Chris Souther recently wrote a post for the VeriFone Blog about the need to address the threat in retail security, as evidenced by the rash of recent security breaches in major retail stores across the globe. He had this to say:
The recent security breaches at major retail centers have elevated the need for more awareness around cardholder data security, to heights not seen in a decade. The irony of course, is that while we are now far more aware of these threats thanks in no small part to the viral nature of the Internet, it is also the Internet that allows criminals to more easily ply their craft and reap the rewards of their nefarious activities.
The silver lining to the breaches is that security solutions for some of these problems are now receiving the attention they should have been enjoying all along. Protections like EMV for card-present transactions, which helps prevent cloning; encryption that can immediately secure data at the point of capture and keep it secure throughout the merchant environment, and tokenization that can completely replace cardholder data with useless data streams for storage and re-use later, all belong in the responsible merchant’s payment security toolbag. And as our CEO, Paul Galant, commented in his recent earnings call, VeriShield Protect encryption solution (part of the VeriShield Total Protect encryption and tokenization solution) is now the de facto standard with 8 of the 11 top US processors and is now protecting 170 national US merchants.
But the industry’s job of continuous education is not over. We need to not only continue educating ourselves and others involved in payments, but we also need to educate our customers, our channel partners and end users. To that end, VeriFone kicked off a series of Security Roadshow events in April covering four major metro areas. Our speakers were industry veterans of the media, government, industry certifying bodies, and research.
See more at the VeriFone Blog
