Retail runs on thin margins. A few hundred milliseconds of page load time moves the needle on conversion. A single checkout friction point costs real revenue. On margins this tight, outdated software is a liability you can measure. Target found that out the hard way in 2013, when attackers got into their POS network through an unsegmented HVAC contractor connection. 40 million payment cards exposed. Over $160 million in settlements.1
Yet many retailers are still running e-commerce platforms on outdated Node versions, legacy Angular, or PHP frameworks that stopped receiving security updates years ago.
1 US Senate Commerce Committee hearing, 2014