gives the opportunity to independent retailers and forecourt operators to meet together to talk about issues, concerns, worries and aspirations.  It’s an event for retailers who truly care about their businesses and grow their businesses for the future. Retail’s Best has become the ‘go-to place’ to gain a view on what’s around the corner!

Are you happy with the role that the event currently has in the industry or is there further developments we can look forward to in the future?  

When we launched in 2013, our vision was to create a series of unique and exclusive new business development networking events, put together ‘by retailers, for retailers’.  A growing network of top retail operators have made an invaluable contribution in helping us to achieve this. 

Over the last seven years we’ve brought together many leading suppliers with hundreds of independent businesses in the world of food service, convenience retailing, motor fuel retailing and retail technology.  Each event hosts some 200 forecourt and retail operators, representing around 3,500 sites between them.  It’s all about coming together to share ideas and good practice to achieve the common goal – to ensure our convenience stores and our forecourts remain vibrant and commercially viable.

We will keep pushing the boundaries to ensure we have an event that enables retailers and suppliers to come together to share knowledge and ideas to ensure their businesses are commercially viable for the future.

The United Kingdom will now officially leave the European Union. By January 1, 2021 new rules will come into effect. Do you expect Brexit to have an impact on British forecourts?  

Through conversations with fellow retailers and forecourt operators, two key areas that come to mind are – Government legislation and freedom of movement.

On legislation the UK government has currently chosen EV (electric vehicles) as the preferred solution of the future while many EU countries are leaning towards choosing hydrogen and some are considering synthetic fuels. Potentially closing off the other options may put us at a disadvantage as changing the infrastructure again in the future may not be viable or be very expensive. With many experts suggesting hydrogen could be the future, it might be best to keep our options open.  If hydrogen ends up being the fuel of choice, not only will the UK not be ready, but we will be left behind.

Another consideration is that if the UK government moves from ‘combustion engines’ to EV and becomes out of line with mainland Europe, this, combined with the lack of hydrogen options, will cause difficulty for the ‘tourist motorist’ visiting the UK. 

And with the introduction of E10 in 2021, will further moves like this distance us from a uniformed approach and again cause difficulties for the tourist industry. 

With regards to freedom of movement, the forecourt sector is hugely reliable on overseas workers. If the government blocks access to some of these workers it is likely to cause a huge staff shortage in our sector (other sectors will be competing for the same staff). In turn this will mean wage increases for the sector (above market increases) which may question the financial viability of many forecourts. 

On previous editions of Retail’s Best, electric vehicle charging infrastructure was one of the key topics. Is that a trend that has completely settled in the UK? 

It’s not simply a trend - most forecourt sites are beginning to take it seriously now.  Operators are no longer simply ‘observing’ the situation, they are beginning to ‘tackle’ it now.  EV charging is now part of the customer journey and it’s here to stay.  With so many different places adding EV charging points, such as train stations, hotels and car parks, the big question for forecourts is how can they make their site a compelling location for a customer to charge their car?

Typically, forecourts have location on their side, generally being in rural areas or busy main roads.  And they are still the best location to quickly pull on and off to charge your car.  Now forecourts also have to seriously consider how to ensure they have a compelling offer for customers whilst they charge their car, whether it’s to grab a coffee, pick up a parcel or something to eat.

What are other key trends involving the forecourt sector do you identify in the UK?

A number of different trends include pre-ordering items before you arrive on a forecourt; exploring different ways of engaging with your customers to let them know about offers before they arrive in your store; more interactive ways to reward customers and offer brand loyalty; sustainable solutions for recycling, packaging etc – there is lots to be done to be more efficient and reduce packaging; food to go with more food theatre – we will begin to see more meals being prepared to a customer’s specification; more cyber-crime and the need for more cyber security solutions with the trend towards a cashless society.

We will move towards certain stores and certain elements of other stores becoming ‘faceless convenience’, with very little human elements.  On the one hand there will be a growing number of ‘unmanned’ options – unmanned coffee bars, milkshake vending, parcel drop offs etc.  On the other hand, there will be more interactive experiences around food to go and food theatre, putting the fun back into retailing and establishing stores as ‘go-to’ locations and community hubs.

* Retail's Best has been postponed to November 18 due to the Coronavirus. 

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