Digital resilience and security as differentiating pillars for black friday

Black Friday 2025, which this year takes place on November 28th, is already prompting a true technology race in the national retail sector. The event, which has evolved from a simple promotional date to an entire strategic season, requires the market to anticipate studies, action plans, and improvements to ensure not only the success of the shopping period but also a significant injection of resources into the Brazilian economy. For this year, for example, revenue is expected to surpass the R$ 13 billion mark in the online environment alone – an increase of about 15% compared to the last period, according to ABComm Forecast.

To achieve this goal, however, it is essential to position the end consumer at the center of the strategies. This consumer is increasingly demanding and has low tolerance for friction. Today, any millisecond of delay can result in a product selling out or a transaction being canceled due to a lack of synchronization between inventory and the storefront – both experiences generate frustration and put an end to the buying experience, with the side effect of tarnishing the brand’s image.

It is in this context that digital resilience becomes indispensable. More than speed, it is what enables the infrastructure to absorb extreme traffic peaks, adapt to volatile demands, and ensure 100% availability. The cost of downtime on Black Friday is not limited to the lost sale in that minute: it extends to the failure to capture a customer who loses confidence. The debate is no longer about keeping the website online, but about the ability to deliver an instantaneous and consistent experience for millions of simultaneous users.

Parallel to the challenge of supporting network stress, Black Friday raises another concern for IT teams: security. The massive volume of transactions and the consumers’ sense of urgency create an environment susceptible to the actions of cybercriminals. Threats range from payment fraud attempts to volumetric Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks, specifically designed to take down operations and cause damage. Data protection is therefore crucial and must be seen as a fundamental guarantee for processes to occur safely and for customer trust to be preserved.

In this high-pressure scenario, the digital infrastructure needs to be intelligent. Technologies like edge computing function as strategic allies in this protection. By processing data closer to the user, the architecture speeds up page loading and inventory validation, in addition to including a vital layer of resilience. It distributes the access load, preventing the central data center from being overloaded, and allows security barriers to act at the edge, filtering malicious traffic before it reaches the main application.

The success of Black Friday is not measured only by revenue, but by customer protection and the maintenance of operations under pressure. Profit, in turn, is the result of a good strategy. Organizations that prioritize digital resilience and security prepare for sales peaks while simultaneously building a lasting competitive advantage.