Retail
Can stores take cards with the provider down? Network, servers, Wi-Fi: supplied, integrated, tested.
Retail
Can stores take cards with the provider down? Network, servers, Wi-Fi: supplied, integrated, tested.
A firewall change and an upgrade took Square down.¹⁴
The cases on this page are public record, not our clients. Square’s own summary: down at 1:54 PM ET on September 7, 2023; merchants restored by 5:19 AM ET the next day.¹⁴ Sellers on offline mode kept taking payments.
We write into your requirement: every store takes a card when the provider is down
We check: what your tills do, seen at one store
First step: send what you need and by when¹²
Installed overnight. Open next morning.⁶
Each store is installed between 11 p.m. and 6 a.m.⁶
220 of 220
Order event streams documented before cut-over⁷
2%
Spares per model, at least two¹³
4 hours
Ticket to spare shipped, in business hours¹³
3,200 assets
Retired in twelve months, a record each⁹
450 stores
Standard changes without a ticket queue¹⁰
Shelf gaps and queues, seen in the store.
Shelf-gap and queue analytics on one GPU in each store.⁵
Shelf gaps and queues, seen in the store.
Shelf-gap and queue analytics on one GPU in each store.⁵
Design studies in this sector
Nine design studies for retailers, each with its test plan.
Store kits, labeled and boxed.
Cabinet, switch, patch panel and access point are labeled to TIA-606-D.⁶
Each kit is boxed with printed labels and the store's port map.⁶
PCI DSS, requirement by requirement, matched to a design.²
PCI DSS v4.0.1 binds any merchant or service provider taking cards. Our design: segmentation, logs and media.⁸
Signed by the people who wrote them.
Principal architects Mark Winston, David Morgan, Avinash Dhinakaran, Steve Phillips and Diksha Shah.
PCI DSS v4.0.1
Segmentation, logs and media, each matched to a design.⁸
Every port
Each store port asks who you are.¹
12 months
Security logs kept online, 24 months in archive.⁸
Zero trust
Access checked at every store and site.⁸
Card-data media that cannot be purged and verified is destroyed.⁹
An asset closes only once its certificate is attached and its disposition recorded.⁹
Some systems could not be recovered, only rebuilt.¹⁵
- Marks & Spencer’s 2025 annual report, after its April 2025 cyber incident.¹⁵
- We write into your requirement: every application that runs a store or the website has a tested rebuild plan, not only a backup
- We check which you could rebuild from nothing, and when that was last shown
- First step
- Send what you need to buy and by when. You get a reply the same day, then a quote.¹²
Planned, store by store.
Store refresh before your MPLS contract renews? Cisco, Fortinet, HPE Aruba or Palo Alto: we carry all four. The one we recommend, we install.
16 weeks
320 stores in the rollout plan, no till dark in opening hours⁶
20 stores a night
Planned per night, across a 600-store rollout¹¹
3,200 handhelds
Shared across 320 grocery stores on Wi-Fi 7⁴
Retail designs, open to read
Spares at the store's baseline.
Spares are held at the store's firmware baseline.⁸
Every failure enters one RMA queue.⁸
Talk to an expert.
Someone reads it and replies the same day.
Send what you need to buy and by when.¹²
You get a reply the same day, then a quote.
